The High Price of the Seal Hunt
After returning from a season in the Bering Sea, the crew of the schooner Henry Dennis is paid off, while experts warn that seal herds are vanishing due to over-hunting.
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The crew of the sealing schooner Henry Dennis was paid off yesterday before United States Shipping Commissioner D. A. McKenzie. The total amount of their wages was about $12,500 for twenty-two men. One hunter, George Wallace, earned $1,638 for the season. Capt. Miner, the vessel's master, recounted the dangers of the journey, noting his brother nearly perished in an Alaska snowstorm. Meanwhile, government officials studying the seals report that the population has dropped by ninety percent in five years, likely due to hunting pressure forcing the herds toward the Japanese coast. Researchers also noted the remarkable instinct of nursing cows, who travel hundreds of miles from the Pribilof Islands to feed and return to their specific cubs.
“It is certainly a wonderful instinct which enables the cows to go off hundreds of miles in search of food and to return in a few days to the exact spot where they left their cubs.”
The collapse of the Bering Sea seal herds due to pelagic sealing in the 1890s echoes modern struggles with the depletion of global fisheries. Today, the Pribilof Islands remain a site of intense ecological monitoring, serving as a reminder of the long-term consequences of 19th-century resource extraction.
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