ECOLOGY AND BIOLOGY OF THE PACIFIG WALRUS 



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Fig. 1. Bering-Chukchi region, showing the principal places mentioned in the text. 



site because (1) it was recognized as one of the four major walrus-harvesting 

 villages in Alaska, and (2) it was the only one to which reliable air transportation 

 was available at that time. Concurrently, James W. Brooks began similar work 

 on Little Diomede Island in Bering Strait and at the village of Barrow on the 

 northern coast of Alaska. A year later. Brooks reviewed the general status of the 

 walrus population as revealed by his investigations and related it to existing 

 social, economic, and management problems in western and northern Alaska 

 (Brooks 1953) . The full results of his work were produced in the following year as 

 a special report of the Alaska Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit (Brooks 1954). 



I continued my work at Gambell in 1953 and 1954 and on a part-time, 

 opportunistic basis there and in other localities thereafter. At the same time, 

 Soviet and American biologists, notably V. I. Krylov, V. N. Gol'tsev, K. W. 

 Kenyon, and J. J. Burns, connected with Federal and State management 

 agencies, intensified their work, and the scope of investigations was greatly 

 broadened. Many important questions still remain unanswered. Growing public 

 concern for the welfare of marine mammals of the world, together with concerns 

 about their competitive position with commercial fisheries and their potential 

 vulnerability to environmental disturbances, demand that the major gaps be 

 promptly filled. 



The following account is mainly descriptive. In it, I have considered aspects of 

 the distribution and migrations of the Pacific walrus population, the 



