FUR SEALS AND THE SEAL FISHERIES. 321 
from the rookeries of breeding seals, as easily as a band of sheep. ‘They are 
killed and skinned by the natives, the skins are counted by government agents, 
and are then placed in the salt houses of the lessees of the islands for a month’s 
curing, when they are shipped to London, which has always been the world’s 
fur-seal market. The selecting and killing are accomplished without noise or 
disturbance, and everything is done decently and in order. The United States 
and Russian Governments have never allowed any disturbing of the breeding 
rookeries and have never permitted the killing of female seals. The breeding 
stock upon the islands has therefore remained undisturbed, and would, but for 
the international nuisance of pelagic sealing, have yielded forever a world supply 
of sealskins. 
Pelagic sealing, however, practiced in the open sea both in and out of season, 
permits of no selections being made, and the catch consists of young and old, 
male and female. By far the greater portion, however, is female seals, for these, 
after the young are born, go to sea to feed, ranging as far as 200 miles from the 
islands and returning at more or less regular intervals to nurse their young. The 
killing of females at this season is followed by the starvation of all nursing young 
on the breeding grounds, the loss of young in this manner corresponding with the 
number of mother seals taken by the sealing vessels. In ten years pelagic sealing 
in the adjacent waters and in the Pacific Ocean destroyed the value of the Pribi- 
lof and Commander islands as government properties. The seal herds are now 
so decimated that the surplus males available for killing on the Pribilof Islands 
are less than half as many as in 1896. 
Pelagic sealing at the present time is engaged in by vessels belonging to 
British Columbia and to Japan. The British Columbia fleet has greatly dimin- 
ished in numbers as the seals have become fewer and it found the profits less, 
but there has been an increasing number of Japanese sealers in recent years, 
until in 1908 the latter fleet numbered 38 vessels, which took 13,197 skins. The 
British Columbia fleet in that year numbered 8 vessels, and took 4,452 skins. 
This total of 17,649 skins is, however, a great decrease from the pelagic catch of 
61,838 skins in 1894, and shows the results of the indiscriminate slaughter. 
So long as pelagic or indiscriminate sealing in any form remains, the restor- 
ation of the fur-seal fisheries will be impossible. The Bering Sea controversy 
was precipitated by the seizure by the United States Government of Canadian 
sealing vessels in Bering Sea. Later on, the matter was placed in the hands of 
the Tribunal of Arbitration at Paris. This tribunal having decided that the 
‘United States had no jurisdiction over Bering Sea outside of territorial limits, 
pelagic sealing continued in but slightly modified form. Renewed efforts have 
been made by the United States Government to put a stop to it, however. 
American citizens, a small number of whom were engaged in pelagic sealing, 
B. B. F. 1908—21 
