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Circular 169. the Northern Fur Seal

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Circular 169. the Northern Fur Seal THE NORTHERN FUR SEAL .'4^'' f ^ FISH A>jm WILDLIFE SERVICE- >k" • BUREAU OF COMMERCIAL flSHfeRlES ^m Circular 169 « ! prifig^Ssl^s yjy^pven ystanS Breeding grounds of the northern fur seals: Robben Island (Kaihyoto or Tyuleniy Island) off Sakhalin; the Commander Islands (Bering Island and Medny or Copper Island) at the Soviet end of the Aleutian chain; and the Pribilof Islands — St. Paul Island, St. George Island, Otter Island, Walrus Island, and Sea Lion Rock. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Stewart L. Udall, Secretary James K, Carr, Under Secretary Frank P. Briggs, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE. Clarence F. Pautzke, Commissioner Bureau of commercial Fisheries, Donald L. McKernan, Director THE NORTHERN FUR SEAL by Ralph C. Baker, Ford Wilke and C. Howard Baltzo Circular 169 Washington, D. C. September 1963 Created in 1849, the Department of the Interior — America's Department of Natural Resources — is concerned with the management, conservation, and development of the Nation's water, fish, wildHfe, mineral, forest, and park and recreational resources. It also has major responsibilities for Indian and Territorial affairs. As the Nation's principal conservation agency, the Department works to assure that nonrenewable resources are developed and used wisely, that park and recreational resources are conserved for the future, and that renewable resources make their full contribution to the progress, pros- perity, and security of the United States — now and in the future. CONTENTS Page Early history of fur sealing 1-3 Distribution and movement of seals 3-7 Food 8 Physical characteristics 8-9 Reproduction 10-11 Mortality and disease 11-12 Population 13 Management 13-16 Research 17 Sealing activity on the Pribilof Islands 17-18 Processing and sale of fur seal skins 18-19 THE NORTHERN FUR SEAL by Ralph C. Baker, Ford Wilke, and C. Howard Baltzo Early History of Fur Sealing Over 220 years ago Georg Wilhelm Steller drew in 1784 by the crew of the American vessel up the first scientific description of the fur seal States from Boston. when he survived the wreck of the vessel com- Vitus Bering off is called manded by what now In the 50 years that followed, the fur seal rook- Island in the Islands. Bering Commander eries on Mas-a-Fuero, Juan Fernandez, the South Shetlands, Prince Edward, the Antipodes, and Forty-two years later Gerassim Pribilof, nav- countless other islands were destroyed as fast igator in the service of Imperial Russia, joined as they were discovered. Literally millions of the search for other breeding grounds of the pelts were taken to the Canton market to trade North Pacific fur seals. Each spring the seals for tea, silks, and other products of China. The were seen to swim northward through the passes huge populations of fur seals south of the of the Aleutian Islands and disappear into the equator were rapidly decimated. Some herds fog and mist of Bering Sea. In 1786, 3 years survived, however, and are still found off the after his search began, Pribilof came upon the coasts of South Africa, South America, Australia, islands that now bear his name and found fur New Zealand, the Galapagos Islands, and some seals along the beaches in seemingly uncountable of the subantarctic islands. numbers. Almost immediately the teeming rook- eries began to yield sealskins for the fur markets The exploitation of the Alaska herd at first of the world, at about the time the 13 colonies followed the same destructive pattern as that pur- on the Atlantic coast of North America were sued by sealers in the southern seas. Twice dur- forming a new nation. ing the Russian administration the herd on the Pribilof Islands was threatened by annihilation: Two years before the discovery of the Pribilof first, through failure to restrict the numbers of Islands, adventurous skippers from New England seals killed, and later by failure to adequately and Europe had discovered commercial possibil- protect the females. The killing of females finally ities in the great herds of fur seals in the South was forbidden by Russia after 1834, and the Sea Islands. The first experimental cargo of herd began to increase. The Russians are said 13,000 pelts from the Southern Hemisphere to have taken more than IVz million pelts be- appears to have been taken at the Falkland Islands tween the time of the discovery of the islands and the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. Authors note. — Ralph C. Baker, Assistant Director for Resource Development, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington 25, D.C. ; Ford Wilke, Immediately after the purchase of Alaska by Wildlije Research Biologist, and C. Howard Baltzo, Program Director, Pribilof Fur Seal Program, Bureau of Commercial the United States, a number of independent com- Fisheries, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Seattle, Wash. panies began sealing operations on the Pribilof Islands, taking about 300,000 skins the first The leasing system was discontinued in 1910, and season. An Act of Congress on 27 July 1868 since then the Alaska fur seal herd has been prohibited the killing of fur seals, and on 3 under the management of the Federal Govern- March 1869 the islands were set aside by the U.S. ment, first by the Secretary of Commerce through Government as a special reservation for the pro- the former Bureau of Fisheries and now by the tection of the animals. A year later the U.S. Secretary of the Interior through the Bureau of Treasury Department was authorized to lease ex- Commercial Fisheries of the U.S. Fish and Wild- clusive rights to take seals on the islands, with life Service. the stipulation that no females were to be taken. Further legislation in 1874 authorized the Sec- Fur seals are vulnerable to capture while at retary of the Treasury to establish catch quotas sea as well as on land. Pelagic sealing, or taking and open seasons for the lessee. of fur seals at sea, began to develop on a com- mercial scale about 1879. As practiced exten- Under the first 20-year lease, beginning in 1870, sively by American, Canadian, and Japanese seal- the Alaska Commercial Company took 1,977,377 ers in the North Pacific, pelagic sealing resulted sealskins. A second 20-year lease, to the North in the indiscriminate killing of the seals, without American Commercial Company, produced only regard to age or sex. The pelagic take of seal- 342,651 sealskins for the period ending in 1909. skins reached a peak of 61,838 in 1894. "Fur seals sporting around the baidar — Natives of St. Paul lightering off the bundled sealskins to the ship from the Village Cove." A sketch by Henry W. Elliott, who visited the Pribilofs for the Treasury De- partment and the Smithsonian Institution in 1872, shortly after purchase of the islands from Russia. The baidar, or bidarrah, was made of sea lion skins, canvas-covered bidarrahs are still used in ship-to-shore ferrying. Almost a million skins were taken on the high The Convention of 1911 provided for the first seas from 1879 to 1909, and many of the seals time a sound basis for the management of the shot or speared in the open sea were not re- North Pacific fur seals. It remained in force covered. Because females comprised 60 to 80 for 30 years, until terminated by Japan on 23 percent of the pelagic catch, the effect on the October 1941. From 1942 to 1957 the Pribilof Alaska herd was disastrous. In 1912, when the herd was protected by a provisional agreement first complete census was taken, 215,900 seals between Canada and the United States, which were counted or estimated. Although scientists reserved to Canada 20 percent of the skins taken believe this estimate was too low, a severe reduction each summer on the Pribilof Islands. in the Pribilof herd had undoubtedly taken place, and the two smaller herds off the Asian coast On 9 February 1957, a new interim North were faced with extinction. Pacific Fur Seal Convention was concluded by Canada, Japan, the Union of Soviet Socialist After extended diplomatic negotiations and a Republics, and the United States, similar in form long series of ineffectual bilateral agreements, the to the 1911 Convention. The present Convention United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia provides in principle that Canada and Japan concluded a Convention on 7 July 1911, for the each shall receive 15 percent of the sealskins protection of the fur seals of the North Pacific. taken commercially by the United States and by Pelagic sealing was prohibited except by abor- the U.S.S.R. igines using primitive weapons. Each country owning fur seal rookeries agreed to share 30 per- Under international protection and a rational cent of its annual take of sealskins—Canada and management program, the Alaska fur seal herd Japan each to receive 15 percent of the sealskins has increased from the low point of about 216,- from the Pribilof Islands and 15 percent of those 000 animals in 1912 to its present level of over from the Commander Islands; and Canada, 1% million animals. From 1940 to 1962 the Russia, and the United States each to re- herd has sustained an average yield of 62,300 ceive 10 percent of the pelts from Robben male sealskins. Since 1956, the annual kill of Island. female seals has averaged 32,300. Distribution and Movements of Seals The northern fur seal, an abundant and widely Robben Island and some of the Kurile Islands' ranging mammal, is seldom observed alive except were described as three separate species because by fishermen and seamen working offshore or of supposed differences in color and in shape by visitors to the Alaskan and Asian islands of head and neck.
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