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.”