SEALING SCHOONEES IN TUSCARORA DEEP 
r,u 
just before the great wave of June 15, 1896, devastated the 
Japanese coast. 
Tliroughout the month of INFay the sealers found unusual and 
most baffling currents and cross-currents prevailing in their hunt- 
ing grounds, which are at that season one hundred to two hun- 
dred miles off the southeastern coast of the Kurile islands, that 
volcanic range of islands or half-submerged peaks whose name 
is literally “ The Smokers.” These hunting grounds lie directly 
over and in line with that great depression (4,655 fathoms) of the 
Pacific’s bed sounded by Admiral Belknap, of the U. S. S. Tamt- 
rora, in 1872. exceeded only by the recent soundings of H. B. I\I. S. 
Penguin of 5,155 fathoms in the southern Pacific. The seal-hunt- 
ers in their small boats were separated from the schooners more 
frequently and for longer periods than usual by these unexpected 
currents, and if the pelagic sealers were not the most practical 
and fearless men they might well have been superstitious. One 
schooner, with all its sails reefed and its small boats out, set 72 
miles to the southwest one calm, clear day. The following day 
it set 60 miles to the southeast, and the third day, still close- 
reefed, on a smooth sea it was borne 40 miles due north. 
Another schooner, sending out its small boats to a herd of seals 
feeding among some tide rips, saw the boats cross the tide rips 
and, with oars resting, drift away to the northeast, while the wait- 
ing schooner was rapidly carried to the southeast. The masters 
of such vessels were puzzled b}^ these currents, and dead reckon- 
ing was rarely verified by observations. 
The temperature of the water is carefully watched b}’’ pelagic 
sealers, as the variation of a few degrees either way will pre- 
clude any chance of seals being found in a neighborhood, tlu)se 
animals kee[)ing to one even-water climate in their migrations. 
Several schooners found the water of unusually high tempera- 
ture in places, and one ves.sel rei>orted taking temperatures from 
48° to 218° Fahrenlieit in the course of a few miles’ sailing, this 
during the second week of June, ddie frightened sealer- |)ut 
about quickly, when, as he descril^ed it, the water was literally 
boiling all around him. 
The schooner OirloUa Cox, winch reached Hakodate June 25, 
ten days after the gr(;at wave had struck the San-Rilai coast, 
reported that when 2-50 miles out and sailing along the line of 
the great trough of Tuscarora deej) it had sailed for two days 
through floating pumice. Other schooners report(;d traces of 
})uniice, and the gossi]) of the Victoria sealers, who visited 
