FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 



199 



Bering Sea, in its entirety, is a sinjile tish-spawuing bank, nowhere deeper than 50 

 to 75 fathoms, averaging perhaps, 40. There are also great reaches of fishing shoals 

 up and down the northwest coast from and above the Straits of Fuca, bordering the 

 entire southern, or Pacific, coast of the Aleutian Islands. The aggregate offish food 

 which the seals find npon these vast ichthyological areas of reproduction must be 

 simply enormous, and fully equal to the most extravagant demand of the voracious 

 appetites of Calhrhini. 



Using the above as a suggestion, several writers have hastily assumed 

 that it would be a good thing if the seals were exterminated; that by 

 exterminating them, just so much more would be given to our salmon 

 and cod fishermen to place u])on the markets of the world. These men 

 forget the fact that all animal life in a state of nature, existing to-day 

 as the fishes and seals do, is sustained by a natural equilibrium, one 

 animal preying upon the other, so that year after year only so many 

 seals, so many cod, so many halibut, so many salmon, so many dogfish, 

 and so on throughout the long list, can and do exist,, 



Suppose, for argument, that we could and did kill all the seals*, we 

 would at once give the deadly dogfish {Squalus acanthias), which 

 family swarms m these waters, an immense impetus to its present 

 extensive work of destruction of untold millions of young food fishes, 

 such as herring, cod, and salmon fry, upon which it feeds. 



A dogfish can, and does destroy everyday of its existence, hundreds 

 and tliousands of young cod, salmon, and other food fishes — destro^^s 

 at least double and quadruiile as much as a seal. What is the most 

 potent factor to the destruction of the dogfish ! Why, the seal him- 

 self; and unless man can and will destroy the dogfish first, he will be 

 doing positive injury to the very cause he pretends to champion if he 

 is permitted to disturb this equilibrium of nature, and destroy the seal. 



OFFICERS OF THE GOVERNMENT. 



List of resident Treasury agents who have served on the seal islands of Alaska from 1869 



to 1S90. 



CHEEF SPECIAL AGEXTS. 



ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENTS. 



