WHERE DO SEALS SPEND THE WINTER?
No one knows where the seals go in the winter. In Alaska they begin to appear on the Islands of St. Paul and St. George about the end of April or the first of May, and toward the latter part of August or in the first weeks of September they disappear as strangely and mysteriously as they came. This is one of nature's secrets which she has kept most successfully hid from scientists as well as the prying eyes of the merely curious and inquisitive.
Even in the days, years ago, when the seals numbered five millions or more, apparently some signal unknown to man would be given and the next day the fog-wreathed rocks would be bare, the seals having deserted the islands. With their slipping off into Bering Sea, all trace of them was lost until their return the following spring. Then some morning they would suddenly reappear, disporting themselves in the water or on the shore.