On 28 August, the Service determined that subsistence 

 needs of the St. Paul Natives had not been satisfied and 

 authorized a two-day extension of the harvest season to allow 

 211 seals to be taken. Seals were harvested on 2 September 

 and only 110 additional seals were taken before the limit of 

 five female seals was reached and the harvest was terminated. 

 Because of the high female take during the 1986 and 1987 

 extensions of the harvest, the Service has indicated that it 

 will review the advisability of allowing seals to be taken 

 after the first week of August and will consider deleting the 

 extension provisions from its regulations. 



In 1986, a few St. Paul residents collected small numbers 

 of seal pelts during the subsistence harvest and indicated 

 that they intended to use them in the creation of Native 

 handicrafts. In contrast, during 1987, the St. Paul Native 

 corporation processed pelts from 1,600 of the 1,710 seals 

 taken. The skins will be held pending resolution of the 

 Natives' view that the Marine Mammal Protection Act should be 

 amended to allow for the commercial sale of such subsistence 

 by-products . 



Seals were harvested on St. George Island on only two 

 days during the 1987 season. A total of 92 seals were taken. 



International Cooperation 



North Pacific fur seals occur not only in U.S. waters 

 but also seasonally in international waters and waters under 

 the jurisdiction of other countries. Thus, conservation of 

 the North Pacific fur seal and the ecosystem of which it is a 

 part requires multinational cooperation. 



As noted earlier, between 1957 and 1984, northern fur 

 seals were managed according to the terms of the Interim 

 Convention on Conservation of North Pacific Fur Seals. This 

 expired at the end of 1984 when the United States failed to 

 ratify the protocol to extend the Convention until 1988. As 

 noted in the Commission's previous Annual Report, the Government 

 of Canada subsequently cancelled a meeting of parties that was 

 to have been held in Ottawa in April 1986 to discuss the 

 future role of the Interim Convention and related issues. 



Recognizing the importance of international cooperation 

 to protect and permit recovery of the Pribilof Islands fur 

 seal population, and the difficulty of securing that cooper- 

 ation in the absence of an international agreement, the National 

 Marine Fisheries Service and the Department of State invited 

 representatives of the former parties to the Interim Convention 

 to an informal meeting in Washington, D.C., to explore the 

 possibility of a new agreement. The meeting, initially proposed 



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