SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 21 
The opening of Bering Sea to pelagic sealing has proved the most 
fatal of all the provisions of the Paris award. 
EFFECTIVE METHODS OF THE SEALING FLEET. 
The effectiveness with which pelagic sealing may be carried on in a 
circumscribed hunting ground like Bering Sea may be more clearly set 
forth by directing attention to the number of hunting boats engaged 
during the past season. The sealing fleet consisted of 38 schooners, 
carrying from 6 to 20 boats or canoes apiece—the average number being 
about 12. The boats hunted in all directions, frequently going 10 miles 
away from the vessels to which they belonged, the hunting areas of the 
different schooners thus overlapping at times. I have often spoken 
canoes 8 miles from their schooners. Pursuing seals in this systematic 
way, 38 vessels carrying somewhat more than 450 boats, took 31,542 
skins in six weeks, notwithstanding the fact that many of them were 
late in reaching Bering Sea from the Japan coast, and left early on 
account of having their North Pacific catches on board, for the purpose 
of being early in market, on account of the impatience of Indian hunt- 
ers already wearied with the long Japan coast cruise, lack of provisions, 
or for other reasons. 
THE USE OF SPEARS. 
Of the Canadian fleet in Bering Sea, all but six schooners carried 
Indian hunters from Vancouver and Queen Charlotte islands. These 
natives have been taking seals off their own shores with the spear from 
time immemorial, and it was a fatal mistake on the part of the Paris 
Tribunal to underestimate the efficiency of spears in such hands, a fact 
doubtless well known to those having charge of the British side of the 
case. 
The spear used during the past season is very similar to that figured 
by Scammon twenty years ago in writing of pelagic sealing by these 
natives.! ‘lhe spear pole is 12 to 14 feet long, pronged, with two detach- 
able barbed iron spear points, secured by a 30-yard line, the end of 
which is tied to the boat. When a seal is struck the barbed points 
slip off the pole, the latter being recovered after the seal has been pulled 
alongside the canoe and clubbed. Seals fight vigorously at such times 
and seldom fail to leave permanent marks of their sharp teeth on boats 
and canoes, while large bulls are very dangerous to handle. 
. Pelagic sealing is altogether impracticable for our own Aleut natives, 
their light skin-covered bidarkies not being constructed to withstand 
such attacks as wounded seals make with their teeth. 
CHANGE OF FEEDING GROUNDS. 
The fur seal changes its feeding grounds in Bering Sea from year to 
year. The changes appear to be quite marked, and are doubtless 
dependent on the food supply. The pelagic catch for the summer of 
1894 was made chiefly to the southeast of the Pribilofs, the rest of the 
catch being made south, southwest, west, and northwest of the islands. 
A small proportion only were taken along the border of the plateau. 4 
Capt. J. W. Todd, of the sealer Rose Sparks. states that in 1889 he 
found seals plentiful to the northeast of the Pribilofs, and moderate 
numbers were to the northwest and southeast. In 1887, when sealing 
with the schooner Lilly L., he found the herd chiefly to the southeast, 
taking 197 seals in two days. 

| Marine Mam., Scammon, p. 159. 
