CHAPTER XII. 
THE EFFECT OF PELAGIC SEALING. 
PELAGIC SEALING INVOLVES THE KILLING OF FEMALES. 
In the foregoing discussion we have assumed for the time being that pelagic 
sealing has been the cause of the decline in the fur-seal herd. The relation of the 
land catch to the sea catch is such as to lead inevitably to this conclusion. But there 
remain other and better reasons for holding pelagic sealing responsible for the 
decline. 
As has been already shown, only males are killed on land; the females are not 
disturbed. On the other hand, at sea animals of every age and condition, and of 
both sexes, are taken. In the water it is impossible to distinguish the sexes, and all 
animals seen are killed if possible. On land the habits of the animals are such that 
the males can be readily separated and handled without disturbance to the females. 
PELAGIC SEALING AND THE SEALING OF THE SOUTH SEAS. 
With the above contrast between land and sea killing in mind, we may pause for 
a moment to consider the strange proposition put forward in the British contention 
before the Paris Tribunal, that “the methods practiced on the Pribilof Islands and 
those practiced in the southern hemisphere” were parallel in results. This was in 
answer to the contention by the United States that pelagic sealing was essentially 
the same as the sealing which destroyed herds of the Antarctic. On the contrary, 
say the British commissioners in 1891, the history of the rookeries of the south seas 
proves incontestably that “excessive slaughter on shore in the entire absence of 
pelagic sealing results in commercial extermination.” ! 
The absence of pelagic sealing in the southern hemisphere has nothing to do 
with the matter. 1t would be absurd to expect pelagic sealing there when there was 
nothing to prevent the sealers from landing and directly invading the rookeries. 
It is safe to say that there would have been no pelagic sealing in the northern 
hemisphere had it been possible for any who might choose to do so to land and kill 
females on shore. 
METHODS OF SOUTHERN SEALING. 
In the case of the rookeries of the southern hemisphere, men armed with clubs 
or firearms were landed on the rookeries, who killed all the animals they could 
secure, making no distinctions as to sex, age, or condition. In a day or a week they 
returned to complete the work of destruction if it was not complete at the first trial. 
It must appear from a candid contrast of such slaughter that it has nothing in 
common with land killing on the Pribilof Islands beyond, perhaps, the fact that 
in both cases the killing is done on shore and with a club. 
‘Rep. of Brit. Comm., Fur Seal Arb., vol. 6, p. 217. 
153 
