FISHERIES OF ALASKA IN 1907. 57 
spring months, when the ice is abundant. The otters, in playing 
about the moving ice, are sometimes caught and crushed to death, 
and occasionally the dead carcass is carried by the ice or the waves 
up onto the beach. Mr. Charles Rosenberg has two or three stations 
on the Bering Sea side of Unimak Island and covers 10 to 12 miles in 
his patrol. During the winter of 1905-6 he secured 10 otters in this 
way; during the winter of 1906-7, however, but 1 was found. A 
few years ago Charles Peterson patrolled the beach from Isenbeck 
Bay to Blind Pass. This was at one time a favorite method on the 
islands adjacent to the Pacific side of the peninsula, upon which 
otters which had been killed by the hunters and not secured would be 
washed up. Certain islands were especially favored in this regard 
owing to the prevailing winds in their direction during the hunting 
season. 
The British Columbia sealing schooner Casco, which cruised in the 
North Pacific Ocean this year, secured 18 sea-otter skins. (This 
same schooner secured 12 in 1906.) Other vessels of the fleet took 20 
sea otters, making a total catch of 38. 
Early in the year a complaint was received from Mr. Charles Rosen- 
berg that his sea-otter stations on Unimak Island, in which he had 
stored considerable supplies, were plundered by Japanese seal 
hunters during his absence in the summer of 1906, and a large part of 
the supplies stolen. 
FUR SEAL. 
The shipment of fur seal skins by the lessees of the Pribilof Islands 
was 12,384 from St. Paul Island, and 2,580 from St. George Island, a 
total of 14,964 skins for the group. At the time of going to press 
with this report all of these skins had not yet been auctioned off 
in the London market, but estimating those unsold on the basis of 
the prices received for the already disposed of lots, the value of 
the total shipment from the islands amounted to $475,107. In 1906 
there were shipped from the islands 14,476 skins, which sold for 
$445,137. Inaddition tothe abovein 1907 there were 405 fur-seal skins, 
valued at $9,042 (this represents the price paid to the hunters for these 
skins and not the London price), taken in southeast Alaska, and 25 
skins, valued at $500, taken in central Alaska, making a total of 430 
skins, valued at $9,542, taken by Alaskan natives, which, added to 
the skins shipped from the Pribilof Islands, makes a grand total of 
15,394 skins shipped from Alaska. It is highly probable that the 
skins of several hundred illegally killed fur seals are smuggled out 
of Alaska each year despite the vigorous efforts to enforce the law 
forbidding such shipments. 
Aside from the Pribilof Islands, the Indians of Sitka are the only 
Alaskan natives who engage actively and as a regular business in the 
