Dr. Mendenhall said: "It will be impossible to know absolutely which group of scientific experts was right (in 1892) in regard to pelagic sealing." The admission made in this paragraph, taken together with other admissions made in paragraphs 11 and 12, effectually disproves this prediction. It ought to be a source of gratification to Dr. Mendenhall and to his colleague, Dr. Merriam, to find it thus clearly proved that they were right and their British associates wrong.
The final clause is here again a diplomatic concession to take the sting out of the real admission. The rapid fall in the pelagic catch as compared with the more even decline of the breeding herd is a natural phenomenon. Pelagic sealing not only destroys the herd, but it is necessarily self-destructive because it preys upon its own capital. The more successful it is the sooner it must cease. With the decline of the herd it is itself declining, and the rapidity of its fall proves the nearness of the end. For the years since 1894 the pelagic catch has been 61,000, 56,000, 43,000, and 25,000 respectively. It is a significant fact that in four years, under regulations which permit the pelagic sealer to take all he can get, the product of his industry has fallen to less than one half.
15. In this greater reduction of the pelagic catch, compared with the gradual decrease of the herd, there is a tendency toward equilibrium, or a stage at which the numbers of the breeding herd would neither increase nor decrease. In considering the probable size of the herd in the immediate future, there remains to be estimated the additional factor of decline resulting from reductions in the number of surviving pups, caused by the larger pelagic catch of 1894 and 1895.
The two statements in this paragraph are not related. The first is a part of the preceding paragraph and is self-evident. Should the pelagic catch continue to decrease, as it must, it will eventually come within the margin of six and two thirds per cent. It has yet to fall far before this end is reached. Then will come that much-mooted "equilibrium," when the herd will be too insignificant to be worthy of attack—the equilibrium of ruin. There is no comfort in this prospect, either for the pelagic sealer or for the owner of the herd, and it takes no note of the injury which has been accomplished in the past, much less of possible restoration in the future. The equilibrium here suggested is purely a figure of speech, another concession to diplomacy.
The final statement of this paragraph is more important. The starvation of pups as a result of the killing of mothers at sea has been a fact strenuously denied from the first by the British side of the fur-seal controversy. After the actual counting of 16,000 of these starved pups in 1896, this position could no longer be maintained. At the same time a specific admission of the fact of starvation and of the destruction of unborn pups was too difficult a matter for the British experts to face. These facts are left to be inferred from the "reductions in surviving pups" here noted and from the admission that "nursing and pregnant females" are taken in the pelagic catch. Stated directly, it is here admitted that on account of "the larger pelagic catch of 1894 and 1895," numbers of pups starved to death on the rookeries or died unborn with their mothers which in the course of Nature should have reached the killable and breeding age.
16. The diminution of the herd is yet far from a stage which involves or threatens the actual extermination of the species, so long as it is protected in its haunts on land. It is not possible during the continuation of the conservative methods at present in force upon the islands, with the further safeguard of the protected zone at sea, that any pelagic killing should accomplish this final end. There is evidence, however, that in its present condition the herd yields an inconsiderable return either to the lessees of the islands or to the owners of the pelagic fleet.
The statements of this concluding paragraph must be taken in close connection, and the "ifs" must be carefully noted if they are not to prove very misleading. The opening sentence refers to the biologic extinction of the herd as contrasted with its commercial ruin. The former is as yet far off, the latter is a matter of history, as is admitted in the concluding statement—"an inconsiderable return." This means simply that the herd has ceased to be a commercial factor, and henceforth under present conditions sealing, whether on land or at sea, must be conducted at a loss.
This has an important bearing upon the suggested impossibility of bringing about the extinction of the species. It all depends upon whether present conditions are maintained. The breeding islands and the sixty-mile protected zone must be guarded. It cost the United States $175,000 for patrol in 1896. England's expense was less, but still considerable. It is beyond reason that this expensive protection should be continued at a loss or without hope of ultimate restoration of the herd. Remove the protection for a single season and the herd would be practically exterminated. A scattered remnant would doubtless escape to maintain a melancholy equilibrium, or perhaps to recuperate and again attract the cupidity of some adventurous sealing captain, but the herd as such would be at an end.
Stated without reference to diplomatic necessities, this concluding paragraph admits two important things: first, that the herd of fur seals resorting to the Pribilof Islands is commercially ruined; second, that its extinction as a species only awaits the abandonment of certain arduous and costly measures of protection now maintained solely in the hope of more adequate protection and the ultimate restoration of the herd.
Such was the work of the Conference of Fur-Seal Experts of 1897. The handwriting of diplomacy is mingled with that of science in its findings, but the resulting obscurity affects only minor matters. The important issues of the vexatious Bering Sea controversy are squarely met and finally settled. It is needless to say that there no longer exists a fur-seal question. It is merely a question of how to get rid of the destructive agency of pelagic sealing. This is a matter for diplomacy to adjust. Any odium which may have attached to the "man of science" as a result of the failure of the meeting of 1892 is effectually wiped out, and if the lesson is read aright by the nations, henceforth the scientific expert must be counted an essential factor in the settlement of governmental disputes.