ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 105 



nal equinoxes — iu order to get this enormous food supply, the fur seals 

 are necessarily obliged to disperse over a veiy large area of fishing 

 ground, ranging throughout the North Pacific 5,000 miles across 

 between Japan and the Straits of Fuca. In feeding they are brought 

 to the southward all this time, and as they go they come more and 

 more in contact with those natural enemies peculiar to the sea of these 

 southern latitudes, which are almost strangers and are really unknown 

 to the waters of Bering Sea; for I did not observe, with the exception 

 of 10 or 12 perhaps, certainly no more, killer whales,^ a single marine 



whole consumption. If the seals can get double the quantity which I credit them 

 with above, startling as it seems, still I firmly believe that they eat it every year. 

 An adequate realization by ictliyologists and fishermen as to what havoc the fur- 

 seal hosts are annually making among the cod, herring, and salmon of the north- 

 west coast and Alaska would disconcert and astonish them. Happily for the peace 

 of political economists who may turn their attention to the settlement and growth 

 of the Pacific Coast of America, it bids fair to never be known with anything like 

 precision. The fishing of man, both aboriginal and civilized, in the past, present, 

 and prospective, has never been, is not, nor will it be, more than a drop in the 

 bucket contrasted with the piscatorial labors of these icthyophagi in those waters 

 adjacent to their birth. What catholic knowledge of fish and fishing banks any- 

 one of those old " see-catchie " must possess, which we observe hauled out on the 

 Pribilof rookeries each summer. It has, tmdoubtedly, during the eighteen or 

 twenty years of its life, explored every fish eddy, bank, or shoal throughoiTt the 

 whole of that vast immensity of the North Pacific and Bering Sea. It has had 

 more piscine sport in a single twelvemonth than Izaak Walton had in his whole 

 life. 



An old sea captain, Dampier, crviising around the world just about two hundred 

 years ago, wrote diligently thereof (or rather one Funnel is said to have written 

 for him), and wrote well. He had frequent reference to meeting hair seals and 

 sea lions, fur seals, etc., and fell into repeating this maxim, evidently of his own 

 making: "For wherever there be plenty of fysh, there be seals." 1 am sure that, 

 unless a vast abundance of good fishing ground was near b)', no such congregation 

 of seal life as is that under discussion on the seal islands could exist. The whole 

 eastern half of Bering Sea, in its entirety, is a single fish-spawning bank, nowhere 

 deeper than 50 to 7.5 fathoms, averaging, perhaps, 40; also, there are great reaches 

 of fishing shoals lap and down the northwest coast, from and above the Straits of 

 Fuca, bordering the entire southern or Pacific coast of the Aleutian Islands. The 

 aggregate of cod, herring, and salmon which the seals find upon these vast icthyo- 

 logical areas of reproduction must be simply enormous, and fully equal to the most 

 extravagant demand of the voracious appetites of Callorhini. 



When, however, the fish retire from spawning here, there, and everywhere over 

 these shallows of Alaska and the northwest coast, along by the end of September 

 to 1st of November every year, I believe that the young fur seal, in following them 

 into the depths of the great Pacific, must have a really arduous struggle for exist- 

 ence — unless it knows of fishing banks unknown to us. The yearlings, however, 

 and all above that age, are endowed with sufficient muscular energy to dive rapidly 

 in deep soundings, and to fish with undoubted success. The pup. however, when 

 it goes to sea, 5 or 6 months old, is not lithe and sinewy like the yearling; it is 

 podgy and fat, a comparative clumsy swimmer, and does not develop, I believe, 

 into a good fisherman until it has become pretty well starved after leaving the 

 Pribilofs. 



I must not be understood as saying that fish alone constitute the diet of the 

 Pribilof pinnipeds; I know that they feed, to a limited extent, upon crustaceans 

 and upon the squid {Loligo), also eating tender algoid sprouts; I believe that the 

 pup seals live for the first five or six months at sea largely, if not wholly, upon 

 crustaceans and sqidds; they are not agile enough, in my opinion, to fish success- 

 fiillv in any great degree when they first depart from the rookeries. 



' But 1 did observe a very striking exhibition, however, of this character one 

 afternoon while looking over Lukannon Bay. I saw a " killer " chasing the alert 

 ' • holluschickie " out beyond the breakers, when suddenly, in an instant, the cruel 

 cetacean was turned toward the beach in hot pursuit, and in less time than this is 

 i-ead the ugly brute was high and dry iipon the sands. The natives were called, 

 and a great feast was in prospect when I left the carcass. But this was the only 

 instance of the orca in pursuit of seals that came directly under my observation; 

 hence, though it does vmdoubtedly capture a few here every year, yet it is au insig- 

 nificant cause of destruction on account of its rarity. 



