SKAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLAND-. 121 



On the facts above stated the United States claim that the following propositions 

 have beeii demonstrated beyond refutation: 



(1) That female seals 2 years old and over are pregnant at all times when found in 

 the waters of Bering Sea. 



(2) That the nursing females are the only class of seals which feed to any extent 

 while pelagic sealing is carried on in Bering Sea. 



(3) That the nursing females are taken in large numbers over 50 miles from the 

 islands. 



(1) That the seal pups are not weaned until after the sealing season has closed in 

 Bering Sea. 



(5) That the killing of a nursing female in Bering Sea destroys at least two lives, 

 namely, the female and the fetus; and it is an irresistible conclusion that the pup 

 left upon the islands by the female killed also perishes (see paper directed particu- 

 larly to that subject). 



i> That in point of numbers alone sealing in Bering Sea is over twice as destruc- 

 tive to seal life as scaling in the North Pacific. 



(7) That the sealing season in Bering Sea comprises only the months of July, 

 August, and a part of September. 



(N) That all the sealers examined by the United States and Great Britain as to the 

 months when sealing should be prohibited include July in the close season proposed, 

 and nearly all include August. 



(9) That to open Bering Sea during the months of July and August, with a pro- 

 tective zone of 20 miles about the Pribilof Islands, as proposed by Great Britain, 

 would mean the extermination of the seal herd. 



(10) That absolute prohibition of pelagic sealing at all times in the whole Bering 

 Sea east of the 180 degrees meridian from Greenwich is necessary to preserve the 

 Alaskan seals. (Notes for United States counsel, p. 10.) 



REGULATIONS. 



[Extract from Senator Morgan's opinion.] 



I will now state, as I gather from all the evidence before us, what is the evil that 

 these Governments have found to be so threatening to seal life in the Alaskan herd 

 as to draw them into an agreement that it should be repressed by their concurrent 

 action. 



I will not attempt to examine again the details of the evidence so thoroughly pre- 

 sented and with such judicial impartiality by Mr. Justice Harlan. I can find no flaw or 

 omission in his careful statements of the evidence, or in the conclusions that he drew 

 from it as to matters of fact. I believe that he stated the exact truth of the situa- 

 tion, and I fully concur in his treatment of the subject and in the conclusions that 

 he has reached. 



The present situation, as I understand it, is as follows, as shown by a comparison 

 of the Pribilof and pelagic catches: 1 



In 1889 the Pribilof catch was 102,617. which fell off to 21,234 in 1890, and this was 

 all that the islands would yield of killable seals, leaving a deficit as compared with 

 the previous year of 81,379 seals upon the islands. If this contrast in the number of 

 seals that could be taken on the islands in 1889 and 1890 was due to the overkilling 

 of males on the islands and not to pelagic sealing, the falling off of numbers would 

 have been indicated in each of the six years prior to 1889. No one has asserted such 

 a fact, and we know that a male seal must be of 6 years old before he is able to take 

 up and niaintain a harem on the rookeries. So that this falling off between 1889 and 

 1890, if it was due to an excessive killing of males, must have occurred at least as 

 early as 1882. This is not true, and no one pretends that it is. The killing of 51,655 

 seals that the pelagic hunters got, and at least three-fold that number, including 



1 These figures, cited by Senator Morgan, include seals taken off the Asiatic coast 

 of the North Pacific Ocean. 



