Whatve you got for #throwbackthursday? HSWRI Senior Research Scientist Dr. Brent Stewart recently traveled to the Pribilof Islands, where he worked with NOAA Fisheries colleagues on the northern fur seal surveys. The Pribilof Islands (Bering Sea, Alaska) are home to the largest breeding colony of northern fur seals, but Dr. Stewart has also worked with the species closer to home, on San Miguel Island off the coast of California. The Pribilof Island population, which has declined from a historical high of over 2 million in the late 1940s and early 1950s to approximately 600,000 today, is designated as depleted under the Mairne Mammal Protection Act. Past declines were associated with a commercial harvest which ended nearly 30 years ago; the cause of the continuing decline is still under investigation but known threats include changes in prey availability and entanglement in marine debris and fishing gear.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 18:00:01 +0000