THE SEALING INDUSTRY.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13416, 14 May 1912, Page 3

THE SEALING INDUSTRY.

. <p. The. prospects of reviving the. sealing industry in the Bub-Antarctic are dis- s cussed in an article in tho "Sydnoy i Morning Herald." Macquario Island 1 used to be a great congregating place for ' seals, one ship taking no fewer than * 40,000 skins from one part of the island. < Now not a seal comes there. "Some as- c serfc," said Mr. Eitel, the secretary to J Dr. Mawson's expedition, to the interviewer last week, "that all the fur seals r have been killed, hy man's 'stupidity, Even the women and cliildren of the seal E tribe wero massacred for their pelts. ' But there are many old hands who declare that the seals have merely made l the island 'tabu.' They remark that E the sealers, contrary to€isual practice, left the dead, bodies of the seals lying on the rocks instead of dumping them * into the sea, and that the intelligent ; seals—they appear to have more intelligence than some 'humans —taking fright a;- the terrible holocaust, have forsaken , t'\* island, never to return to it." Seals x ':.-, > so valuable nowadays that the quests >:i. where the seals of the Southern £'-\*s have gone to is worthy of investigation. Sealskins are worth up to £'o i each. To take 20,000 skins off an island . would occupy a crew three of four . months, but the return would be enormous. Mr. Eitel suggests "n intercut- Ur , ing explanation of the disappearance of o most of the seals in the Sub-Antarctic. • They have retreated to some islands that ,< are never visited hy man. From time t . to time islands have been charted in the Sub-Antarctic and later on have boon j. wiped o (fthe chart again. Emerald j. Island and the Royal Company Islands have both been placed on the Admiralty charts twice, and have twice been ex- c punged. It is quite possible that these (r islands exist, but have been inaccurate- o ly located on ilie chart. On the forth- j, 1 coming cruise of the Aurora, Captain n '■ .Davis will make another attempt t:> lo- ' ' c.rtc the Roy;il Company Islands. t • i;