PRIBILOF ISLANDS: The Beaches of Lukannon

I met my mates in the morning (and oh but I am old!)

Where roaring on the ledges the summer groundswell rolled.

I heard them lift the chorus that drowned the breakers' song—

The Beaches of Lukannon—two million voices strong!

Thus, according to Rudyard Kipling, sang the great sleek Callorhinus alascanus, the fur seal, of his summer home in the Bering Sea, the barren volcanic islands of the Pribilof Archipelago. To these islands each May the males come first, from their winter haunts in the north Pacific—huge, scarred 600-lb. bulls, full-coated three-year-old "bachelors." By...