In 1786, a seal hunter gave his employer 13,000 fur seal skins that he had accidentally obtained, and the employer was so disappointed that they disposed of the shipment for 50 cents each. After the buyers sent the shipment to Guangzhou, China, the price of each fur seal skin was 5 US dollars, a tenfold increase. The news was relayed back to their respective countries by ships docked in Guangzhou, and fur seals around Antarctica were massacred in an extinct manner.
New business opportunities
After James Cook discovered South Georgia in 1775, they spotted herds of elephant seals and various animals off the coast. The fat of the elephant seal was used as fuel at the time and was an important industrial raw material with high economic value. Therefore, after the news of the discovery of South Georgia returned to Europe, merchants and seal hunters from all over the world came to the island in search of business opportunities.
Photo by Paul Carroll on Unsplash
During the hunt, they found an animal much smaller than an elephant seal, namely a fur seal (also known as a fur seal). The essence of fly meat is also the principle of meat, they ripped off the fur seal skin, but also accidentally found that the original fur seal skin is so profitable. The first people to go to South Georgia made a lot of money, and attracted more people to go hunting in South Georgia.
fur seal
Elephant seals are larger, 4 to 6 meters long and weigh up to 2 to 3.6 tons, while fur seals are much smaller, weighing only 21-26 kg. So for hunters, they prefer to hunt smaller fur seals.
By Engrave
Fur seal hunting in South Georgia peaked in the early 19th century, with about thirty ships docked here between the summer of 1801 and 1802. Fur seal hunters have hunted more than 1.2 million fur seals in South Georgia, so much so that the species has disappeared on the island.
Hunting boats bound for the island (Photo: Charles Haskins Townsend)
When hunters discovered that South Georgia did not have enough fur seals, they sailed to nearby surrounding islets and, in the same way, destroyed the local fur seal population.
Discover the South Shetland Islands
William Smith, a 28-year-old British merchant ship captain, was hit by a storm on a voyage back to England on the Williams around Cape Horn (the southernmost part of South America) and decided to head south first to see if they could get good weather.
Williams in the imagination of later artists (Photo: Andrew Robinson)
On February 10, 1819, he saw what appeared to be landforms in a storm, and he sailed to explore it. Smith did find land, the South Shetland Islands, estimated at latitude 62°17′ S and longitude 60°12′ W.
The South Shetland Islands are archipelagos located on the northern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula
After he landed, he found the beach crowded with fur seals. Smith wanted to continue exploring, but since his marine insurance was not responsible for actions other than standard commercial activities, he had to return to Valparaiso, Chile first.
Smith's landing location, Williams Point
Back in Chile, Smith immediately reported his findings to the British Navy stationed there, but the military did not believe it. When his discovery spread among the people, many people laughed at him for hallucinating.
Smith set out again in May of the same year to prove himself, but the ending was not as he wished, and he did not see land in a similar position. When Smith returned, American businessmen and seal hunters were ecstatic, although the British government still did not value his discovery. Smith wanted to give Smith a large sum of money to obtain a specific location in the Southern Shetland Islands, but Smith refused, because he wanted to be the first to land on this land and declare a British territorial claim to it.
At the end of September 1819, Smith set out again, and the kung fu paid off. On 15 October he discovered land at roughly the same location eight months earlier, landed with some of his men on land now known as King George Island, and planted the British flag, declaring it British territory.
King George Island
This time Smith spent a few days exploring the land of A-So, and he found that his landing site was just one link in the island chain, and he drew the coastline of the island, looking at the thousands of fur seals on the beach, he smiled with satisfaction.
A complete map of King George Island
After Smith returned home, he told his story again to others, and both the British government and businessmen showed great interest in the South Shetland Islands. Merchants and fur seal hunters had new places to make a profit, and the British government had a new territory, and the ending was happy. But the end of the fur seals basking in the sun on the beaches of the South Shetland Islands can be imagined.
By the end of the 19th century, fur seals and elephant seals around Antarctica had almost completely gone extinct. Ironically, Antarctica has many uncharted territories that seal hunters have discovered in their search for new hunting grounds.
Not enough to benefit from the discovery of oil has greatly reduced the economic value of animal fats and oils. As a result, the bloody slaughter of seals around the Antarctic continent gradually decreased. Their numbers slowly began to grow. In 1972, the Antarctic Treaty Negotiators drafted and adopted the Antarctic Seal Protection Convention, which gave Antarctic seals legal protection.