PAPER BY WILLIAM PALMER. 291 



procure food. For this purpose they travel from 50 to 100 miles west, 

 southwest, and northwest of the islands, where they only too readily 

 fall a prey to the seal hunters, who have learned to await their arrival at 

 these places in Bering Sea. 



While the fur-seal is a quiet, shy, and easily alarmed animal, it has 

 several peculiar habits which are taken advantage of by the seal hunt- 

 ers and render its capture almost an easy matter. Fur-seals are com- 

 monly seen scratching themselves while at the surface of the water. 

 A seal, having satisfied its hunger and desiriug to rest, will ascend to 

 the surface, and with only the tip of its nose and a small portion of its 

 back, with now and then a flipper, out of water, will sleep, though in a 

 rather fitful manner, or, with closed eyes, it will roll over and over, 

 keeping its body in a continual slow motion, with one flipper gently 

 beating the water, and bending its body in every conceivable position. 

 I had many splendid opportunities of observing this habit of the seals. 

 On one occasion I waded out until I could have touched with my fingers 

 a fur-seal floating on the surface. With its eyes closed it rolled over 

 several times a minute, at the same time bending and twisting its body 

 into every possible position, using one of its fore flippers as a paddle, 

 and occasionally scratching itself with a hind flipper. I stood thus for 

 more than fifteen minutes, and could at any moment have easily killed 

 it. But suddenly, as it was slowly drifting to leeward of me, its great 

 eyes opened, a look of astonishment seemed to pass over its face, and 

 in an instant, with a great plunge, it had disappeared below the surface, 

 only, however, as is the habit of the fur-seal, to rise again a few yards 

 away, take a last look at the strange object that had alarmed it, and 

 again disappear, this time for good. 



It is to this habit of the fur-seal that the success of the pelagic seal 

 hunters is due. On a calm day hundreds of the seals may be seen on 

 the surface engaged in this manner. The poachers are provided with 

 canoes, mostly manned with Puget Sound Indians, who stealthily pad- 

 dle up to the unconscious seal from leeward and, shooting it through 

 the head, immediately attempt to prevent its sinking by catching it 

 with a pole armed with hooks. It is known that from five to nine of 

 the seals out of every ten that are struck sink before they can be reached, 

 so that the waste of seal life by the pelagic seal hunters is from 50 to 90 

 per cent. But there is to be added to this statement another fact. The 

 greater number of the seals captured in the waters of Bering Sea are 

 females which are on their way to or have left their young on the rook- 

 eries while they are seeking food. As it is a well-known fact that a 

 mother seal will only suckle its own young, and that the young seal 

 is unable until it is several months old to procure its own food, it neces- 

 sarily obtains that the death of the pup follows that of its mother in a 

 short time. The numbers of dead pups about the shores of St. Paul's 

 began to attract my attention about the middle of July last year. On 

 Aug. 2 I stood on Zoltoi Beach and counted 17 dead pups within ten 

 feet of me, and a line of them stretched the whole length of the beach. 

 Many of them starve to death on the rookeries, but by far the greater 

 number sink in the deep water along the margin of the rookeries. 1 



'The remaining portion of this article appears at page 187 of the Report of the 

 British Bering Sea Commissioners. 



