718 MARINE PRODUCTS OF COMMERCE 



France participated in this enterprise. The fur-seal skins obtained were taken 

 mostly to the Canton market where, in exchange for teas and silks, thoy brought 

 the comparatively low price of 50 cents to $5.00 each. The fur was removed and 

 only the hides were used, chiefly in the manufacture of leather luggage. 



The sealing business was a profitable one, however, and this stimulated indis- 

 criminate slaughter. One after another of the seal rookeries was discovered and 

 decimated. Every seal that could be obtained was killed regardless of sex or age. 

 So vigorously was sealing prosecuted that when the South Shetland rookeries were 

 discovered in 1820 their immense wealth of seal life was nearly exterminated in 

 a single season. There is a record of one vessel taking 57,000 fur-seal skins in one 

 season's operations. The period of prosperity was short-lived, and fur seals are 

 now present in the Southern Hemisphere in significant numbers only on the South 

 African coast and on Lobos Island off the coast of Uruguay, where they are pro- 

 tected and utilized on a management basis. Fur seals elsewhere south of the 

 equator owe their existence to the inaccessibility of the rocky shores they inhabit, 

 which ofi^er partial protection against human depredation. 



Northern Hemisphere. In the North Pacific the Pribilof Islands were discovered 

 by the Russian navigator Gerassim Pribilof in 1786, and the slaughter of fur seals 

 began there immediately, following the same destructive pattern pursued in the 

 Southern Hemisphere. At the time of discovery it was estimated that this herd 

 contained at least 5,000,000 fur seals. About 2,000,000 fur seals were killed in 

 the 50 years immediately following the discovery of the islands. By 1835 the Rus- 

 sian management had grown apprehensive of the future of the herd, and conse- 

 quently imposed restrictions on shore killings on the Pribilofs. These restrictions 

 were applied soon enough, and the herd responded to the more favorable condi- 

 tions. In 1867, when these islands were acquired by the United States in the 

 Alaska purchase, it is estimated that there were 3,000,000 fur seals in the herd. 



During the first 40 years of ownership by the United States the sealing privi- 

 lege on the Pribilofs was leased to private companies, and more than 2,300,000 

 fur-seal skins were taken, for which about $9,500,000 was paid into the United 

 States Treasury. Such operations on shore were carefully regulated; but in 1879 

 and thereafter, until stopped by the treaty of 1911, pelagic sealing (the killing of 

 seals at sea) took a heavy and damaging toll, and the herd suffered a serious de- 

 cline. The Indians of the northwest coast from time immemorial followed the cus- 

 tom of spearing fur seals from their canoes as the herd passed along their shores 

 from February to May. The number of animals so taken, primarily for food, was 

 small and probably never exceeded a few thousand. In 1879, however, schooners 

 engaged in this fishery. They were fitted out to transport hunters and canoes to 

 the sealing grounds and to care for them there. These schooners, averaging 70 

 tons, with sealing canoes and hunters on board, sailed chiefly from Victoria, Brit- 

 ish Columbia, but others based at Pacific Coast ports from San Diego to Seattle. 

 Pelagic sealing commenced off the California Coast late in December, and the 

 migrating Pribilof herd was followed northward into the Bering Sea, where opera- 

 tions continued until September. A less important but equally intense and damag- 

 ing pelagic sealing industry was dependent upon the Japanese and Russian fur- 

 seal herds. The sealing grounds along the Asiatic Coast extended from the latitude 

 of Yokohama to the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea, and the season was 

 from March to September. 



