102 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



Loss OF LIFE SUSTAINED BY THE YOUNG SEALS. — From my calcula- 

 tions, given above, it will be seen thai 1,000,000 pups, or j^oung seals, 

 in round numbers, ai*e born upon these islands of the Pribilof group 

 every year; of this million, one-half are males. These 500,000 young 

 males, before they leave the islands for sea, during October and Novem- 

 ber, and when they are between 5 and 6 months old, fat and hardy, 

 have suffered but a trifling loss in numbers, say 1 per cent, while on 

 and about the islands of their birth, surrounding which, and upon 

 which, thej^ have no enemies whatever to speak of; but after they 

 get well down to the Pacific, spread out over an immense area of 

 watery highways in quest of piscatorial food, they form the most help- 

 less of their kind to resist or elude the murderous teeth and carniver- 

 ous attacks of basking sharks ^ and killer whales.^ By these agencies, 

 during their absence from the islands until their reappearance in the 

 following year, and in July, they are so perceptibly diminished in 

 number that I do not think, fairly considered, more than one-half of 

 the legion which left the ground of their birth, last October, came up 

 the next July to these favorite landing i^laces; that is, only 250,000 

 of them return out of the 500,000 born last j^ear. The same statement, 

 in every res^iect, applies to the going and the coming of the 500,000 

 female pups, Avliich are identical in size, shape, and behavior. 



As yearlings, however, these 250,000 survivors of last year's birth 

 have become strong, lithe, and active swimmers; and when they again 

 leave the hauling grounds as before, in the fall, thej^ are fully as able 

 as are the older class to take care of themselves; and when thej^ reap- 

 pear next year at least 225,000 of them safely return in the second 

 season after birth; from this on I believe that they live out their nat- 

 ural lives of fifteen to twenty years each ; the death rate now caused 

 by the visitation of marine enemies affecting them in the aggregate 

 but slig•htl3^ And, again, the same will hold good touching the 

 females, the average natural life of which, however, I take to be only 

 nine or ten years each. 



Out of these 225,000 young males we are required to save only one- 

 fifteenth of their number to pass over to the breeding grounds and 



^ Som)iiosus mio'ocephalus. Some of these sharks are of very large size, and 

 when caught by the Indians of the northwest coast, basking or asleep on the sur- 

 face of the sea, they will, if transfixed by the natives' harpoons, take a whole fleet 

 of canoes in tow and run swiftly with them several hours before exhaustion ena- 

 bles the savages to finally dispatch them. A Hudson Bay trader, William Manson 

 (at Fort Alexander, in 18fi5), told me that his father had killed one in the smooth 

 waters of Millbank Sound which measured 34 feet in length, and its liver alone 

 yielded o6 gallons of oil. The Somiiiosxf; lies motionless for long intervals in calm 

 waters of the North Pacific, just under and at the surface, with its dorsal fin 

 clearly exposed above. What havoc such a carnivorous fish would be likely to 

 effect in a i^od of young fur seals can be better imagined than described. 



'-Orca (jJatUatoy. While revolving this particular line of inquiry in my mind 

 when on the ground and among the seals, I involuntarily looked constantly for 

 some sign of disturbance in the sea which would indicate the presence of an enemy; 

 and, save seeing a few examples of the 0/ro. I never detected anything: If the 

 killer whale were common here, it would be pacent to the most casual eye, because 

 it is the habit of this ferocious cetacean to swim so closely at the surface as to show 

 its peculiar sharp dorsal fin high above the water. Possibly a very sui)erficial 

 observer coukl and would confound the long, trenchant fluke of the Orca with the 

 stubby node upon the spine of the humpback whale, which that animal exhibits 

 only when it is about to dive. Humpbacks feed around the islands, but not com- 

 monly — they are the exception. They do not, however, molest the seals in any 

 manner whatever, and little squads of these pinnipeds seem to delight themselves 

 by swimming in endless circles around and under the huge bodies of those whales, 

 frequently leaping out and entirely over tlie cetacean's back, as witnessed on one 

 occasion bv myself and the crew of the Reliance, off the coast of Kadiak, June, 

 18T4. 



