456 TESTIMONY 



Deposition of Caleb IJmlahl, sealer (master). 



ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC SEALING. 



State or California, 



Citi/ and County of San Francisco, ss: 

 Caleb Liiidahl, having been duly sworn, deposes and says: I am 40 

 years of age. I reside in San Francisco. My occupa- 

 Mattie T. Dyer. tion Is that of a scaler. I first went sealing in the 

 Bering Sea in 1890 on the Mattie T. Dyer. I was em- 

 ployed as a hunter. Our intention was to catch seals ))efore we entered 

 the Bering Sea. We left San Francisco in the latter part of April, but 

 caught no seals between here and Sanak. We sealed from there to the 

 Akatan Pass and caught 75 seals, mostly females with 

 Mostly pregnant pup. Somc of the youug they had inside were quite 

 *^"^^' grown, but of course you could not tell when you shot a 



seal lying asleep whether it was ai male or female. We 

 enSf.^*'''*' *'™' °^ entered the Bering Sea in the latter part of May. We 

 caught no seals in the Bering Sea. Had no boats out. 

 Seized. The Mattie T. Dyer was seized soon after she entered 



the Bering Sea. We shoot at all the seals we get a 

 chance, but it is only the ones that we find asleep that we catch. On 

 ^ an average a hunter gets one seal out of four. Some 



hunters do not get that many, because the seals sink 

 out of sight after they are killed before we can get them. I have 

 Antarctic seaiin k»own of poor huntcrs losiug nine out of ten. We left 

 n arc ic sea ing. ^^^ ^^^^ Hancoclc iu Octobcr, 1891, to go on a sealing 

 Hancock, 1891. expedition in tlie south seas. We started in sealing 



Patagonia. ^ff the coast of Patagonia and sealed in those seas 



until March. The seals are nearly all killed off down 

 there, so that we got only about 20 skins. It is no use for vessels to go 

 there sealing any more. I was there twelve years ago oil a sealing 

 expedition and the rookeries were full of seals. Noav 

 ro?keiiVs!"'*'''° "^ tl't'y have most all gone. They never gave the seals a 

 chance to breed there. They shot them as soon as 

 they came up on the rocks. 



If they keep on hunting them in the Bering Sea and the North Pa- 

 cific in the same way they have done iu the last few 

 sary"*^*''^*^*"^ ^*^^^^ ycars, they will exterminate them in the same way, be- 

 causemcst all the seals killed are females. The young 

 ones will all die, and every female seal you shoot makes the killing of 

 two, because after the seal has given birth to her young the pup will 

 starve to death on the laud, or when you shoot them in the water they 

 may have a pup inside. If the seals on the Soutli 

 lafds*^ ^''""''"'^ ^" Shetland Islands had been protected, I think they 

 would have been there by the million, because in one 

 year they took 300,000 seals from the Shetland Islands, I have very 

 often cut a seal open and found a live young one inside, 1 was codfish- 

 ing in the Bering Sea in the schooner Hancoclc in 1891. 

 eas ee mg. Where I fislicd there were no seals that came around 



Decrease that part of the sea. From what I learned when fish- 



ing in the Bering Sea there are not nearly as many 

 seals there as there were ten years ago. 



Caleb Lindahl, 



Subscribed and sworn to before me this Otli day of April, A. D, 1892. 

 [l. s.] Clement Bennett, 



Notary Public. 



