APPENDIX II 
HISTORY OF SEA-OTTER HUNTING IN THE 
KURIL ISLANDS 
From old Japanese records, it is evident that sea- 
otters at one time were found on the east coasts of 
Yezo, although they have long been extinct there. 
The animals probably retreated from those waters 
to the unfrequented shores of the Kuril Islands as 
the Japanese advanced and established their fishing 
and seaweed-gathering stations along the coast. As 
previously stated, the Russians discovered the sea- 
otter on the coasts of Kamchatka towards the end 
of the seventeenth century, but there are Japanese 
records which show that it was hunted by the Ainu 
of Yezo more than a century earlier. Mr. J. Carey 
Hall, who was British Consul in Hakodate in 1892, 
gives some interesting particulars in his report for 
that year concerning this subject, the result of his 
researches amongst old Japanese records, and also 
some account of the hunting up to recent times. I 
have taken the liberty of making use of his informa¬ 
tion, and of correcting a few errors concerning the 
hunting in the early seventies, when the Japanese 
authorities first awoke to the value of this business. 
Mr. Hall says : 64 The hunting of the sea-otter in 
Yezo and the Kurils has been going on for at least 
three centuries. The earliest notice of it I can find 
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