1) Pelagic sealing was prohibited except for research pur- 

 poses. A recommendation was to be made at the end of the 

 fifth year (14 October 1962) as to the best methods of sealing. 

 Behind this provision lay Japan's hope that the best method 

 would prove to be pelagic sealing, and that she would again be 

 permitted to take part directly in cropping the North Pacific 

 Fur seal resource. 



2) A 6-yr cooperative research program (to 14 October 1963) 

 was set up to determine the measures necessary to achieve 

 maximum sustainable productivity. 



3) The seal harvests were to be shared. Of the U.S. harvest 

 from the Pribilofs, 15% was to be delivered to Canada and 

 15% to Japan; of the Soviet harvest from her islands, 15% to 

 Canada and 15% to Japan. (As a result of a 1963 amendment, 

 the U.S.S.R.'s contribution was reduced to 10% for the 3-yr 

 period 1964-66.) 



4) A four-man commission was established. The North 

 Pacific Fur Seal Commission was organized and held its first 

 meeting in Washington on 13-17 January 1958. The commis- 

 sioners were George R. Clark, Kenjiro Nishimura, Alexsandr 

 A. Ishkov, and Arnie J. Suomela. (Mr. Clark died in 1963.) 



1958 



Early in 1958 the joint research program got under way. For 

 6 ensuing years the biologists of Canada, Japan, the U.S.S.R., 

 and the United States studied abundance, distribution, and 

 food habits of seals at sea. Simultaneously, biologists of the 

 two nations which own seal islands — the U.S.S.R. and the 

 United States — continued to study seals on land. Some of the 

 studies on land and sea were prescribed by the Convention; 

 some would have been carried on in its absence. 



United States biologists chartered two halibut schooners and 

 one purse seiner and took 1,503 seals off the west coast of 

 North America (Wilke et al. 1958") (Fig. 13). A section of the 

 Marine Mammal Biological Laboratory in Seattle was con- 

 verted to a "wet lab" where seal stomach contents could be 

 analyzed and where seal teeth could be sectioned. Fiscus 

 gradually built up a reference collection of fishes and in- 

 vertebrates, plus a few marine birds and mammals, for use in 

 identifying remains in stomachs. The task of identifying partly 

 digested remains on the basis of such hard parts as bones, 

 otoliths, scales, eye lenses, and beaks is not easy. Fortunately, 

 the remains in seal stomachs are usually schooling fishes and 

 the identification of one specimen leads to quick recognition 

 of others. 



An improved technique for estimating the age of a seal from 

 the right upper canine tooth was developed in 1958 (Wilke et 

 al. footnote 26, p. 10-15). Charles M. Kirkpatrick (Purdue 

 University) had shown in an unpublished report in 1957 that 

 longitudinal sections reveal growth layers more clearly than do 

 surface ridges. In the pelagic research report for 1958 (Wilke et 

 al. footnote 26, table 4) there was given the first breakdown of 

 ages beyond 10 yr from a sample of teeth. The oldest of 1,321 

 females was 22 yr. David F. Riley made a photographic study 

 of teeth in 1959. Scheffer in 1962 examined sections of the 

 lower jaw and found that the bone is reworked during life, 



Figure 13.- 



-Harold L. Hansen weighing a seal aboard Ihe MV Windward, 

 1960 (photo by Pelagic Section, NMML). 



"Wilke, F., K. Niggol, and C. H. Fiscus. 1958. Pelagic fur seal investigations/ 

 California, Oregon. Washington, and Alaska. 1958. Unpubl. rep., 96 p. North- 

 west and Alaska Fish. Cent.. Natl. Mar. Mammal Lab., Natl. Mar. Fish. Serv., 

 NOAA, 7600 Sand Point Way NE., Seattle, WA 981 15. 



eventually obscuring the pattern of annual layers. Fiscus ex- 

 amined lower canine teeth in 1963 and concluded that they are 

 less useful than upper teeth for routine age estimation. Today, 

 the so-called "aging method" is essentially the one developed 

 in 1958. 



"An 11-year-old female, carrying two well-developed, 

 equal-sized female fetuses, was taken on 9 May 1958, fur- 

 nishing the first record known to the United States of twins in 

 the northern fur seal" (Wilke et al. footnote 26, p. 2) although 

 there was one earlier report (Johnston 1925). Later, Niggol 

 and Fiscus (1960) summarized information on four sets of 

 twins. The two observed combinations were: same sex and dif- 

 ferent uterine horns, different sexes and same horn. 



We will not dwell on the yearly pelagic programs after 1958, 

 since they are summarized in the report of the North Pacific 

 Fur Seal Commission (1964). This report covers the first 4 yr 

 of the 6-yr investigation; it was issued in order to give the 

 Commissioners time to study it before they were called upon to 

 draft an extension (protocol) of the Convention. The report 

 contains an enormous amount of information in its text and 

 137 tables. It is the best modern reference to statistics of the 

 northern fur seal herds. 



While the 1958 pelagic program was under way, research 

 continued on the Pribilof Islands. Gordon Pike and Fukuzo 

 Nagasaki visited St. Paul as official observers for Canada and 

 Japan, respectively, under terms of the Convention. Biologists 

 of the Marine Mammal Biological Laboratory completed their 

 second summer of training under general manager Clarence L. 

 Olson in the technique of counting bulls. In 1959, the 

 biologists assumed responsibility for the count. 



For the first time, a seal marked on the western side of the 

 Pacific was recovered on the eastern side. At Northeast Point 

 on 16 August 1958, a 6-yr female seal wearing a Commander 

 Islands tag was killed. 



The design of the U.S. tag was improved by moving the 

 serial number to the upper, or clinching, side where it is less 

 subject to wear. Five thousand pups were double tagged as a 



43 



