Islands, taking about 300,000 skins the first 

 season. An Act of Congress on 27 July 1868 

 prohibited the killing of fur seals, and on 3 

 March 1869 the islands were set aside by the U.S. 

 Government as a special reservation for the pro- 

 tection of the animals. A year later the U.S. 

 Treasury Department was authorized to lease ex- 

 clusive rights to take seals on the islands, with 

 the stipulation that no females were to be taken. 

 Further legislation in 1874 authorized the Sec- 

 retary of the Treasury to establish catch quotas 

 and open seasons for the lessee. 



Under the first 20-year lease, beginning in 1870, 

 the Alaska Commercial Company took 1,977,377 

 sealskins. A second 20-year lease, to the North 

 American Commercial Company, produced only 

 342,651 sealskins for the period ending in 1909. 



The leasing system was discontinued in 1910, and 

 since then the Alaska fur seal herd has been 

 under the management of the Federal Govern- 

 ment, first by the Secretary of Commerce through 

 the former Bureau of Fisheries and now by the 

 Secretary of the Interior through the Bureau of 

 Commercial Fisheries of the U.S. Fish and Wild- 

 life Service. 



Fur seals are vulnerable to capture while at 

 sea as well as on land. Pelagic sealing, or taking 

 of fur seals at sea, began to develop on a com- 

 mercial scale about 1879. As practiced exten- 

 sively by American, Canadian, and Japanese seal- 

 ers in the North Pacific, pelagic sealing resulted 

 in the indiscriminate killing of the seals, without 

 regard to age or sex. The pelagic take of seal- 

 skins reached a peak of 61,838 in 1894. 



"Fur seals sporting around the baidar — Natives of St. Paul lightering off the bundled sealskins to the 

 ship from the Village Cove." A sketch by Henry W. Elliott, who visited the Pribilofs for the Treasury De- 

 partment and the Smithsonian Institution in 1872, shortly after purchase of the islands from Russia. The 

 baidar, or bidarrah, was made of sea lion skins, canvas-covered bidarrahs are still used in ship-to-shore 

 ferrying. 



