OCEANIC MAMMALS 471 



As an example of wasteful methods of hunting the walrus, 

 Captain Bernard (1925) tells that where 30 or 40 years before 

 there were numerous places on the Alaskan coast where wal- 

 ruses used to haul out on beaches for rest, today, although 

 the herds pass along the Alaskan coast in their migration north 

 or south, they keep well offshore and haul out on the floating 

 ice instead of on land. For this reason the Eskimos have to go 

 out in their boats and hunt them as they rest on the floes, with 

 the result that numbers are killed and not recovered, while 

 much of the meat is wasted because it can not be landed. He 

 adds, "During the summer of 1923, while cruising along the 

 Alaskan coast north of Point Hope to Wainwright Inlet near 

 Point Barrow, I examined a stretch of coast of over 200 miles 

 from Cape Lisburne north. A westerly wind had washed 

 ashore on that one part of the coast over a thousand bodies of 

 walrus which had been killed among the ice floes by the 

 Eskimos. One-third of the walrus bodies still had the ivory 

 tusks, showing that the walrus had been shot and had slipped 

 off the ice and sunk before the natives had reached them. 

 These animals were a total loss as the meat was spoiled when 

 the bodies came ashore." Captain Bernard points out that 

 between the entrance of Maryatt Inlet and Cape Lisburne is a 

 stretch of broken beach about 25 miles long that was formerly 

 a very favorite hauling place for walruses and "is the only 

 place on the coast of Alaska where today a walrus occasionally 

 lands. " This stretch, if it could be set aside as a walrus reserve, 

 would provide an area where they would undoubtedly return 

 in increasing numbers to spend a season, just as happened in 

 the case of the beach near East Cape, Siberia. This protection, 

 Captain Bernard believes, would not interfere with the hunting 

 by the natives at Point Hope and other settlements, not far 

 distant. "If such a reservation should be established and 

 regulations made whereby the natives were allowed an allot- 

 ment of walrus to be killed on certain days, as is the custom at 

 Ingshong, Siberia, there would be no waste as now exists under 

 the present custom of killing out on the ice. " Bernard adds 

 that "it seems impossible to enforce the present law to the 

 effect that walrus are to be killed only for meat. The natives 

 kill for the ivory or not at all. No matter how much they need 

 the meat, they can only bring small pieces of it ashore. " 



Concerning the present economic uses of the Pacific walrus, 



