28 TESTIMONY 



there lias been a very perceptible dimiinition in the number of seals 

 seen in the water of the Bering Sea and hauling grounds on the islands. 

 This decrease has become alarmingly sudden in the 

 *^^®' last three or four years, due I believe to the ruthless 



and indiscriminate methods of destruction employed by vessels in tak- 

 ing female seals in the oj^en sea. 

 My experience has been that the vessels employed in hunting seals 

 Indiscriminate ^^^^^^ indiscriminately, pups, male and female seals, re- 

 Biai^giiter/ ""^"'^ ^ gardlcss of age or sex, and even should sealers wish to 

 discriminate in the killing it would not be i)ossible for 

 Sex indistingnisii- them to do SO. My study of them in a long experience 

 able in water. j^^^ ^^^ enabled me to positively distinguish the sex of 



a seal while in the water. It is the custom to pay seal-hunters per 

 Pa • of hmiiers slvins taken, hence it is the object of the hunters to se- 

 cure as many as possible, without reference to sex, age, 

 or condition. While hunting they use small row boats, with two or 

 Tir.ti.„^„fi .• three men in each boat armed with shotgun and rifle, 



Method of nunting. t • n n f i ■. iti • i • -i-i 



chiefly the lormer, and it would be simply impossible 

 for the master or owners, even should they desire it, to supervise ten 

 or a dozen hunters as to the killing of any particular sex or kind. 



Formerly the seals were gentle and the approach of a vessel did not 



even alarm them, but when firearms came into use it so frightened 



Waste of life thciu that they liad to be shot at long range, entailing 



a loss of not less than three out of every four or five 

 killed. The ruthless practice of killing seals by shooting them in the 

 sea is not only extravagant in the loss of skins, but is also a wanton 

 and useless destruction of a valuable and useful animal, and must 

 necessarily soon lead to its extermination if not discontinued. 



It will be readily seen that the demoralization ])roduced by a sealing 

 fleet of fifty to a hundred vessels with from 1,000 to 2,000 men scat- 

 tered over the .sea, hunting and shooting indiscriminately, would soon 

 put an end to all seal life in those waters. 



My ow^n observation and the information obtained from seal hunters 

 convince me that fully 90 per cent of the' seals found swimming in the 



Bering Sea during the breeding season are iemales in 

 ingSi^' "*' ^''''' search of food, and their slaughter results in the de- 

 struction of her young by starvation. I firmly believe 

 that the fur-seal industry at the Pribilof Islands can be saved from 



destruction only by a total prohibition against killing 

 saS'"'''^"'"'" '"'"'''" seals not only in the waters of the Bering Sea but also 



during their annual immigration northward in the Pa- 

 cific Ocean. 



This conclusion is based u]ion the well-known fact that the mother 

 seals are slaughtered by the thousands in the North Pacific while on 

 their way to the islands to give birth to their young, and extinction 

 must necessarily come to any sjtecies of animal where the temaleis con- 

 tinually hunted and killed during the period required for gestation and 



rearing of her young; as now practiced tliere is no re- 

 of^Slr ''"""" spite to the female seal from the relentless pursuit of 



the seal hunters, for the schooners close their season 

 with the departure of the seals from the northern sea, and then return 

 home, refit immediately and start out upon a new voyage in February 

 or March, commencing upon the coast of California, Oregon, and Wash- 

 ington, following the seals northward as the season advances into the 

 Bering Sea. 



