312 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 61, FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



walrus swam past our ship." And again (p. 298), for August 1, 

 1741, near Cape Elizabeth, the southwestern point of Kenai Pen- 

 insula : "A walrus dived near the ship." 



If we may accept these early records, and they appear to be 

 authentic, in primitive times the walrus must have ranged at 

 least as far south and east as Prince of Wales Island in south- 

 eastern Alaska, possibly farther. It should be noted that this is 

 actually not farther south than the north shore of Unimak Is- 

 land. However, if there had been large herds in southeastern 

 Alaska, surely some of them would have survived long enough to 

 have been more generally recorded. It is reasonable to conclude 

 that walruses occurring south and east of Alaska Peninsula were 

 only in small groups and that they represented the southern fringe 

 of their distribution. 



The Aleutian Islands west of Unimak are not properly in the 

 walrus range, but Turner (1886, p. 207) records a 2-year-old male 

 killed at Attu Island in September 1880. 



In 1938, Scheffer recorded the following statement by Pete 

 Olson, of Unalaska Island: 



I went to Anderson Bay near Makushin with my power dory and towed 

 a walrus up on the beach. It had been killed by natives, was two or three 

 years old, and had a body about two thirds as long as my twenty foot 

 dory. The walrus was beached and the natives took some meat. A doctor 

 on the Coast Guard boat "Haida" took the head, cleaned off the meat, and 

 saved the skull. This happened in the late fall of 1926 or 1927. 



Such records represent strays. 



Walruses feed on clams on the ocean floor, therefore we would 

 not expect to find optimum habitat in the deep waters that are 

 so prevalent in the western Aleutians. On the other hand, we 

 know that walruses existed in great numbers in Bering Sea, 

 whose shallow waters afford favorable feeding grounds. It is 

 significant that Bristol Bay, whose shallow waters and mud and 

 sand bottom were the home of great numbers of walruses in 

 earlier days, now has very few. 



Several places on the north side of Alaska Peninsula were 

 visited by great numbers of walruses, though early accounts do 

 not always specify precise localities. It is obvious that the 

 "south side of Bristol Bay" harbored large walrus herds. Local 

 residents indicated that the vicinity of Ugashik had one or more 

 hauling-out places. 



Osgood (1904, p. 49) reported in 1902 that— 



A very limited number of walruses still occur about some of the small 

 islands in Togiak Bay west of Nushagak, and on the north coast of the 

 Alaska Peninsula in the vicinity of the native village of Unangashik. Large 



