48fi HISTORY AND METHODS OF TOE FISHERIES. 



CONDITION OF THE BUSINESS WHEN CEDED 10 THE UNITED STATES. "When the Alaskan 

 Territory came into our possession the Russians were taking between 400 and 500 sea-otters from 

 the Aleutian Islands and south of the peninsula of Alaska, with perhaps 150 from Kenai, Yakootafc 

 and the Sitkan district. The Hudson Baj Company and other traders were then getting about 

 200 more each year from the coast of Queen Charlotte's and Vancouver's Island and off Gray's 

 harbor, near the mouth of the Columbia River, Washington Territory an annual average yield 

 of less than 1,000 skins from the whole Russian-American and northwest coast. 



This is interesting, because an extraordinary excess of these figures is recorded by the results 

 of the last year's catch in Alaska, for, instead of securing less than 700 skins, as obtained by the 

 Russians, our traders handled in 1880 nearly C,000 skins. This immense difference is not due to 

 the fact of there being a proportionate increase of sea-ottecs, but rather, in my opinion, to the 

 organization of hunting parties fired by the same spirit and competitive ardor as that which 

 animated and shaped the hunting during early days of Alaskan discovery. 



This keen competition of our traders, it seems to me, will in a short time ruin the business if 

 some action is not taken by the Government, although the Treasury Department has, agreeably to 

 my recommendation in 1874, made a very promising beginning in this matter. And, to the credit 

 of the traders up there, it should be said that, while they cannot desist, for if they do others will 

 step in and profit at their expense, yet they are anxious that some prohibition should be laid upon 

 the business. This can be easily done and in such a manner as to perpetuate the sea-otter, not 

 only for themselves but for the natives, five thousand of whom are wholly dependent upon this 

 hunting for a living, which lifts them above the barbarous life of savages. 



BREEDING-GROUNDS OF ALASKA. Over two-thirds of all the sea-otters taken in Alaska are 

 secured in those small areas of water and little rocky islands, and on the reefs around the islands 

 of Saauach and the Cheruobours, which proves that these animals, in spite of the incessant hunt- 

 ing all the year round on this marine ground, seem to have some particular preference for it to the 

 practical exclusion of nearly all the rest of the coast in the Territory. 



I think that this is due, perhaps if not wholly so at least in part, to the fact that those crusta- 

 ceans and mollusks upon which the kalan feeds are secured here by that animal in the greatest 

 profusion and constancy of supply ; otherwise, I cannot see why it should, in spite of its intensely 

 suspicious and wary nature, hug a coast that literally bristles with human enemies and entails its 

 wholesale destruction annually. Again, these reefs and rocky shoals, before indicated, furnish an 

 anchorage to immense areas of kelp, upon the semi- submerged masses of which, I believe, the sea- 

 otter breeds. I think it breeds there and there only, because I cannot find a scintilla of evidence 

 showing that there is any spot of landing ground about an island or along the main coast which 

 has ever been occupied by the Enhydra for the purpose of breeding.* 



SEA-OTTER AT STRAITS OF FUCA. It is also noteworthy that nearly every one of the sea- 

 otters taken below the Straits of Fuca are shot by the Indians and white hunters off the beach in 

 the surf at Gray's Harbor, all shot within a stretch of less than 20 miles. Here every year some 

 fifty to one hundred are taken in this manner, while not half that number can be obtained from 



* The gigantic _Yi n-ori/xlix HitktHiiius, \vitli stems resembling clothes-lines, sometimes over 300 feet ill length, which 

 are supported by large air-vessels, crowned with bunches of chicotomous leaves, each 30 and SO feet in length. This 

 submarine forestry, when disengaged from its anchorage, floats in large raft-like aggregations here and there all over 

 Bering Sea and the North Pacific. Upon these floating fnci islands the sea-otter brings forth its young; or else, I 

 know of no other place where this act of reproduction culminates. It is well established by the concurrent testi- 

 mony of sea otter hunters during the last century that this animal does not repair to land or reef during this period 

 of its life and habit. 



