A number of uncertainties concerning the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service's North Pacific Fur Seal Research Program 

 were raised during the review of permit applications submitted 

 by the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in 1986. As noted 

 in the Commission's previous Annual Report, a brief review of 

 ongoing and planned activities related to the conservation of 

 the Pribilof Islands fur seal population was held during the 

 Commission's 28-30 October 1986 meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. 

 In preparation for that review, the Service provided a draft 

 research plan containing sections on research needs, priorities, 

 and plans for studies that were to have been conducted in 

 Fiscal Year 1986. It noted that the draft plan constituted a 

 first draft of the Fur Seal Conservation Plan recommended by 

 the Commission and that the National Marine Mammal Laboratory 

 was planning to hold a fur seal research program review in 

 February 1987. 



Information provided by the Service during the Commission's 

 October 1986 meeting in Anchorage did not resolve all of the 

 Commission's concerns. The Commission was advised, for example, 

 that the program review, initially scheduled to be held in 

 February 1987, had been delayed until March 1987 and that the 

 Service had not yet constituted a group of experts to facilitate 

 development of a long-range conservation plan. The Commission 

 therefore wrote to the Service on 23 December 1986, recommending 

 (a) that the planned program review be held as soon as possible 

 so that the results could be used in planning the 1987 research 

 program and (b) that a working group be constituted and convened 

 to prepare and oversee implementation of the long-range conser- 

 vation plan as recommended by the Commission in 1985. 



Commission representatives participated in the fur seal 

 program review at the Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center, 

 Seattle, Washington, on 10-11 March 1987. During the review, 

 participants were given copies of the Service's "Draft Fur Seal 

 Research Plans: Needs, Alternatives and Priorities with a 

 List of Proposed Studies for FY 1987." The Commission, in 

 consultation with its Committee of Scientific Advisors, subse- 

 quently reviewed the draft research plan and other information 

 presented during the program review and, on 27 April 1987, 

 provided comments and recommendations to the Service. 



In its letter, the Commission again called attention to 

 the need for a long-range conservation plan and expressed its 

 belief that highest priority should be devoted to assessing 

 and monitoring population status and to identifying the cause 

 or causes of the continuing fur seal population decline. 

 With respect to population monitoring, the Commission recom- 

 mended that efforts be continued or initiated to: (a) better 

 estimate the number of pups born each year on the Pribilof 

 Islands; (b) tag a large cohort of pups each year for the 

 next three to five years to develop better data on age-specific 



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