432 FUR INDUSTRY 



goes on for nine months in the year and covers about 2,000 miles. The seal gets all its 

 food in the open sea at great distances from land. It resorts to the land only to bring 

 forth and nourish its young to self-dependence. It is resident for this purpose on certain 

 islands in Bering Sea from May to November. The mother seal goes 150 to 200 miles 

 from the rookeries to find her food, leaving her young behind, returning to nurse it, and 

 again going away to feed. With the storms of winter all classes of animals leave the 

 islands and make a long migration down through the Pacific ocean to the latitude of 

 Southern California, the farthest point south reached by the fur seals about the month 

 of January, when the course of their migration turns again northward along the western 

 coast of Alaska, ending at the Pribiloff Islands sometime in the month of July. 



It has been the custom of the Indians of the north-west coast of America from the 

 earliest times to go out in their canoes a day's journey to hunt with the spear stragglers 

 from the migrating herd on its northward journey. It was a precarious business and the 

 number of animals taken was unimportant. In 1879 however sailing vessels began to 

 be used to take the Indians and their canoes out to the main body of the herd and to 

 enable them to follow its course. This new form of sealing was very successful. The 

 fleet grew in numbers and the catch multiplied until it reached the total of 140,000 skins 

 in a single season. The operation of the fleet gradually extended over the entire migra- 

 tion route of the seals and included their summer feeding grounds in Bering Sea. Until 

 very recently at least the pelagic fleet contained about thirty vessels manned by about 

 twelve hundred men using about three hundred boats. The sealers knew in general the 

 locality of the fur seals at different periods of the year; the migration route has been 

 determined by the logs of the various pelagic sealing vessels that have taken fur seals at 

 various times of the year throughout that great course. 



Between 1883 and 1897 a total of 304,713 skins of seals killed at sea were marketed, 

 and undoubtedly an equal number were lost. The moment the mother seals left the 

 islands the sealers were after them, and a mother seal, in order to get her food with 

 which to suckle her young, was obliged to run the gauntlet of the vessels. The destruc- 

 tion of the mother seal meant the starvation of the offspring on shore, and uncounted 

 thousands of young seals have perished on the islands from that cause. The males 

 being reduced in numbers by land killing, the females predominated in the herd as found 

 at sea. On land the young males are forced to herd by themselves through fear of the 

 adult males. They can be readily distinguished and handled without disturbance to 

 the breeding herd. At sea the sexes cannot be distinguished. On the spring migration 

 the mother seal is heavy with young, and hence less swift in her movements. On the 

 summer feeding grounds she must feed regularly and heavily through necessity of 

 nourishing her young, and as a result the pelagic catch is made up chiefly of the breeding 

 females. From 1879 to the present time this hunting of gravid and nursing females has 

 gone steadily on, with the consequence that the herd of fur seals belonging to the United 

 States has been reduced enormously. 



This decline of the seal herd was established for the United States Government in 

 1898 by a commission of scientific experts. It was pointed out that only by the estab- 

 lishment of an international game law for the high seas which should protect the female 

 fur seal, in other words the abolition of pelagic sealing could the herd be preserved 

 and restored. The property involved is a very important one. With regard to the 

 practice of killing bachelor seals for the natives' food it was decided that this should not 

 be abandoned unless a cogent reason presents itself. No harm to the herd can result 

 from the killing of surplus males. No benefit to the herd could accrue from the matur- 

 ing of males unnecessary for purposes of reproduction, which when of adult age would 

 have no female consorts, but which by incessant and furious fighting would destroy or 

 cripple the breeding bulls and themselves as well. 



Since signing this convention, the United States Government has passed a new 

 measure with regard to killing fur seals on the islands, and has decided on a close season 

 for five years from 1913. The section of the bill giving effect to the convention has 

 therefore been amended to read as follows: 



