a harem could effectively hold. The average harem fell to 26 or 



27. 



Year 

 1912 

 1913 

 1914 

 1915 

 1916 

 1917 

 1918 

 1919 

 1920 

 1921 



Average harem 

 60 

 66 

 60 



48 

 33 

 26 

 27 

 30 

 41 

 45 



Thus the closed season, now seen by hindsight as a manage- 

 ment error, provided us with biological evidence on the bull- 

 to-cow relationship. 



In 1921, two wooden towers with elevated approaches or 

 "catwalks" were erected on the Reef to improve visibility for 

 bull counting (Johnston 1922:78 and fig. 21). Many other 

 towers have been erected on the rookeries since. Before 1921, 

 the annual bull count had been made from high points on 

 land, from ladders, from portable tripods, and from boats. 

 The bull count first became an annual event in 1904. 



In 1922 "at least 95 percent" of all pups on the Pribilofs 

 were counted under the direction of Edward C. Johnston, 

 storekeeper (Bower 1923:92). A full count has not been made 

 since. Johnston started his career in 1911 as a clerk on the 

 Albatross, spent the years 1919 to 1927 in teaching and ad- 

 ministrative work on the Pribilofs, returned in 1939 as superin- 

 tendent, and retired in 1949 as general manager (Bower 1920: 

 74; Thompson 1952b:57). 



Also in 1922, the sizes of the rookery areas were estimated 

 and were reported to be no larger than in 1916. The rookeries 

 were photographed from fixed camera stations, as they had 

 been in 1917 (Bower 1923:93). 



Hanna (1921a) described the organs of two hermaphroditic 

 seals obtained on the killing fields in 1918. No one has reported 

 since on this abnormality in fur seals, though Scheffer (1951) 

 has described cryptorchidism. 



Hanna also measured heart temperature in 71 seals. He con- 

 cluded that "the normal temperatures of bachelor seals as 

 received on the killing fields in a thoroughly cooled condition 

 are about 101 °F" (Hanna 1924:53). This value is too high; it 

 probably represents the temperature of excited seals. Hanna 

 also found that one seal, which died in convulsions during a 

 drive, had a temperature of 108. 9°F (42.7°C). "Upon exami- 

 nation it was found that the fur [of this seal] had loosened and 

 could be easily plucked with the fingers." For many years, the 

 skin from a seal which died from exhaustion and overheating 

 in a drive was known as a "roadskin" and was marked for 

 special attention by a loop of rope through the armhole. No 

 special handling is given to such skins today. 



In mid-July 1922, Leonhard Stejneger stopped briefly at St. 

 Paul Island en route to an inspection of the Commander 

 Islands rookeries (Stejneger 1923, 1925). At Bering and Cop- 

 per Islands, he saw the old flag of Imperial Russia still flying, 6 

 yr after the Revolution. He visited certain rookeries where he 

 had stood just 40 yr before, in July 1882. The seal industry of 

 the Commanders was in deplorable condition and the seal 

 population had fallen to about 18,000, mainly as a result of 



pelagic sealing. A Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce 

 report for the following year, 1923, gave the Commander 

 population as only 12,562 (Bower 1926:160). 



In 1923, the Bureau of Fisheries decided to insure an escape- 

 ment of males for the breeding reserve by marking and sparing 

 a prescribed number during the harvest. That year, 10,017 

 seals were marked by shearing or hot-iron branding, or both 

 (Bower 1925a: 1 19). The task must have been difficult. In later 

 years, branding was resorted to intermittently and on a small 

 scale only. After 1926, shearing operations were postponed 

 until the close of the killing season; after 1932, marking for the 

 breeding reserve was abandoned (Bower 1933:64; Scheffer 

 1950d:6-7). "Of the animals marked by shearing [in the second 

 year of reserving operations, 1924], 1 ,000 were further marked 

 by clipping off the tips of both ears" (Bower 1925b: 149). The 

 results of this experiment are not recorded. 



In 1922, Henry W. Elliott persuaded Senator Hiram W. 

 Johnson to introduce a bill (S. 3731, 67th Congress) which 

 would change the method of harvesting and selling sealskins 

 (U.S. Congress, Senate 1923). For each skin, its "salted length 

 and girth [width]" (U.S. Congress, Senate 1923:1) would be 

 measured; no seal could be killed, the skin of which when 

 salted was < 37.5 in (95 cm) long; all skins would be sold in 

 raw salted condition. At a Senate committee meeting on the 

 bill on 2 February 1923, Elliott again met in debate his old 

 adversary, David Starr Jordan. The bill was not endorsed by 

 the committee (U.S. Congress, Senate 1926:2). 



In 1926, Elliott lobbied successfully for the introduction of a 

 bill similar to the one proposed in 1922. It went further. It 

 would oblige the Bureau of Fisheries to mark permanently all 

 3-yr-old males spared annually for the breeding reserve (U.S. 

 Congress, Senate 1926). Elliott, at the age of 80, appeared 

 before the Senate committee to speak for the bill and to reiter- 

 ate charges that the Bureau was deliberately and illegally kill- 

 ing yearling seals. His effort brought no new legislation, 

 though perhaps his self-appointed role as watchdog of the seal 

 herd may have been useful in exposing management to public 

 criticism. 



Johnston (1925:136) observed that "cows that were branded 

 in 1902, or before, with a single bar across the back continue 

 to appear on the rookeries of St. George Island. Three were 

 seen in 1923. These are at least 21 years old. . . ." No older 

 seals were recorded until the 1960's, when improved methods 

 of reading the age of a seal from its teeth were developed. 



The first report of twin fetuses in a fur seal was obtained in 

 1923 on the 10th of May, when a Bureau of Fisheries agent ex- 

 amined an adult female killed by Tlingits off Biorka Island in 

 Sitka Sound (Johnston 1925:136). 



In 1923 "Mr. Keishi Ishino, fur-farming expert of the Im- 

 perial Fisheries Bureau [of Japan]" spent a month on the Prib- 

 ilofs "making a careful study of questions pertaining to fur 

 seals" (Bower 1925a: I II). He returned in 1926 (Bower 

 1927:303). His second visit was doubtless concerned, in part, 

 with international relations. The Fur Seal Treaty of 1911 was 

 to continue in force until 15 December 1926 and thereafter un- 

 til terminated by 12 mo written notice given by one or more of 

 the parties. 



"In January, 1926, Japan proposed to the other three signa- 

 tory Powers that a conference be called to revise the 191 1 Con- 

 vention, to make the regulations less stringent in order to 

 decrease the number of seals . . . coming into Japanese seas 

 and seriously damaging the Japanese fishing industry; but as 



25 



