64 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



not contain them long when they depart from the breeding rookeries and the hauling-gronnds therein. While 

 it is carried in mind that they sleep and rest in the water with soundness and with the greatest comfort on its 

 surface, and that even when around the land, during the summer, they frequently put off from the beaches to take 

 a bath and a quiet snooze just beyond the surf, we can readily agree that it is no inconvenience whatever, when 

 the reproductive functions have been discharged, and their coats renewed, for them to stay the balance of the time 

 in their most congenial element — the briny deep. 



Natural enemies of the fur-seals. — That these animals are preyed upon extensively by killer-whales 

 (Orca gladiator), in especial, and by sharks, and probably other submarine foes now unknown, is at once evident; 

 for, were they not held in check by some such cause, they would, as they exist to-day on St. Paul, quickly 

 multiply, by arithmetical progression, to so great an extent that the island, nay, Bering sea itself, could not 

 contain them. The present annual killing of 100,000 out of a yearly total of over a million males does not, in an 

 appreciable degree, diminish the seal-life, or interfere in the slightest with its regular, sure perpetuation on the 

 breeding-grounds every year. We may, therefore, properly look upon this aggregate of four and five millions of 

 fur-seals, as we see them every season on these Pribylov islands, as the maximum limit of increase assigned to them 

 by natural law. The great equdibrium, which nature holds in life upon this earth, must be sustained at St. Paul 

 as well as elsewhere. 



Food consumed by the fur-seals. — Think of the enormous food-consumption of these rookeries and 

 hauling-grounds ; 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, muscles like bands of steel, cannot live on air, or 

 absorb it from the sea. Their food is fish, 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 off by these animals at the nape, were washed up 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 baud 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, 1 can safely say that forty pounds for a full-grown fur-seal is a fair allowance, with at least 

 ten or twelve 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 four and five millions of hearty, active animals which we know 

 on the seal-islands, must consume an enormous amount of such food every year. They cannot average less than 

 ten pounds of fish each per diem, which gives the consumption, as exhibited by their appetite, of over six million 

 tons of fish every year. What wonder, then, that nature should do something to hold these active fishermen in 

 check.t 



* Anarrhichas sp. 



1 1 feel confident that I have placed this average of fish eaten per diem by each seal at a starvation allowance, or, in other words, it 

 is a certain minimum of the whole consumption. If the seals can get, double the quantity which I credit them with above, startling as it 

 seems, still I firmly believe that they eat it every year. An adequate realization by icthyologists and fishermen as to what havoc the fur- 

 seal hosts are annually making among the cod, herring, and salmon of the northwest coast and Alaska, would disconcert and astonish 

 them. Happily for the peace of political economists who may turn their attention to the settlement and growth of the Pacific coast of 

 America, it bids fair to never be known with anything like precision. The fishing of man, both aboriginal and civilized, in the past, 

 present, and prospective, has never been, is not, nor will it be, more than a drop in the bucket contrasted with the piscatorial labors of 

 these iethyophagi in those waters adjacent to their birth. AVhat catholic knowledge of fish and fishing banks any one of those old 

 "seecatchie" must possess, which we observe hauled out on the Pribylov rookeries each summer. It has, undoubtedly, during the 

 eighteen or twenty years of its life, explored every fish eddy, bauk, or shoal throughout the whole of that vast immensity of the North 

 Pacific and Bering sea. It has had more piscine sport in a single twelve mouth than Izaak Walton had in his whole life. 



An old sea-captain, Dampier, cruising around the world just about 200 years ago, wrote diligently thereof (or, rather, one Funnel 

 is said to have written for him), and wrote well. He had frequent reference to meeting hair-seals and sea-lions, fur-seals, etc., and fell 

 into repeating this maxim, evidently of his own making: " For wherever there be plenty of fysh, there be seals." I am sure that, unless 

 a vast abundance of good fishing-ground was near by, no such congregation of seal-life as is that under discussion on the seal-islands, 

 could exist. Tho whole eastern half of Bering sea, in its entirety, is a single fish -spawning bank, nowhere deeper than 50 to 75 fathoms, 

 averaging, perhaps, 40; also, there are great reaches of fishing-shoals up and down the northwest coast, from and above the straits of 

 Fuca, bordering the entire southern, or Pacific, coast of the Aleutian islands. The aggregate of cod, herring, and salmon which the seals 

 find upon these vast icthyological areas of reproduction, must be simply cuormous, and fully equal to the most extravagant demand of tho 

 voracious appetites of Callorhini. 



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 existence — unless it knows of fishing banks unknown to us. Tho 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, five or six 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 Pribylovs. 



