420 TESTIMONY 



hunting is rapidly destroying the fur-seals, and that it is only a ques- 

 tion of a few years until they entirely disappear if the i)elagic sealing 

 continues. Since the seal hunting began to be industriously pursued 

 about the years 1884:-'85, and the transfer of American schooners to the 

 British flag at Victoria, British Colombia, took place to avoid seizure, 

 I have been made acquainted, both from observation and conversation 

 „ .. . ,, , ,, with sealers, of the fact of the growing scarcity of seals. 

 Duruig my voyages up and down the coast I have fre- 

 quently seen fur-seals in small groups at points where, until lately, they 

 were never known to apj)ear before. This scattering of the herd is un- 

 questionably in large part due to the fact that expert hunters first aim 

 to kill the leader of these small herds, when the remaining members be- 

 coming confused and scattered fall an easier prey to the sealer, or losing 

 their way wander off in their frightened condition to new grounds away 

 from the usual path to the islands where they are killed by Indians or 

 sealers alongshore. 



My information and observation is that a very large proportion of 



those killed along the coast and at sea from Oregon to the Aleutian 



^^. Islands are female seals with pups; I think not less 



witifiTiIp^ " ^"^^ ^^ than 95 per cent. The proportion of female seals killed 



in the Bering Sea is equally large, but the destruction 



. to seal life is much greater, owing to the fact that when 



a mother seal is killed her suckling pup left at the 



rookery also perishes. Impregnation having also taken place before she 



left the rookery in search of food, the ftetus of the next year's birth is 



likewise destroyed. I also found that females after giving birth to 



their young at the rookeries seek the codfish baidis at various points 



Femaks feediu"- ^^ ^ distance of from 40 to 125 miles from the islands 



eeciug. ^^^^ food, and are frequently absent one or more days at 



a time, when they return to find their young. 



I have noticed that the females when at sea are less wild and dis- 

 trustful than the bachelor seals, and dive less quickly in the presence 

 of the hunter. After feeding plentifully, or when resting after heavy 

 weather, they appear to fall asleep upon the surface of the water. It 

 is then they become an easy target for the hunters. 



About seven years since I was on the revenue-cutter Corwin when 



San Die o eized ^^^ scized thc Sealing schooucr San Diego in Bering 



1885!" '"^'^ ^'^^''^^ ' Sea. On the schooner's deck were found the bodies of 



some twenty seals that had recently bf^en killed. An 



Majority of female examination of the bodies disclosed that all of them, 



skins on board. ^y[^i^ |j^^^ ,^ singlc cxceptiou, wcre females, and had 



their young inside or were giving suck to their young. 



Out of some 500 or 600 skins on board I only found some 5 of the 

 number that were taken from males. I have also been i)resent at nu- 

 merous other seizures of sealing vessels, some eighteen in number, and 

 ^.. , among the several thousand skins seized I fVmnd on 



other seizures, aud • j • j_i ^ ^i ■, , • • i i . i ^ 



skins aboard. examination that they were almost invariably those 01 



females. There certainly was not a larger proiDortion 

 of males than five to the hundred skins. This great slaughter of mother 

 seals certainly means a speedy destruction to seal life. 



I have myself observed, and have so learned from others, that for the 

 last ten or fifteen years there were more seals at the islands than there 

 were twenty-two years ago when I first visited the Pribilof Islands; an 

 M.ina"-enient incrcasc duc, without doubt, to the very careful pro- 



tection and fostering of the seal herds afforded by the 

 Alaska Commercial Company, then lessee of the islands. 



J. H. Douglass, 



