Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/94

82 arrest any diminution in numbers and restore the herd to its normal condition. For an area of protection perpetually closed to pelagic sealing, the British commissioners suggested a zone about each island ten miles in width. When it is remembered that the two principal Pribilof Islands are each about a dozen miles long and nearly half as wide, and that they are approximately distant forty miles from each other, the utter inadequacy of such a suggestion is at once evident. To the consideration of a closed time during which all sealing at sea should be prohibited, they were not at all inclined, except it were so limited as to be practically valueless. They strongly urged the recommendation of a scheme in which it was assumed that some sort of a relation might be established between the number of seals permitted to be killed on the islands and the pelagic catch. This relation was to be elastic and compensatory, and its advocacy logically compelled the extraordinary declaration that sealing at sea could be as vigorously and exactly controlled and restricted as sealing on land.

In short, it became more and more evident every day, as the conferences continued, that the representatives of the people who were engaged in pelagic sealing were set upon opposing any recommendations looking either to its destruction or to its serious curtailment. Apparently the question was not so much How will this measure or that affect the vitality of the seal herd? as How will it affect the profits of this nation or the losses of that? The possible preservation or destruction of a useful and rare species was lost sight of in the consideration of immediate gains, compensatory regulations, equivalent shares, etc. The American commissioners, while not unwilling to discuss all proposals to limit and control sealing, both on land and at sea, became so thoroughly convinced that there was but one efficacious remedy that they felt compelled to reject all schemes of improvement in which that was not insisted upon. Indeed, nothing else was offered or considered which, in their judgment, gave even small encouragement of success in actual practice.

Under these circumstances it was only possible to agree to disagree. A very brief joint report was finally settled upon and drawn up, in which the only conclusion of any importance whatever was a most cautious and circumspect declaration that there had been a diminution in the number of seals annually resorting to the Pribilof Islands, and a hesitating admission that "man" must be held responsible for it.

It is worth noting that during the entire conference there was a singular anxiety and desire on the part of the British commissioners to secure from their American colleagues some formal admission regarding or recognition of pelagic sealing as a legitimate mode of