USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 27
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* The seal-life on the Pribylov Islands may be classified under the follow- ing heads, namely : (1) The fur-seal, Callorhinus ursinus, the "kautickie " of the Russians ; (2) the sea-lion, Eumetopias stelleri, the "seevitchie " of the Rus- sians ; (3) the hair-seal, Phoca citulina. the "nearhpahsky " of the Russians ; (4) the walrus, Odobirnus obesus, the "morsjee " of the Russians.
+ The inconsequential numbers of the hair-seal around and on the Pribylov Islands seem to be characteristic of all Alaskan waters and the northwest coast ; also, the phocida are equally scant on the Asiatic littoral margins. Only the following four species are known to exist throughout the entire ex- tent of that vast marine area, viz. :
Phocu ritulina-Everywhere between Bering Straits and California.
Phoca fotida-Plover Bay, Norton's Sound, Kuskokvim mouth, and Bris- tol Bay, of Bering Sea ; Cape Seartze Kammin, Arctic Ocean, to Point Barrow.
Erignathus barbatus -- Kamchatkan coast, Norton's Sound, Kuskokvim mouth and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.
Histriophocu equestris-Yukon mouth and coast south to Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.
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Labrador, Newfoundland, and Greenland ; to say nothing of the re- searches and notes made by European scientists. It differs com- pletely in shape and habit from its congeners on these islands. Here, where I have studied its biology, it seldom comes up from the water more than a few rods at the farthest ; generally hanling and resting at the margin of the surf-wash. It takes up no position on land to hold and protect a family or harem, preferring the de- tached water-worn rocks, especially those on the lonely north shore of St. Paul, although I have seen it resting at "Gorbatch," near the sea margin of the great seal-rookery of that name, on the Reef Point of St. Paul ; its cylindrical, supine, gray and white body marked in strong contrast with the erect, black, and ochre-colored forms of the Callorhinus, which swarmed round about it. On such small spots of rock, wet and isolated from the mainland, and in se- cluded places of the north shore, the "nearhpah" brings forth its young, a single pup, perfectly white, covered with long woolly hair, and weighing from three to seven pounds. This pup grows rap- idly, and after the lapse of four or five months it tips the scales at fifty pounds ; by that time it has shed its infant coat and donned the adult soft steel-gray hair over the head, limbs, and abdomen, with its back most richly mottled and barred lengthwise, by dark brown and brown-black streaks and blotches, suffused at their edges into the light steel-gray ground of the body. When they appear in the spring following, this bright gray tone to their color has ri- pened into a dingy ochre, and the mottling spread well over the head and down on the upper side or back of the flippers, but fades out as it progresses. It has no appreciable fur or under-wool. There is no noteworthy difference as to color or size between the sexes. So far as I have observed, they are not polygamous. They are ex- ceedingly timid and wary at all times, and in this manner and method they are diametrically opposed, not by shape alone, but by habit and disposition, to the fashion of the fur-seal in especial, and the sea-lion. Their skin is of little value, comparatively, but their chief merit, according to the natives, is the relative greater juiciness and sweetness of their flesh, over even the best steaks of sea-lion or fur-seal pup meat.
One common point of agreement among all authors was, by my observations of fact, so strikingly refuted, that I will here correct a prevalent error made by naturalists who, comparing the hair-seal with the fur-seal, state that in consequence of the peculiar struct-
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ure of their limbs, their progression on land is "mainly accom- plished by a wriggling, serpentine motion of the body, slightly as- sisted by the extremities." This is not so in any respect ; for, whenever I have purposely surprised these animals, a few rods from the beach-margin, they would awake and excitedly scramble, or rather spasmodically exert themselves, to reach the water instantly, by striking out quickly with both fore-feet simultaneously, lifting in this way alone, and dragging the whole body forward, without any " wriggling motion " whatever to their back or posterior parts, moving from six inches to a foot in advance every time their fore- feet were projected forward, and the body drawn along according to the violence of the effort and the character of the ground; the body of the seal then falls flat upon its stomach, and the fore-feet or flippers are free again for another similar motion. This action of Phoca is effected so continuously and so rapidly, that in attempting to head off a young "nearhpah " from the water, at English Bay, I was obliged to leave a brisk walk and take to a dog trot to do it. The hind-feet are not used when exerted in this rapid movement at all ; they are dragged along in the wake of the body, perfectly limp and motionless. But they do use those posterior parts, however, when leisurely climbing up and over rocks undisturbed, or playing one with another ; still it is always a weak, trembling terrestrial ef- fort, and particularly impotent and clumsy. In their swift swim- ming the hind-feet of Phocide evidently do all the work ; the re- verse is a remarkable characteristic of the Otariidae.
These remarks of mine, it should be borne in mind, apply di- rectly to the Phoca vitulina, and I presume indirectly with equal force to all the rest of its more important generic kindred, be they as large as the big maklok, Erignathus barbata, or less.
This hair-seal is found around these islands at all seasons of the year, but in very small numbers. I have never seen more than twenty-five or thirty at any one time, and I am told that its occi- dental distribution, although everywhere found, above and below, from the arctic to the tropics, and especially general over the North Pacific coast, nowhere exhibits any great number at any one place ; but we know that it and its immediate kindred form a vast majority of the multitudinous seal-life peculiar to our North At- lantic shores, ice-floes, and contiguous waters. The scarcity of this species, and of all its generic allies, in the waters of the Pacific, is notable as compared with those of the circumpolar Atlantic,
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where these hair-seals are the seals of commerce : they are found in such immense numbers between Greenland and Labrador, and thence to the eastward at certain seasons of every year, that em- ployment is given to a fleet of about sixty sailing and steam ves- sels, which annually goes forth from St. John, Newfoundland, and elsewhere, fitted for seal-fishing : taking in all this cruising over three hundred thousand of these animals each season. The princi- pal object of value, however, is the oil rendered from them : the skins have a very small commercial importance.
The fur-seal, Callorhinus ursinus, which repairs to these islands to breed and to shed its hair and fur, in numbers that seem almost fabulous, is the highest organized of all the Pinnipedia, and, indeed, for that matter, when land and water are weighed in the account together, there is no other animal known to man which may be truly classed as its superior, from a purely physical point of view. Certainly there are few, if any, creatures in the animal kingdom that can be said to exhibit a higher order of instinct, approaching even our intelligence.
I wish to draw attention to a specimen of the finest of this race -a male in the flush and prime of his first maturity, six or seven years old, and full grown. When it comes up from the sea early in the spring, out to its station for the breeding season, we have an animal before us that will measure six and a half to seven and a . quarter feet in length from tip of nose to the end of its abbreviated abortive tail. It will weigh at least four hundred pounds, and I have seen older specimens much more corpulent, which, in my best judgment, could not be less than six hundred pounds in weight .*
* Those extremely heavy adult males which arrive first in the season and take their stations on the rookeries, are so fat that they do not exhibit a wrinkle or a fold of the skins enveloping their blubber-lined bodies. Most of this fatty deposit is found around the shoulders and the neck, though a warm coat o" blubber covers all the other portions of the body save the flippers. This blubber-thickening of the neck and chest is characteristic of the adult males only, which are, by its provisions, enabled to sustain the extraordinary pro- tracted fasting periods incident to their habit of life and reproduction.
When those superlatively fleshy bulls first arrive, a curious body-tremor seems to attend every movement which the animals make on land ; their fat appears to ripple backward and forward under their hides, like waves. As they alternate with their flippers in walking, the whole form of the "see. catchie " fairly shakes as a bowl full of jelly does when agitated on the table before us.
1;
14.
-
Young Females 2 years
Old Male 18 years
GROUP OF FUR SEALS
Young Male 6 years
Mother Seal and Pup nursing
Old Male " Roaring"
Young Males 2 years
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AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
The head of this animal now before us appears to be disproportion- ately small in comparison with an immensely thick neck and shoul- ders ; but, as we come to examine it, we will find it is mostly all occupied by the brain. The light frame-work of its skull supports an expressive pair of large bluish-hazel eyes, alternately burning with revengeful, passionate light, then suddenly changing to the tones of tenderness and good-nature. It has a muzzle and jaws of about the same size and form observed in any full-blooded New- foundland dog, with this difference, that the lips are not flabby and overhanging ; they are as firmly lined and pressed against one an- other as our own. The upper lips support a yellowish-white and gray mustache, composed of long, stiff bristles, which, when not torn out and broken off in combat, sweeps down and over the shoulders as a luxuriant plume. Look at it as it comes leisurely swimming on toward the land ; see how high above the water it carries its head, and how deliberately it surveys the beach, after having stepped upon it (for it may be truly said to step with its fore-flippers, as they regularly alternate when it moves up), carry- ing the head well above them, erect and graceful, at least three feet from the ground. The fore-feet, or flippers, are a pair of dark bluish-black hands, about eight or ten inches broad at their junc- tion with the body, and the metacarpal joint, running out to an ovate point at their extremity, some fifteen to eighteen inches from this union-all the rest of the forearm, the ulna, radius, and humerus being concealed under the skin and thick blubber-folds of the main body and neck, hidden entirely at this season, when it is so fat. But six weeks to three months after this time of landing, when that superfluous fat and flesh is consumed by self-absorption, then those bones will show plainly under its shrunken skin. On the upper side of these flippers the hair of the body straggles down finer and fainter as it comes below to a point close by, and slightly beyond that spot of junction where the phalanges and the meta- carpal bones unite, similar to that point on our own hand where our knuckles are placed ; and here the hair ends, leaving the rest of the skin to the end of the flipper bare and wrinkled in places at the margin of the inner side ; showing, also, five small pits, con- taining abortive nails, which are situated immediately over the union of the phalanges with their cartilaginous continuations to the end of the flipper.
On the under side of the flipper the skin is entirely bare from
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its outer extremity up to the body-connection. It is sensibly tougher and thicker than elsewhere on the body ; it is deeply and regularly wrinkled with seams and furrows, which cross one an- other so as to leave a kind of sharp diamond-cut pattern. When they are placed by the animal upon the smoothest rocks, shining and slippery from algoid growths and the sea-polish of restless waters, they seldom fail to adhere.
When we observe this seal moving out on the land, we notice that, though it handles its fore-feet in a most creditable manner, it brings up its rear in quite a different style : for, after every second step ahead with the anterior limbs it will arch its spine, and in arch- ing, it drags and lifts up, and together forward, the hind-feet, to a fit position under its body, giving it in this manner fresh leverage for another movement forward by the fore-feet, in which the spine is again straightened out, and then a fresh hitch is taken up on the posteriors once more, and so on as the seal progresses. This is the leisurely and natural movement on land, when not disturbed, the body all the time being carried clear of and never touching the ground ; but if the creature is frightened, this method of progres- sion is radically changed. It launches into a lope and actually gal- lops so fast that the best powers of a man in running are taxed to head it off. Still, it must be remembered that it cannot run far be- fore it sinks, trembling, gasping, breathless, to the earth. Thirty or forty yards of such speed marks the utmost limit of its endurance.
The radical difference in the form and action of the hind-feet cannot fail to strike the eye at once. They are one-seventh longer than the fore-hands and very much lighter and more slender ; they resemble, in broad terms, a pair of black-kid gloves, flattened out and shrivelled, as they lie in their box.
There is no suggestion of fingers on the fore-hands ; but the hind-feet seem to be toes run into ribbons, for they literally flap about involuntarily from that point where the cartilaginous pro- cesses unite with the phalangeal bones. The hind-feet are also merged in the body at their junction with it, like those anterior. Nothing can be seen of the leg above the tarsal joint.
The shape of the hind flipper is strikingly like that of a human foot, provided the latter were drawn out to a length of twenty or twenty-two inches, the instep flattened down and the toes run out into thin, membranous, oval-tipped points, only skin-thick, leaving three strong cylindrical, grayish, horn-colored nails, half an inch
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long each, back six inches from these skinny toe-ends, without any sign of nails to mention on the outer big and little toes.
On the upper side of this hind-foot the body-hair comes down to that point where the metatarsus and phalangeal bones join and fade out. From that junction the phalanges, about six inches down to the nails above mentioned, are entirely bare and stand ribbed up in bold relief on the membrane which unites them, as the web to a duck's foot. The nails just referred to mark the ends of the pha- langeal bones and their union in turn with the cartilaginous pro- cesses, which run rapidly tapering and flattening out to the ends of the thin toe-points. Now, as we are looking at this fur-seal's mo- tion and progression, that which seems most odd is the gingerly manner (if I may be allowed to use the expression) in which it car- ries these hind flippers. They are held out at right angles from the body directly opposite the pelvis, the toe-ends or flaps slightly waving, curled, and drooping over, supported daintily, as it were, above the earth, the animal only suffering its weight behind to fall upon its heels, which are themselves opposed to each other, scarcely five inches apart.
We shall, as we see this seal again later in the season, have to notice a different mode of progression and bearing, both when it is lording over its harem or when it grows shy and restless at the end of the breeding season, then faint, emaciated, and dejected. But we will now proceed to observe him in the order of his arrival and that of his family. His behavior during the long period of fasting and unceasing activity and vigilance, and other cares which devolve upon him as the most eminent of all polygamists in the brute world, I shall carefully relate, and to fully comprehend the method of this exceedingly interesting animal it will be frequently necessary for the reader to refer to my sketch-maps of its breeding grounds or rookeries, and the islands.
The adult males are the first examples of the Callorhinus to ar- rive in the spring on the seal-ground, which has been deserted by all of them since the close of the preceding year. *
* The distances at sea, away from the Pribylov Islands, in which fur-seals are found during the breeding season, are very considerable. Scattered rec- ords have been made of seeing large bands of them during August as far down the northwest coast as they probably range at any season of the year, viz., well out at sea in the latitude of Cape Flattery, 47 to 49 south latitude. In the winter and spring, up to middle of June, all classes are found-here spread out
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Between May 1st and 5th, usually, a few males will be found scattered over the rookeries pretty close to the water. They are at this time quite shy and sensitive, seeming not yet satisfied with the land, and a great many spend day after day idly swimming out among the breakers a little distance from the shore before they come to it, perhaps somewhat reluctant at first to enter upon the assiduous duties and the grave responsibilities before them of fight- ing for and maintaining their positions in the rookeries.
The first arrivals are not always the oldest bulls, but may be said to be the finest and most ambitious of their class. They are full grown and able to hold their places on the rookeries or the breed- ing flats, which they immediately take up after coming ashore. Their method of landing is to come collectively to those breeding grounds where they passed the prior season ; but I am not able to say authoritatively, nor do I believe it, strongly as it has been urged by many careful men who were with me on the islands, that these animals come back to and take up the same position on their breed- ing grounds that they individually occupied when there last year. From my knowledge of their action and habit, and from what I have learned of the natives, I should say that very few, if any, of them make such a selection and keep these places year after year. Even did the seal itself intend to come directly from the sea to that spot on the rookery which it left last summer, what could it do if it came to that rookery margin a little later and found that another "see-catch " had occupied its ground ? The bull could do nothing. It would either have to die in its tracks, if it persisted in attaining this supposed objective point, or do what undoubtedly it does do- seek the next best locality which it can secure adjacent.
One aged " see-catch " was pointed out to me at the "Gor- batch " section of the Reef rookery, as an animal that was long known to the natives as a regular visitor, close by or on the same rock, every season during the past three years. They called him " Old John," and they said they knew him because he had one of his posterior digits missing, bitten off, perhaps, in a combat. I
over wide areas of ocean. Then by June 15th they will have all departed, the first and the latest, en route for the Pribylov Islands. Then, when seen again in this extreme southern range, I presume the unusually early examples of return toward the end of August are squads of the yearlings of both sexes, for this division is always the last to land on and the first to leave the Seal Islands annually.
Portraits of
his
Trol Vives
" OLD JOHN"
A Life Study of an aged Fur Seal-Bull or "Seecatch."-Gorbotch Rookery, July 2, 1872
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saw him in 1872, and made careful drawings of him in order that I might recognize his individuality, should he appear again in the following year, and when that time rolled by, I found him not ; he failed to reappear, and the natives acquiesced in his absence. Of course it was impossible to say that he was dead when there were ten thousand rousing, fighting bulls to the right, left, and below us, under our eyes, for we could not approach for inspection. Still, if these animals came each to a certain place in any general fash- ion, or as a rule, I think there would be no difficulty in recognizing the fact ; the natives certainly would do so; as it is, they do not. I think it very likely, however, that the older bulls come back to the same common rookery ground where they spent the previous season ; but they are obliged to take up their position on it just as the circumstances attending their arrival will permit, such as find- ing other seals which have arrived before them, or of being whipped out by stronger rivals from their old stands.
It is entertaining to note, in this connection, that the Russians themselves, with the object of testing that mooted query, during the later years of their possession of the islands, drove up a num- ber of young males from Lukannon, cut off their ears, and turned them out to sea again. The following season, when the droves came in from the "hauling-grounds" to the slaughtering-fields, quite a number of those cropped seals were in the drives, but in- stead of being found all at one place-the place from whence they were driven the year before-they were scattered examples of crop- pies from every point on the island. The same experiment was again made by our people in 1870 (the natives having told them of such prior undertaking), and they went also to Lukannon, drove up one hundred young males, cut off their left ears, and set them free in turn. Of this number, during the summer of 1872, when I was there, the natives found in their driving of seventy-five thousand seals from the different hauling-grounds of St. Paul up to the vil- lage killing-grounds, two on Novastoshnah rookery, ten miles north of Lukannon, and two or three from English Bay and Tolstoi rook- eries, six miles west by water ; one or two were taken on St. George Island, thirty-six miles to the southeast, and not one from Lukan- non was found among those that were driven from there ; probably, had all the young males on the two islands this season been exam- ined, the rest of the croppies that had returned from the perils of the deep, whence they sojourned during the winter, would have
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been distributed quite equally about the Pribylov hauling-grounds. Although the natives say that they think the cutting off of the ani- mal's ear gives the water such access to its head as to cause its death, yet I noticed that those examples which we had recognized by this auricular mutilation, were normally fat and well developed. Their theory does not appeal to my belief, and it certainly requires confirmation.
These experiments would tend to prove very cogently and con- clusively that when the seals approach the islands in the spring they have nothing in their minds but a general instinctive apprecia- tion of the fitness of the land as a whole, and no special fondness or determination to select any one particular spot, not even the place of their birth. A study of my map of the distribution of the seal-life on St. Paul, clearly indicates that the landing of the seals on the respective rookeries is influenced greatly by the direc- tion of the wind at the time of their approach to the islands in the spring and early summer. The prevailing airs, blowing, as they do at that season, from the north and northwest, carry far out to sea the odor of the old rookery flats, together with a fresh scent of the pioneer bulls which have located themselves on these breeding grounds three or four weeks in advance of their kind. The seals come up from the great North Pacific, and hence it will be seen that the rookeries of the south and southeastern shores of St. Paul Island receive nearly all the seal-life, although there are miles of perfectly eligible ground at Nahsayvernia or north shore. To settle this matter beyond all argument, however, I know is an exceedingly difficult task, since the identification of individuals, from one season to another, among the hundreds of thousands, and even millions, that come under your eye on one of these great rookeries, is well- nigh impossible. From the time of the first arrival in May up to the beginning of June, or as late as the middle of that month, if the weather be clear, is an interval in which everything seems quiet. Very few seals are added to the pioneers that have landed, as we have described. About June 1st, however, sometimes a little be- fore, and never much later, the seal-weather-the foggy, humid, oozy damp of summer-sets in ; and with it, as the gray banks roll up and shroud the islands, old bull-seals swarm from the depths by hundreds and thousands, and locate themselves in advantageous positions for the reception of the females, which are generally three weeks or a month later than this date in arrival.
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