310 CAUSE. 



Since 1SS3, however, there is said to have occurred a very materia] 

 diminution of the seal life on the Pribilof Islands, 

 J. M. Morton, p. G9. due, as it is claimed, to a large and indiscriminate 

 slaughter of these animals in the waters of Bering 

 Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The cause assigned for this loss is undoubt- 

 edly the true one. If no other proof were forthcoming in relation to it 

 the large display of dead pups on the rookeries would in itself furnish 

 all the evidence required. Such diminution could not, in my opinion, 

 be the result of the ordinary yearly slaughter for shins. It is shown 

 that an appreciable expansion of the rookeries took place after twelve 

 or fourteen years of such slaughter, and I think this fact conclusively 

 demonstrates that the number of seals which the law permitted to be 

 killed each year was not greater than the known conditions of the 

 seal's life would safely warrant. 



From the experience gained and observations made during three 



killing seasons, from the information gleaned 



Jos. Murray, p. 74. from men who have devoted their lives to the 



practical side of the seal question, and from the 



books and reports in the Government offices on the islands, 1 am able 



to say that, in my opinion, there is only one great cause of the decrease 



of the fur seal, and that is the killing of the females by pelagic hunting. 



I believe this decrease is owing to the large number of vessels engaged 

 in hunting the fur seal at sea and the indiscriin- 



Arthur Newman, p. 211. inate methods employed by these sealing vessels 

 in taking skins. 



The practice of pelagic seal hunting was followed by the northwest 

 coast Indians from their earliest history, but 



Gustave Niebaum, p. 78. amounted to so little as to be inappreciable on 

 the islands. Even after white hunters engaged 

 in it in a limited way our losses from this source were attributed to the 

 marine enemies of the seals, and was so far overcome by the good man- 

 agement on the islands as to permit the growth of the herd to continue 

 so long as it was limited to a few vessels and confined to the vicinity 

 of the Oregon, Washington, and British Columbian coasts. But even 

 before anv considerable slaughter had taken place in the waters of 

 Bering Sea, as early as 1882, it was noticed that the rookeries had 

 stopped expanding, though they were treated in every way as they 

 always had been. An examination of the London Catalogue of seal- 

 skin sales shows that the "Victoria catch" already aggregated a very 

 considerable number of skins and now brings home the conviction that 

 pelagic sealing, when confined almost wholly to the Pacific, is still a 

 very dangerous enemy of seal life on the islands. 



After 1886 the force of pelagic hunters was greatly augmented, and 

 became more and more aggressive, and their field of operations widely 

 extended, until they appeared in alarming numbers in Bering Sea in 

 1884 and 1S85. In' 1887 we were forced to commence taking smaller 

 skins in order to obtain our quota and preserve enough breeding bulls. 

 In 1888 they were still smaller, while in 1889 more than half of them 

 were such as we would not have killed in former years, and we called 

 the attention of the Treasury Department to the evident diminution of 

 seal life, and recommended that fewer seals be kdlcd in future. There 



