104 ' ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



agree that it is no inconvenience whatever, when the reproductive 

 functions have been discharged and their coats renewed, for them to 

 stay the balance of the time in their most congenial element — the 

 briny deep. 



Natural enemies of the fur seals.— That these animals are 

 preyed upon extensively by killer- whales {Orca gladiator) , in especial, 

 and by sharks, and probably other submarine foes now unknown, is 

 at once evident; for, were they not held in check by some such cause, 

 they would, as they exist to-day on St. Paul, quickl}^ multiply, by 

 arithmetical progression, to so great an extent that the island, nay, 

 Bering Sea itself, could not contain them. The present annual kill- 

 ing of 100,000 out of a j^early total of over a million males does not, 

 in an appreciable degree, diminish the seal life, or interfere in the 

 slightest with its regular, sure peri^etuation on the breeding grounds 

 every year. We may, therefore, proi)erly look uijon this aggregate of 

 four and five millions of fur seals, as we see them every season on 

 these Pribilof Islands, as the maximum limit of increase assigned to 

 them by natural law. The great equilibrium, which nature holds in 

 life upon this earth, must be sustained at St. Paul as well as else- 

 where. 



Food consumed by the fur seals. — Think of the enormous food 

 consumption of these rookeries and hauling grounds — what an 

 immense quantity of finny prey must pass down their voracious throats 

 as every year rolls b}^! A creature so full of life, strung with nerves, 

 muscles like bands of steel, can not live on air or absorb it from the 

 sea. Their food is fish, to the practical exclusion of all other diet. I 

 have never seen them touch, or disturb with the intention of touching 

 it, one solitary example in the flocks of waterfowl which rest upon the 

 surface of the water all about the islands. I was especially careful 

 in noting this, because it seemed to me that the canine armature of 

 their mouths must suggest flesh for food at times as well as fish ; but 

 fish we know they eat. Whole windrows of the heads of cod and 

 wolf fishes,^ bitten ofi" by these animals at the nape, were washed \\p 

 on the south shore of St. George during a gale in the summer of 1873. 

 This pelagic decapitation evidently marked the progress and the 

 appetite of a band of fur seals to the windward of the island as they 

 passed into and through a stray school of these fishes. 



How many pounds per diem is required by an adult seal and taken 

 by it when feeding is not certain in my mind. Judging from the appe- 

 tite, however, of kindred animals, such as sea lions fed in confinement 

 at Woodward's Gardens, San Francisco, I can safely say that 40 pounds 

 for a full-grown fur seal is a fair allowance, with at least 10 or 12 

 pounds per diem to every adult female, and not much less, if any, to 

 the rapidly growing pups and young ' ' holluschickie. " Therefore, this 

 great body of four or five millions of hearty, active animals which 

 we know on the seal islands must consume an enormous amount of 

 such food every year. They can not average less than 10 pounds of 

 fish each per diem, which gives the consumf)tion, as exhibited hy their 

 appetite, of over 6,000,000 tons of fish every year. What wonder, then, 

 that nature should do something to hold these active fishermen in 

 check ? 2 



Pelagic range of fur seals for food. — During the winter sol- 

 stice — between the lapse of the autumnal and the verging of the ver- 



^Anarrhieas sj). 



- 1 feel confident that I have placed this average of fish eaten per diem by each 

 seal at a starvation allowance, or, in other words, it is a certain minimum of the 



