Girdling, northern fur seal, Alaska,=--From time to time, perhaps once a 
year, a bachelor fur seal wearing a collar is seen on the killing fields of 
the Pribilof Islands, 
(1) Christoffers reported that "each of three of the 3-year old males 
that were killed during the 1936 season had around its neck a very tight 
rubber band that had evidently been on for a long time. These bands, apparently 
cut from inner tubes of automobile tires, must have been placed around the 
necks of seals by human hands" (19372342). 
(2) We recovered a strip of inner tube from a bachelor seal killed in 
1940. Johnston reported that "in nearly every year recently seals have been 
found with bands around their necks, Many of these bands have been cross sec- 
tions of an inner tube of an automobile tire; several have been of rawhide, 
and even heavy string has been used. In 1941 on St. George Island one rubber 
band was removed and on St, Paul Island several were removed. One seal, picked 
up in a drive on Tolstoi Rookery, St. Paul Island, had a heavy cord bound so 
tightly around the neck that it had cut into the flesh. In the short time the 
seal had been ashore fly larvae had developed. The same seal was later seen 
at Northeast Point with the wound nearly healed" (1943: 62-63). 
(3) In 1943, Palmer saw "a few animals. . .with what looked like rope 
burns around the body. It is possible that these animals may have become 
temporarily ensnared in a net or tangle of rope while at sea. Two young animals 
were noted with a rubber band around the neck and one with a cord. In each 
case, the band or cord was deeply embedded in the fur and was cutting into the 
skin," 
In most cases we believe that little importance can be attached to the ‘ 
finding of collars on seals. Perhaps a collar is placed, in a spirit of fun, 
on a young seal caught by accident in a fish net in the North Pacific or Bering 
Sea. Or a young seal pushes its nose througha ring floating as detritus on 
the sea. There are dozens of reports of fishes foufd wearing girdles of one 
kind or another (Gudger 1937). 
(4) Starting in 1944, however, rubber rings of a peculiar nature began 
to appear on bachelor fur seals (fig. 11). Up to the end of 1948, ten of these 
had been recovered on St. Paul Island. They are creamy to brownish-black, 
soft, lighter than water, and of rolled sheet construction. A plausible theory 
as to their source is furnished by Col. H. M. McCoy, Chief of Intelligence, 
U. S. Air Force (letter of June 7, 1948). He suggests that they are fragments 
of rubber bags used by the Japanese for aerial delivery of food and water in 
the Aleutian Islands in the latter years of World War II. In 1947 we observed 
that the collars were cracked and old-looking. In 1948 we found one seal 
with a collar and thrée seals with neck scars only, the collars having dis- 
cron In 1949 we found neither collars nor scars. (See also Anonymous, 
49 ® 
Painting, northern fur seal, Alaska.--(1) Millard C. Marsh, naturalist 
on the Pribriof Islands In I9II "madé experiments with various methods of marking 
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