History of Scientific Study and Management of the 

 Alaskan Fur Seal, Callorhinus ursinus^ 1786-1964 



VICTOR B. SCHEFFER,' CLIFFORD H. FISCUS/ and ETHEL I. TODD' 



INTRODUCTION 



The breeding grounds of the Alaskan fur seal were discov- 

 ered in 1786 when the United States was a nation 10 yr old. 

 The seal population has now become a resource of great value 

 and its future seems assured. In the language of wildlife man- 

 agers, the population has nearly reached the "level of maxi- 

 mum sustainable productivity." There appear to be no biolog- 

 ical problems in keeping the population near this level. 



Nevertheless, the managing agency — the U.S. Department 

 of the Interior' — will continue to be faced with problems of a 

 diplomatic nature rising from the fact that all Alaskan fur seals 

 feed at times in international waters. A few actually land on 

 foreign soil. Research on the Alaskan seal population has been 

 carried out since the early 1890's on efforts to manage it, not 

 only as a national but also as an international resource. 



The Department can also expect to face local problems ris- 

 ing from the fact that the welfare of seals and the welfare of 

 people are not always compatible. Certain areas of conflict are 

 illustrated by the following questions: Is predation by seals 

 upon commercial fishes of the eastern North Pacific Ocean 

 and Bering Sea economically important? Should tourism to the 

 seal-breeding grounds be encouraged? How can the future 

 livelihood of the people of the Pribilof Islands be ensured 

 when their population is outgrowing its local base of support 

 (the seal harvest)? What should be the respective roles of the 

 Federal Government and the State of Alaska in conserving the 

 seal herd? 



The purpose of the present history is to trace the evolution 

 of zoological research on the fur seals, to discuss the origin 

 and development of research ideas and techniques, and to 

 point out the contributions of research to the present manage- 

 ment structure. In discussing past research, we will describe 

 not only scientific studies but also changes in fur seal manage- 

 ment and fur seal legislation which have, from time to time, 

 made the studies necessary. 



In the fur seal industry during its first century of U.S. own- 

 ership, the gap between management and research, or between 

 business (i.e., the narrow view of the fur seal as an item of 

 commerce) and biology, has slowly been closing. It seems clear 



'Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center National Marine Mammal Labora- 

 tory. National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, Seattle, Wash.; present ad- 

 dress: 14806 SE 54th St., Bellevue, WA 9800I6'. 



'Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center National Marine Mammal Labora- 

 tory. National Marine Fisheries Service. NOAA. Seattle, Wash.; present ad- 

 dress: 23402 Brier Road, Brier, WA 98036. 



'Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center National Marine Mammal Labora- 

 tory, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, Seattle, Wash.; present ad- 

 dress: 13320 Highway 99S, Space 96, Everett, WA 98204. 



'At the time this manuscript was written (1967). the U.S. Department of the 

 Interior was the managing agency. However, at publication, the U.S. Depart- 

 ment of Commerce is the managing agency. 



now that, in order to manage effectively a resource of 1.5 mil- 

 lion wild mammals, constant exploratory research must be car- 

 ried on by zoologists working within the federal management 

 organization itself. Yet, from 1868 to 1939 the seal herd was 

 studied intermittently, and mainly by zoologists borrowed or 

 hired from nongovernmental research institutions. We note 

 that for 45 yr the Pribilof managers had no good way of esti- 

 mating the age of a seal, yet a simple marking experiment in 

 1912 finally provided them with a method for so doing. For 80 

 yr they were saying that the number of births equals the num- 

 ber of adult females, yet a bold experiment in killing and dis- 

 secting females ("the sacred cows" of the industry) revealed 

 that the pregnancy rate is not 100% but nearer 60%. These ex- 

 amples indicate the importance of scientific study. The reader 

 will doubtless agree, as he reads the following history, that 

 $1,000 worth of research would, on occasion, have saved 

 $10,000 worth of time on the part of managers, legislators, and 

 diplomats. 



THE RUSSIAN PERIOD, 1786-1867 

 Establishment of the Fur Seal Industry 



The first European to see an Alaskan fur seal was Georg 

 Wilhelm Steller, on the voyage of discovery of Alaska. At 

 dusk on 10 August 1741, south of Kodiak Island, he watched a 

 "sea-ape" playing about the ship. He did not then or later rec- 

 ognize it as a seal (Stejneger 1936:278). 



In the following summer, while shipwrecked on Bering Is- 

 land, he saw fur seals returning to land to breed. The species 

 became known to science through the posthumous publication 

 of his "De Bestiis Marinis" (Steller 1751), containing a full de- 

 scription of seals which he saw on Bering Island. The species 

 was given a formal name, Phoca ursina, by Linnaeus in 1758. 

 After Steller's 1751 description, little information on Cal- 

 lorhinus ursinus was published for a century. 



The Pribilof Islands, sole breeding grounds of the Alaskan 

 fur seals, were discovered by the crew of the Russian ship St. 

 George under command of Gerasim Gavrilovich Pribilof. The 

 southern island of the group, St. George, was apparently 

 sighted in June 1786. Vague or conflicting accounts of the dis- 

 covery were given by Sauer (1802), Berkh (1823), Veniaminov 

 (1840), and Tikhmenev (1861-63, part 1, p. 34 in transl.). 

 Sauer's story is perhaps the best. Sauer met "Mr. Pribuloff" at 

 Unalaska in October 1790 (Sauer 1802:210). According to 

 Sauer, Pribilof discovered St. George Island 24 h after he left 

 Unalaska in search of the breeding grounds of the seal. "Ob- 

 serving another island to the north, at the distance of 44 miles, 

 he went thither in a large baidar [skin boat], accompanied by a 

 number of Aleutes. This island is much smaller than that of St. 

 George, and he named it St. Paul's: this, as well as the former. 



