ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 371 



lar, sure perpetuation on the breeding grounds every year. We may, therefore, 

 properly look upon this aggregate of 4,000,000, or 5,000,000 of fur seals, as we see 

 them every season on these Pribilov 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 elsewhere. 



Think of the enormous food consumption of these rookeries and haul- 

 ing grounds when 5,000,000 seals ranged the Pacific Ocean and Bering 

 Sea! I said in 1881 — [Mon. Seal Islands of Alaska.] 



What an immense quantity of finny prey must pass down their voracious throats 

 as every year rolls by. A creature so full of life, strung with nerves, and muscles 

 like bands of steel, can not live on air or absorb it from the sea. Their food is hsh 

 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 water fowl 

 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 ani- 

 mals at the nape, were washed np 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 appetite, 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 

 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 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 consumption, as exhibited 

 by their appetite, of over 6,000,000 tons of fish every year. W hat wonder then that 

 nature should do something to hold these active fishermen in check. ' 



savages to finally dispatch them. A Hudson Bay trader, William Manson (at Fort 

 Alexander, in 1865), told me that his father had killed one in the smooth waters of 

 Millbank Sound which measured 24 feet in length, and its liver alone yielded 36 

 gallons of oil. The Somniostis lays 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 elfect in a "pod" 

 of young fur seals can be better imagined than described. 



The following sharks probably prey upon the fur seals and fur-seal pups in the 

 North Pacific Ocean : 



Heptranchias maculatus, Shovel-nosed Shark. 



Hexanchus corinus, Cow Shark. 



Cetorhinus maximiis, Ground Shark or Basking Shark 



Carcharias glauGiis, Bine Shark. 



Somniosus microcephahts, Sleeper or Basking Shark. 



These species range from Monterey Bay northward ; the range of Cetorhinus and 

 Somniosus is to the Artie seas, the others do not ( ?) go so far north. 



I should think that the Cetorhinus is the most destructive. If the pups get down 

 well within the range of the blue shark, it would also be one of their worst enemies, 



' 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 Pribilovs. I 

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

 pinnipeds. I know that they feed to a limited extent upon crustaceans and upon 

 the squid (Lolofjo), 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 squids, They are not agile enough, in my opinion, to fish successfully in any 

 great degree when they first depart from the rookeries. 



