sealing season (Scheffer I960 34 ). The following year, Wilke 

 and party visited the Commander Islands (Wilke et al. 1961") 

 and in 1963 Wilke visited Robber. Island. Wilke (1963 36 ) thus 

 became the first American since Stejneger in 1922 to land on 

 the three breeding resorts of the northern fur seal. We will not 

 dwell on international exchanges of personnel after 1960. 



W. J. L. Sladen (Johns Hopkins University) began in 1960 a 

 study of upper respiratory' infections of Pribilof Islanders. He 

 had been a biologist and medical officer for the Falkland 

 Islands Dependencies Surveys in Antarctica in 1947 and later. 

 His interest soon extended to fur seals; he collected blood sam- 

 ples and biopsies in 1960 and 1961. He isolated Clostridium 

 perfringens from seals in 1961; this probably causes enteritis in 

 pups (Keyes 1963). (For further technical details, see Abegglen 

 et al. footnote 31, p. 50, 58.) One of his students, Richard S. 

 Peterson, later made an important behavior study of fur seals 

 on Kitovi Rookery. 



In May 1960, Andrine Merculief, a native of St. George 

 Island, found the fresh carcass of a large dog about 500 ft (150 

 m) inland from Zapadni beach. Small boys had heard a dog 

 barking on the drift ice about 2 wk earlier. Presumably the 

 animal was a sledge dog from St. Lawrence Island or the main- 

 land. The incident shows that Pribilof foxes and seals are not 

 completely insulated from the parasites and pathogens of car- 

 nivores from other shores. 



Larry R. Nygren (1963) successfully fed a captive pup. "One 

 pup learned to suck warm fur seal's milk from a human baby 

 bottle. The hole in the tip of the nipple had been enlarged to 

 accomodate the thick milk. To my knowledge this was the first 

 successful bottle-feeding involving a captive fur seal pup." 

 Nygren wrote (in a letter of 15 September 1965) that the pup 

 had been taken by caesarean section in late June or early July 

 and was still alive in September. 



The first of many attempts to anesthetize or tranquilize fur 

 seals for research purposes was made in 1960 (Abegglen et al. 

 footnote 31, p. 69). The Palmer "Cap Chur Gun," firing a 

 drug-loaded syringe, had been released for sale in 1958 in 

 Georgia. It soon became a popular research tool for wildlife 

 managers. Against fur seals in 1960 it was not a success. Be- 

 tween 1961 and 1964, however, Peterson and Keyes carried on 

 further experiments in immobilizing seals and were satisfied 

 with the results. A report of their successes and failures was 

 not immediately released to the public because of the potential 

 hazard of certain drugs used in the studies (Peterson 1965a). 



The crew of a pelagic sealing vessel collected a killer whale 

 near Kodiak, Alaska, in 1960. It was killed with a 50 mm 

 Norwegian harpoon gun mounted on the bow of the vessel. It 

 was the first of a small series of specimens of killer whales and 

 sharks taken in an effort to learn more about the predators of 

 seals. We believe that it was the first killer whale taken for 

 research purposes in North American waters, though several 



"Scheffer, V. B. 1960. Observations on Robben Island. U.S.S.R., in summer 

 of 1960. Unpubl. manuscr., 29 p. Northwest and Alaska Fish. Cent., Natl. Mar. 

 Mammal Lab., Natl. Mar. Fish. Serv., NOAA, 7600 Sand Point Way NE., 

 Seattle, WA 981 15. 



"Wilke, F., A. Y. Roppel, and K. Niggol. 1961. Observations on Medny and 

 Bering Islands, Kamchatka, U.S.S.R., in July 1961. Unpubl. rep., 40 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. 



"Wilke, F. 1963. A visit to Robben Island, U.S.S.R.. in 1963. Unpubl. 

 manuscr., 20 p. Northwest and Alaska Fish. Cent., Natl. Mar. Mammal Lab., 

 Natl. Mar. Fish. Serv., NOAA, 7600 Sand Point Way NE., Seattle, WA 981 15. 



had been taken by commercial shore-whalers. The following 

 summer, a killer was taken off San Francisco. In its stomach 

 were fragments of northern elephant seal, Mirounga angusti- 

 rostris, California sea lion, and a small cetacean. 



The pelagic research crew in 1960 obtained evidence that 

 nursing female seals may forage out to 206 nmi (382 km) from 

 the Pribilof Islands. In midsummer in Unimak Pass they col- 

 lected seals which, upon examination proved to be post par- 

 turn. 



Scheffer (1960a) compared the weights of 10 organs oi 

 glands in the fur seal with those in the dog. He found no im- 

 portant differences, though, from the evidence of one sample, 

 the fur seal thyroid is relatively small. 



The routine of weighing 1 ,200 pups each summer had been 

 established in 1957. This was the basis for determining whether 

 body condition at age zero (summer of birth) in autumn is 

 related to survival at the ages of harvest. To measure the 

 variability in body weight at the age of harvest and relate it to 

 the body condition at age zero, a portable scale-and-rule was 

 trundled along the killing fields of St. Paul in 1960 and 1,672 

 known-age 2-, 3-, and 4-yr-olds of both sexes were weighed 

 and measured. 3 ' At the end of 1963 the project was abandoned 

 because it produced no meaningful data. 



In 1960 the length measurements of pregnant and nonpreg- 

 nant seals were compared. The data from seals killed on land 

 were inconclusive; those from seals killed at sea in 1958 and 

 1959 indicated that pregnant animals are longer than nonpreg- 

 nant ones of the same age. This curious relationship was 

 discovered in the pelagic research of 1952 (Abegglen et al. 

 footnote 33, p. 74). 



A test run was made on two small rookeries in 1960 to find 

 the ratio of tagged to untagged pups of the current year class. 

 Workmen removed all dead pups from Zapadni Reef and Lit- 

 tle Polovina just before they started the annual tagging opera- 

 tion here. Several weeks later, they examined (for tags) 747 live 

 pups and 278 dead ones. The experiment was encouraging; it 

 was extended in 1961 to all St. Paul rookeries, though dead 

 pups were not removed. It yielded an estimate of 275,000 pups 

 at time of tagging, or definitely fewer than had been estimated 

 in recent years by other means. In the third year, 1962, the 

 estimate was 231,800 pups. Starting in 1963, fall pup sampling 

 was based on individuals especially marked by shearing, rather 

 than on individuals wearing metal tags. The pup sampling 

 trials of 1960-62 were important in focusing attention on the 

 weaknesses of the conventional Petersen-index method based 

 on returns of subadults. 



The "Marine Mammal Biological Laboratory" received its 

 name in July 1960. Wilke (1960) summarized information on 

 the life history and exploitation of the northern fur seal. His 

 summary was later incorporated in a more extensive publica- 

 tion by Baker et al. (1963). Gerald J. Oppenheimer, librarian 

 for the University of Washington's Fisheries-Oceanography 

 Library, compiled a list of reference sources for marine mam- 

 malogy (Oppenheimer 1960). 



In 1960, C. Howard Baltzo became Program Director of a 

 newly formed Marine Mammal Resources Program. 38 Research 



"A. Y. Roppel, wildlife biologist. National Marine Mammal Laboratory, 

 Northwest and Alaska Fish. Cent., Natl. Mar. Fish. Serv., NOAA, 7600 Sand 

 Point Way NE., Seattle, WA 981 15, pers. commun. 1964 



"Marine Mammal Resources Program, now the Pribilof Islands Program, 

 Northwest Regional Office, Natl. Mar. Fish. Serv., NOAA, 7600 Sand Point 

 Way NE., Seattle, WA 981 15. 



47 



