conjunction with tags, marks made by re- 

 moving part of a flipper are considered 

 checkmarks. 



Rookery Where breeding seals congregate 

 (see hauling ground). 



Round The sequence in which hauling 

 grounds on St. Paul Island are visited to 

 harvest seals. When used, a circuit or 

 "round" of the hauling grounds is completed 

 in 5 days, a procedure that is repeated 

 throughout the kill of males. The mean 

 round of the kill is calculated by multiplying 



the round number by the number killed in 

 that round and dividing the cumulative prod- 

 uct by the cumulative kill. 



Tagged Refers to a seal with an inscribed 

 metal tag or tags attached to one or more 

 of its flippers. 



Tag Recoveries Includes seals that were 

 given tags or other marks, and seals identi- 

 fied from checkmarks as having lost their 

 tags. See checkmark, mark, lost tag, and 

 tagged. 



Part II. PELAGIC FUR SEAL INVESTIGATIONS, 1969 



Pelagic research provides information useful 

 to us in our management of fur seals that re- 

 sort to the Pribilof Islands and fulfills United 

 States treaty obligations as stated in the In- 

 terim Convention of 1957 and the Protocol of 

 1963. 



We have cooperated with Canada in planning 

 an extensive joint study of fur seals off the 

 Washington and British Columbia coasts and, 

 in 1969, carried out the first of several years 

 of research that we designed for these areas. 

 Canada and the United States have also stand- 

 ardized their methods of collecting and record- 

 ing information on fur seals and can now ex- 

 change data on punch cards. 



Our objective is to collect data that will show 

 changes, if any, in the distribution, by age, sex, 

 and time, and to obtain current information 

 on pregnancy rates and food habits of fur seals 

 in the area studied. 



Clifford H. Fiscus, Project Leader 



RESEARCH IN 1969 



We conducted pelagic investigations off 

 Washington from 6 February to 31 March 

 (research cruise No. 32) aboard the M/V 

 Tonquin," a chartered vessel. 



Equipment and methods used to collect seals 

 at sea have been described by Fiscus, Baines, 

 and Wilke (1964) and by Fiscus and Kajimura 



" Registered length 29.4 m. (96.6 feet), 200 net tons, 

 350 horsepower, cruising speed 16.7 km. per hour (9 

 knots). 



(1967) . We measured, weighed, and examined 

 the seals we collected in 1969 for checkmarks, 

 tags, scars, general physical condition, barna- 

 cles, and algae aboard ships. We also cleaned 

 all canine teeth and preserved the stomachs 

 and reproductive tracts in 10 percent Formalin. 

 In our Seattle laboratory, we sectioned one up- 

 per canine tooth from each seal for use in esti- 

 mating age, and examined the stomach contents 

 and reproductive tracts for studies of food 

 habits and pregnancy rates. 



Distribution 



Figure 13 shows the distribution of seals in 

 February. Seals were abundant along the 

 continental shelf between Grays Harbor and 

 the mouth of the Columbia River and west of 

 Cape Flattery on the edge of La Perouse Bank. 

 In March (fig. 14), we found concentrations of 

 seals along the continental shelf between Grays 

 Harbor and the mouth of the Columbia River 

 within 55 km. (30 miles) of shore. 



Tables B-l and B-2 give the distribution 

 of seals. Yearlings (1968 year class) were 

 taken closer inshore than older seals. 



Abundance 



Of 1,136 fur seals sighted, 334 (29.4 percent) 

 were collected, 41 (3.6 percent) were wounded 

 and lost, and 42 (3.7 percent) were killed and 

 lost. The number and relative abundance of 

 seals seen and collected off Washington by 10- 

 day periods are shown in tables B-3 and B-4. 



37 



