The pelagic sealing operations on which the Japanese now embarked in their coastal 
waters employed a radically new technique, so different from the old sethod and eo well 
perfected that it does not seem likely it ws developed overnight. In the old days of 
pelagic sealing, it will be remenbered, the Japanese had religiously copied the Canadian 
and American techniques, whereby seale were hunted from small boats which operated from a 
mother ship capable of making long cruises far from the home port. The Japanese had made 
no essential changes in this method up to the time pelagic sealing wae outlawed in 1911 
and apparently used the same type of equipment in their Commander [sland raids during and 
immediately after World War I. The new technique which so miraculously blossomed full- 
fledged in 1942 eliminates both the mother ship and the emall hand-propelled hunting boats 
and substitutes for thes a single veesel which is far more practical and efficient for 
operations in coastal waters where sealers need not remain at sea for more than two or 
three daye at a time. The Japanese had a suitable craft ready at hand in the so-called 
"teukimbo-sen" which they had developed for coastal porpoise hunting early in the 20th 
century (Figure 9 and p 41). 
The Bureau of Fisheries estimates some 300 teukimbo-sen were in operation in 1941l- 
42, probably one-balf of them being based in ports adjacant to the sealing grounds. How 
many seals these vessels captured under the new regulations is uncertain because their 
reporting was faulty at best and, as previously noted, most of the records of the Bureau 
of Fisheries were supposedly destroyed in 1944-45. The only fairly complete official fig- 
ures unearthed for pelagic sealing during the war years were those for 1943. In that year 
60 vessels were licensed for pelagic sealing, 37 of which reported a total of 3,659 fur 
seale into the following ports: 
TABLE C. = PELAGIC SEALING CATCH, 1943 
Port in Which Catch was Landed Nunber of Seals 
Chosi 
Onahana 
Onagawa 
Kesennuma 
Kamaishi 
Ozuchi 
Muroran 
Hakodate 
Hokkaido Marine Mammal Hunting Assen 
Japan Marine Mammal Co (taken off Hokkaido) 
Japan Marine Mammal Co (taken off Sakhalin) 
Other hunters 

















TOTAL 
SOURCE: Bureau of Fisheries 
The fishermen themselves admit that only part of the actual catch was ever re- 
ported officially, because all the seals reported had to be sold to the government for army 
use at prices considerably lower than they were bringing in the ever-present black market. 
Hence the reporting was quite desultory, especially by the smaller privately owned and 
operated bunting boate. The fishermen state that on the vessels operated by the large 
companies it was standard practice for the poorly paid crews to “appropriate” part of the 
catch each trip to sell locally for themselves while the captain closed his eyes. The 
sealers claim that most vessels actually averaged almost 500 seals per season. Hence the 
wartime pelagic take was probably 6,000 or more seals annually. 
Pelagic sealing operations in 1944 and the spring of 1945 were considerably han- 
pered, as were all the commercial fisheries, by the scarcity of fuel and lack of manpower 
which were engendered by the war and became progreesively more and more critical as the 
