SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 21 



My people wondered why this was so, and no one could tell until we 

 learned that hunters in schooners were shooting and destroying them 

 in the sea. Then we knew what the trouble was, for we knew the seal* 

 they killed and destroyed must be cows, for most all the males remain 

 on or near the islands until they go away in the fall or fore part of the 

 winter. We also noticed dead pups on the rookeries that had been 

 starved to death. If they had not killed the seals in the sea there 

 would be as many on the rookeries as there was ten years ago. There 

 was not more than one fourth as many seals in 1891 as there was in 1880. 

 We understand the danger there is in the seals being all killed off and 

 that we will have no way of earning our living. There is not one of us- 

 but what believes if they had not killed them off by shooting them in 

 the water there would be as many seals on the islands now as there was 

 in 1880, and we could go on forever taking 100,000 seals on the two- 

 islands; but if they get less as fast as they have in the last five or six 

 years there will be none left in a little while. (Kerrick Artomanoff.) 



Upon examining the Bering Sea catch for 1891, as based upon the 

 records of the Victoria custom-house, I ascertained that nearly 30,000 

 seals had been taken by the British fleet alone in Bering Sea during 

 the summer of 1891. When there is added to this the catch of the 

 American vessels, the dead pups upon the rookeries, and allowances 

 made for those that are killed and not recovered, we have a catch whicb 

 will not only nearly reach in numbers the quota of male seals allowed to 

 be taken upon the islands in years gone by, but we have a catch in the 

 securing of which destruction has fallen most heavily upon the produc- 

 ing females. This is borne out by a further fact. The young bachelor 

 seals can lie idly on the hauling grounds and through the peculiarities 

 of their physical economy sustain life with a small supply of food, but 

 the cows must range the ocean iu search of nourishment that they may 

 meet the demands made upon them by their young. That seals go a 

 great distance from the islands 1 know from personal observation, for 

 we saw them 120 miles to the northward of the island on the way to 

 Nunival. That the females outnumber the males ten to one is well 

 known, otherwise the hauling ground would present such an array of 

 killable seals that there would be no necessity for the Government to- 

 suspend the annual quota. It inevitably follows that the females are 

 the class most preyed upon in Bering Sea. No class of animals which 

 bring forth but a single offspring annually can long sustain itself 

 against the destruction of the producers. As a result of my investiga- 

 tion I believe that the destruction of females was carried to the point, 

 in about 1885, where the birth rate could not keep up the necessary 

 supply of mothers, and that the equilibrium being once destroyed and 

 the drain upon the producing class increasing from year to year from 

 that date, the present depleted condition of the rookeries has resulted 

 directly therefrom. (J. Stanley-Brown.) 



When we first noticed that the seals on the rookeries were not so 

 many as they used to be, we did not know what was wrong, but by and 

 by we found that plenty of schooners came into the sea and shot seals, 

 and we often found bullets and shot in seals when we were skinning 

 them. And then we found plenty of dead pups on the rookeries, more 

 and more every year, until last year (1891), when there were so many the 

 rookeries were covered with them, and when the doctor (Akerly) opened 

 some of them there was no milk or food in their stomachs. Then we 

 all knew the cows had been shot when they went into the sea to feed, 

 and the pups died because they had nothing'to eat. Plenty of schooners 



