A STRANGE CENSUS.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17291, 1 November 1921, Page 2

A STRANGE CENSUS.

The only herd of animals in the world of which a yearly census is taken is the famous fur seal of the Pribyloff Islands in the Behring Sea. Once numbering between five and six million, the creature was so ruthlessly slaughtered that by 1908 there were less than a hundred thousand on the islands. The fact is the fur seal is a very strange creature. It spends about twothirds of each year far out at sea, making a circuit of 6000 miles in the, open ocean without touching land. It only comes to the Pribyloff Islands in the summer months. to breed and rear its young. , ' Conference after conference was held in an effort to j find a way by which the valuable herd could be, The taking of seals was prohibited within a radius of 60. miles of the island and the entire ocean was closed to sealing from May to September. Then, when war broke out, Britain, Russia, and Japan, anxious to fall in with any reasonable, suggestion, agreed to give up sealing within the waters of the Pacific traversed by the Pribyloff seals. Last year's census revealed the existence of 550,000 seals; and this year's count is expected to show at least 600,000. As the pelt of this particular seal readily fetches £3O in the open market, the herd may {be said to represent a value of £18,000,000. Counting the seals is by no means an easy task. They occupy various rookeries, and in the height of the breeding season the big bulls' are particularly vicious. Thus the bulls and the females are wunted from the cliffs, and the young pups before they are ready to go to sea.