20 SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 
Paul, we found seals in abundance. The sea being perfectly smooth, I 
went out in the dingey a few hundred yards from the ship and photo- 
graphed several seals, showing their positions when asleep and awake. 
The distance at which we were able to photograph them was from 30 
to 40 feet. In the three-quarters of an hour 26 seals were counted. 
Most of them were sleeping, and all were females, judging by size alone. 
The photographs show the customary attitudes. Seals sleeping at sea 
have little more than the nose, lower jaw, and hind flippers above water, 
the fore flippers being raised occasionally as the animal scratches itself 
or rolls slowly from side to side. The back is always down and deeply 
submerged. 
As arule sealing with spears is practicable only when seals are found 
asleep, the ordinary spearing distance being 30 to 35 feet. To the fur 
seal’s unfortunate habit of sleeping much at sea is chiefly traceable its 
diminution, for it is at such times most readily approached by the pelagic 
sealer and taken with guns or spears. The number of seals to be 
observed asleep in Bering Sea is greater than elsewhere, the migration 




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Sleeping fur seals. 
being over and the animals feeding at their natural habitat. It is a 
well- imown fact of natural history that breeding male seals do not leave 
the rookeries during the breeding season, and that young pups can not 
leave the immediate vicinity of the islands until they depart on their 
first migration southward. 
From the almost constant presence on the hauling grounds of the 
nonbreeding males, it is also well established that they do not leave the 
islands to any oreat extent. The females alone constitute a class that 
feed at long distances from the islands during the breeding season. 
Their excursions in search of food extend over 200 miles, and com- 
mencing soon after the birth of their young are continued to the close 
of the season. There can be no doubt but that the nursing females are 
the most constantly exposed of any class of seals to the destructive 
methods of pelagic sealing in Bering Sea, and that their capture during 
the breeding season is, of all the agencies tending toward the diminution 
of the seal herd, the one most to be deplored. 
