FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 61 



lar, sure perpetuation on the breeding grouuds every year. We may, therefore, 

 properly looli upon this aggregate of 4,000,000, or 5,000,000 of fur seals, as we see 

 them every season on these Pribilov Islands, as the maximum limit of increase 

 assigned to them by natural law. The great e<iuilibrium which nature holds in life 

 upon this earth must be sustained at St. Paul s^s well as elsewhere. 



Think of the euormous food cousumptiou of these i ookeries and haul- 

 ing grounds when 5,000,000 seals ranged the Pacific Ocean and Bering 

 Sea! I said in 1881^— [Mou. Seal Islands of Alaska.] 



What an immense quantity of linny prey must pass down their voracious throats 

 as every year rolls by. A creature so lull of life, strung with nerves, and muscles 

 like bands of steel, ciiu not live on air or absorb it from the sen. Their food is lish 

 to the ])ractical exclusion of all other diet. I have never seen them touch, or disturb 

 with the intention of touching it, one solitary example in the tiocks 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 tlesh for food at' times as well as iish ; but lish we know they 

 eat. Wlnde windrows of the heads of cod and wolf lislies, bitten off by these ani- 

 mals 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 aud 

 the appetite of a band of fur seals to the windward of the island, as they passed into 

 and through a stray school of these tislies. 



How many pounds per diem is re(|uin'd by an adult seal, and taken by it when 

 feeding, is not certain in my mind. .Judgiug from the appetite, however, of kindred 

 animals, such as sea lions ied in contineuient at ^^■oodward's Gardens, San Francisco, 

 I can safely say that 40 pouuds for a full grown fur seal is a fair allowance, with at 

 least 10 or 12 poutuls per diem to every adult female, ;nid not much less, if any, to 

 the rapidly growing pups and, young hoUuschickie. Theretbre, this great body of 

 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 of hearty, active animals which we know on the seal islands, 

 must consume an euormous amount of such food every year. They can not average 

 less than 10 pounds of lish carh per diem, which gives the consumption, as exhibited 

 by their appetite, of over 6,000,000 toiis of fish every year. W hat wonder then that 

 nature should do something to hold these active fishermen in check.' 



savages to finally dispatch them. A Hudson Bay trader, William Manson (at Fort 

 Alexander, in 1865), told me that his father had killed one in the smooth waters of 

 Millbank Sound which measured 24 feet in leugth, and its liver alone yielded 36 

 gallons of oil. The Somniosus lays nu)tionless for long intervals in calm waters of 

 the North Pacific, just under and at the surface, with its dorsal tin clearly exposed 

 above. What havoc such a carnivorous lish would be likely to effect in a "pod" 

 of young fur seals can be better imagined than described. 



The following sharks probably prey upon the fur seals and fur-seal pux)S in the 

 North Pacific Ocean : 



Hcptranchias 7na(iiilatiis, Shovel-nosed Shark. 



Hexatuhiis co7'iniis, Cow Shark. 

 , Cetorldntts maxim tis, Ground Shark or Basking Shark 



Carvh arias f/lauciis, Blue Shark. 



Somniosii!^ microcephaliis, Sleeper or Basking Shark. 



These species range from Monterey Bay northward; the range of Cetorhinus and 

 Somniosua is to the Artie seas, the others do not (?) go so far north. 



1 should think that the Cetorhinus is the uu)st destructive. If the pups get down 

 well within the range of the blue shark, it would also be one of their worst enemies. 



' When, however, tlie 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 exist- 

 ence, unless it knows of fishing banks, unknown to us. The yearlings, however, 

 and all above that age, are eudowinl with sufficient muscular energy to dive rapidly 

 in deep soundings and to fish with undoubted success. The pup, however, when it 

 goes to sea, 5 or 6 mouths old, is not lithe and sinewy like the yearling; it is podgy 

 and i'at, a comparative clumsy swinnuer, and does not develop. I believe, into a good 

 fisherman until it has become pretty well starved after leaving the Pribilovs, I 

 must not be understood as saying that fish alone constitute the diet of the Pribilov 

 piunii)eds. I know that they feed to a liinited extent upon crustaceans and upon 

 the squid (Lolof/o), akso eating tender algoid s])routs. I believe that the pup seals 

 live for the first five or six mouths at sea largely, if not wholly, upon crustaceans 

 and sijuids. They are not agile euougli, in my opinion, to fish successfully in any 

 great degi'ee when they first depart from the rookeries. 



