CARNIVORA--SEALS.
The wild life of New Zealand includes members of the marine Carnivora
and of the Cetacea; but these animals are known only to the relatively
few persons who “go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great
waters,” and to some residents of the sea-coast. I say “some residents”
because too many who live by the seaside know nothing of the wonders of
the ocean.
The marine Carnivora belong to the section Pinnipedia--literally
“fin-footed”--so termed because the limbs are modified into flippers.
When New Zealand was discovered by Europeans seals were extraordinarily
abundant on the coasts, but they shared the fate of similar unprotected
animals in other parts of the world. Their fur and oil were valuable
and were easily obtained, and the animals were slaughtered so
mercilessly that they were nearly exterminated. Only one species, the
fur-seal (_Arctocephalus forsteri_), occurred commonly on the shores
of the three main islands of New Zealand, though the sea-leopard
(_Ogmorhinus leptonyx_) was an occasional visitor. As these animals
are now protected, a few stray ones still come inshore, but they are
somewhat rare visitors.
Before referring at length to the fur-seal I may with advantage quote
what Sir James Hector had to say about other species in a report
he prepared for the Minister of Marine in 1892. He states that the
hair-seal, or sea-lion (_Eumetopias hookeri_), used to take up its
station on the west coast of the South Island about December. The
animals are polygamous, and the males are enormously larger than the
females. The males arrive first. “Soon afterwards the cow seals appear,
and on landing give birth to the young, each male securing a harem of
ten to twenty cows, and protecting the mothers and young pups. The
rutting season is in January, after which the males (or lions) leave
the mothers to bring up the young until May, when they all leave the
coast for the winter. The mode of life of the hair-seals has, however,
been much altered since 1863, when I made my first observations, and
I believe that the New Zealand hair-seals have now become much more
solitary, and that they will soon become extinct.”
When I was in the extreme south of Stewart Island in 1874 I found the
tracks of these animals in the scrub close to the water’s edge, though
I did not meet with the sea-lions themselves. I have not heard of one
being seen for many a long day.
Speaking of the sea-leopard, Hector wrote as follows: “This is common
round the New Zealand coast, but is a solitary animal. They frequently
come on shore, and, notwithstanding their feeble powers of locomotion,
they scramble far back into the bush in flat country, and occasionally
ascend rivers for a long distance. For instance, one of the seals
ascended the Waikato River a few years ago as far as Hamilton, and was
claimed by the Maoris as being a real _taniwha_.”
The fur-seal (_Arctocephalus forsteri_) is named after J. R. Forster,
the naturalist who accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage of
circumnavigation. When in Dusky Bay the seals were found in great
numbers on the rocks in the sound, Forster described them as seals
with ears (the northern seals being earless), free hands, feet webbed
on the under-surface, naked between the fingers, and hardly nailed.
“Gregarious in habit, they are timid, and fling themselves off the
rocks into the sea on the approach of man; but the most powerful resist
when attacked, bite the weapons used against them, and even venture to
assail the boats. They swim with such rapidity that a boat rowed by
six strong men can scarcely keep up with them. Tenacious of life to a
degree, a fractured skull did not despatch them.” These animals are
from 6 ft. to 7 ft. in length; the anterior flipper is about 30 in.
long; and the posterior about 15 in. Full-grown males weigh 260 lb. and
over, and females from 200 lb. to 220 lb. The hair is soft and black,
with reddish-grey tips, and the under-fur is a delicate reddish colour.
In old specimens the hairs are tipped with white.
Hector, writing in 1892, says, “I spent from June, 1863, to January,
1864, in the western sounds of Otago, and have since made occasional
visits at other seasons, but chiefly during the summer months, from
February to May. I have always observed the seals closely, and have
collected many specimens. The male fur-seal used to arrive about the
5th November on inaccessible rocky platforms outside the entrance
to the fiords or sounds, and the cows began to arrive about the 1st
December. At the same date all the young stock--males up to seven and
females up to three or four years old--went to still more exposed
places by themselves, and spent the moulting season until about the
end of March, when, having acquired the new fur coat, they proceeded
to sea. The last of these ‘hauling-grounds,’ as they are called, I
have known in New Zealand was at Cape Foulwind, but formerly they were
all round the coast. In the breeding-grounds, or ‘rookeries,’ the old
males keep guard on the females and newly-born pups until the close
of the rutting season, about the 15th February, and then desert them,
being then in a feeble and emaciated condition from having fasted, and
fed only on their own fat, for several months. The females remain with
the pups until they learn to swim and to catch fish for themselves,
and about the end of May they all leave the coast, only occasionally a
groggy old bull remaining behind for the winter months.”
Soon after the discovery of New Zealand by Cook the abundance of the
fur-seals on the coast led to the exploitation of this source of wealth
by sealers--many from Sydney, but others from far-distant ports of
Europe and America. Sealing from Sydney appears to have commenced as
early as 1791, but it was not till 1801 that the trade was “free to
British subjects, as to foreigners, although as a concession granted by
a private company” (the East India Company), according to Dr. McNab.
Sir Joseph Banks, in a memorandum on the “Present State of the Colony
of Sidney, in New South Wales,” dated the 4th June, 1806, says of
the fur-seal, “The island of Van Diemen, the south-west coast of New
Holland, and the southern parts of New Zealand produce seals of all
kinds in quantities at present almost innumerable. Their stations on
rocks or in bays have remained unmolested since the Creation. The beach
is incumber’d with their quantities, and those who visit their haunts
have less trouble in killing them than the servants of the Victualling
Office have who kill hogs in a pen with mallets. While this is the
case the utmost encouragement should be given to those colonists who
will embark in search of the seals.... There can be no doubt that at
all times hereafter seals will be attainable in great quantities--as
is now the case in Newfoundland--by stationary fishers, who know the
courses they take in their migrations, and can intercept them in their
progress by nets and other contrivances. Thus, if we encourage our new
settlers to disturb as speedily as possible every seal-station they can
discover, we shall receive from them an immense supply of skins and
oil in the first instance; shall prevent the interference of foreign
nations in future in the sealing fishery; and secure to ourselves a
permanent fishery hereafter, because it will be carried out by means
which none but stationary fishermen can provide.”
To show how far out Banks was in his estimate of the permanency of the
seal fishery, I may quote a sentence from a despatch sent by Surgeon
Luttrell to Under-Secretary Sullivan, dated the 8th October, 1807: “A
few of the ships that have arrived have had a Home freight of whale-oil
and seal-skins, but the latter trade is greatly on the decline, as the
seals are all nearly destroyed on the southern islands in this coast,
or, from the constant molestation they have suffered, have abandoned
the islands.” In the course of a parliamentary inquiry held in England
in 1819 a Mr. McDonald, who had been sealing on the New Zealand
coast, gave some evidence on this subject, from which I summarize the
following: The seals were taken at two different seasons, the best
being in April, when the pups are six months old, and the other about
Christmas, when the females come to the males. The pup seals yield
about 2 gallons of oil, and the “wigs,” or old males, from 5 to 6
gallons. The skins brought from 5s. to 8s. each. On the first voyage he
was out they brought over some 11,500 skins. Asked if the skins were
becoming scarce on the coast of New Zealand, he stated that they were
not, but they required to be well sought after.
From 1803 to 1805 several small vessels visited the south and
south-west coasts of New Zealand and carried off many thousands of
seal-skins; but even by that date the seals must have been reduced in
numbers, and the sealers had turned their attention to the Southern
Islands. Thus in 1806 the American ship “Favourite” reached Sydney with
60,000 seal-skins, said to have been obtained on the “east coast of New
Zealand.” As a matter of fact, they were taken on Antipodes Island.
A Mr. Scott, on the authority of Mr. Morris, an old Sydney sealer by
profession, remarks that “to so great an extent was this indiscriminate
killing carried that in two years (1814-15) no less than 400,000
skins were obtained from Penantipod, or Antipodes Island, alone, and
necessarily collected in so hasty a manner that very many of them but
were imperfectly cured. The ship ‘Pegasus’ took home 100,000 of these
in bulk, and on her arrival in London the skins, having heated during
the voyage, had to be dug out of the hold, and were sold as manure--a
sad and reckless waste of life.”
Later on the Bounties were visited; then the Auckland Islands were
discovered and exploited; and still later the Campbell and Macquarie
Islands. It is quite impossible to arrive at any estimate of the
quantity of oil and seal-skins taken in this destructive trade;
and, further, many of the most successful sealers did not state too
definitely where they obtained their catches.
A letter written in Sydney about 1824 states that, “I do assert of late
the southern and western coasts of New Zealand have been infested with
Europeans and New-Zealanders who without consideration have killed
the pups before they are prime, and the clapmatches before pupping,
for the sake of eating their carcases, the consequence of which is
that the increase of [_sic_] seals will be totally extinct in about
three years on the coast. This circumstance will illustrate what I
am about to observe when I state that the seals will not resort to
the ground frequented by man.” According to the late Dr. McNab, the
great seal trade of New Zealand was practically over by 1830. Captain
Benjamin Morrell, of the American schooner “Antarctic,” visited the
Southern Islands in that year, and here are his own words: “Although
the Auckland Islands once abounded with numerous herds of fur and
hair seals, the American and English seamen engaged in this business
have made such clean work of it as scarcely to leave a breed; at all
events, there was not one fur-seal to be found on the 4th January,
1830. We therefore got under way on the morning of Tuesday, the 5th,
at 6 o’clock, and steered for another cluster of islands--or, rather,
rocks--called ‘the Snares.’... We searched them in vain for fur-seal,
with which they formerly abounded. The population was extinct--cut off,
root and branch.”