418 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



The color is dark brown, becoming hoary on the head. The 

 sparse whiskers are stout and short. The posterior teeth are 

 remarkably enlarged, broadened, and their cusps blunted to 

 form low rounded knobs suitable for crushing the shellfish that 

 form their diet. Dr. Merriam states that the skin of the type 

 of the southern race was 6 feet long, but it may have been 

 stretched, or perhaps a very large individual. Barabash- 

 Nikiforov (1935) gives a maximum length of 1,635 mm., of 

 which the tail was 330, and a maximum weight of 35 kilograms. 



Sea otters were abundant formerly from the coasts of south- 

 ern Kamchatka to the Kurile Islands in the western North 

 Pacific and in the waters about the islands of the Bering Sea 

 and Alaskan coasts southward following the cooler currents 

 even to the coasts of southern California. On the Asiatic side 

 they ranged at one time as far south as Yezo. On account of 

 the richness of its fur the sea otter was ruthlessly pursued 

 since its discovery by the Russians in about the middle of the 

 eighteenth century, down to more modern times, until by the 

 first decade of the present century it was very nearly exter- 

 minated. The few skins that then came on the market sold for 

 as much as $1,000 apiece. Finally the United States Govern- 

 ment in 1910 passed a law forbidding its capture in American 

 waters and negotiated treaties with other interested nations 

 for giving similar protection. Now, after a lapse of little over 

 a quarter of a century, there is encouraging evidence that the 

 species is recovering and it has lately appeared in some num- 

 bers off the California coasts. 



The history of the pursuit and exploitation of the sea otter 

 has at various times been written. From some of these ac- 

 counts the following pertinent facts are gleaned. Active 

 trade in sea-otter skins seems to have begun in 1742, when 

 Bering, after being wrecked in the sea bearing his name, 

 returned to Petropaulovsk with about 900 skins stowed in the 

 small boat built from the wreck of his vessel, the St. Peter. 

 These at first were chiefly traded with the Chinese, by whom 

 they were highly valued. Shelikof, a Russian trader, at once 

 saw great possibilities in further trade in this fur. He founded 

 a colony on Kodiak Island and made plans for collecting sea- 

 otter skins on a large scale. He died before his object was 

 accomplished, but his son-in-law, Nicholas P. Rezanof, carried 

 on the work and in 1799 obtained from Emperor Paul the 



