FOGS IN BERING SEA. 527 



There is almost constant cloudiness and dense fog, and it is difficult 

 for a vessel to know her own location within 



reasonable limits after having cruised about lor a Report of American Com- 

 shorttime. The margin of uncertainty would be missioners, p. 376 of The 

 nearly as wide as the zone itself. Often the Case. 

 navigator receives his first information regarding 



the nearness to the islands by hearing the cries of the seals on the rook- 

 eries, which he can not see. Under such circumstances few arrests 

 would be made of trespassing vessels that could not make a plausible 

 plea in self defense. In most cases it would be difficult to prove that 

 the sealer was actually within the forbidden area. 



During the summer months fogs envelop the sea islands or cover the 

 sea a short distance from them a considerable por- 

 tion of the time. Harry N. Clark, p. 160. 



Sealing vessels are enabled thereby to carry on 

 their work without detection at almost any point, and could and would, 

 I believe, cross any boundary line that might be drawn about the is- 

 lands and catch seals at will inside of it. 



I do not think sealing can be permitted, with safety to the rookeries, 

 in any part of the sea. If the sealers are given an inch they will take 

 an ell, and destroy them. 



I have also no doubt as to the final result of this indiscriminate 

 sealing. The dense fogs which prevail over Ber- 



in g Sea in summer render the drawing of an imag- S. W. Mclntyre, p. 138. 

 inary line of protection about the seal islands ab- 

 solutely futile and inoperative for such purpose; and unless full protec- 

 tion is afforded the animals, their extermination must follow as surely 

 as in the case of the seals at the South Shetland Islands or the buffalo 

 on the plains of North America. 



It is my opinion that should pelagic sealing be prohibited in a zone 

 30, 40, or 50 miles about the Pribilof Islands it 

 would be utterly useless as a protection to seal L. G. Shepard, p. 189. 

 life, because female seals go much farther than 



that in search of food, and because fogs are so prevalent about those 

 islands that it would be impossible to enforce any such prohibition. 



As seals are fouud in large numbers over 100 miles from the islands 

 during the entire summer, a zone 30 or 40 miles 

 about the islands in which open-sea sealing were Geo. Wardman,p.l79. 

 prevented, if such could be done, would be of com- 

 paratively little protection to seal life. 



