Pribilof Islands Historic Preservation and Environmental Restoration

Topics

Island Natural Resources
Marine Mammals

The Pribilof Islands and their surrounding sea support a diversity of marine fauna. Best known may be the islands’ northern fur-seal (Callorhinus ursinus) population, constituting just over 50% of the world’s population (Ream 2007, pers. comm.). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Marine Fisheries Service, estimated the 2004 total northern fur-seal stock size for the Pribilof Islands to be 756,000 (Ream 2007, pers. comm., derived from pup production estimates of Towell et al. 2006). This is a decrease from the 2002 total northern fur-seal stock size estimate of 848,000 (York et al. 2005). The estimated number of pups born on the islands has also shown a decline. Towell et al. (2006) estimated the number of pups born on St. Paul in 2004 was 15.7% less than in 2002 and 22.6% less than in 2000. For St. George Island, the estimated number of pups born in 2004 was 4.1% less than in 2002 and 16.3% less than in 2000. Estimated pup production has declined to the 1918 level on St. Paul Island and below the 1916 level on St. George Island, years in which the northern fur-seal population was recovering from the devastation wrought by pelagic harvests.

Photo of seal.
A female northern fur seal on St. Paul Island (NOAA)

The immensity of the seal herd once entranced Henry Wood Elliott, an assistant agent for the U.S. Department of Treasury. Elliott studied the fur seals and the natural history of the Pribilof Islands as an avocation. By the time he concluded his studies in 1876 with the controversial publication The Seal-Islands of Alaska (Elliott 1976), he’d risen to unexpected acclaim as a fur-seal expert. Elliott took copious field notes, painted watercolors, conducted a census of the seals, and mapped the islands’ rookeries and haul outs. Joseph Stanley-Brown, a special treasury agent for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1891, George A. Clark in 1913, and Charles H. Townsend, a naturalist on the U.S. Fish Commission steamer Albatross, also mapped the fur-seal rookeries and haul outs on St. Paul and St. George Islands, respectively, in the late nineteenth century.

Numerous other marine mammals occur in the Pribilof Islands’ region, many being near the northern or southern limits of their ranges (Haley 1986; Hanna 1923; Preble and McAtee 1923, 105–107). Species near their southern limits are the ringed seal (Phoca hispida), bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus), walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens), and bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus). Species near their northern limits are the Pacific harbor seal (Phoca vitulina richardii), Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus), Dall’s porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli), northern giant bottlenose or Baird’s beaked whale (Berardius bairdii), sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), and right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). The killer whale (Orcinus orca) occurs both north and south of the Pribilofs, and may be seen feeding on fur seals. Also, occasionally observed near the Pribilofs are the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), minke whale (B. acutorostrata), spotted seal (Phoca largha), ribbon seal (Phoca fasciata), and harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena).

Photo of orca.
An orca whale near St. Paul Island (NOAA)

The Pribilof Islands once served as home, breeding grounds, or shelter for thousands of Steller sea lions and sea otters (Enhydra lutris), and unknown numbers of walrus and harbor seals²⁷ (Preble and McAtee 1923, 105–107). K. T. Khlebnikov’s notes from the early 1800s indicated, “At the time the island was discovered… there were many sea otters. At present they never appear, but fur seals and sea lions usually come. Walrus seldom come to these islands.”²⁸ Elliott (1976, 93) reported that sea lions were “common,” and walrus and harbor seals were “a few only” in the late 1800s.

Osgood et al. (1915, 119–120 ) wrote, “Until comparatively recent times sea lions were found in thousands on both St. Paul and St. George Islands…Where formerly there were many thousands of the huge creatures there are at present only a few hundred on both islands.” Reports from early American occupation indicated sea lions on the Pribilofs numbered 20,000 to 25,000 at St. Paul Island and 7,000 to 8,000 at St. George Island with a few breeding at Walrus Island (Preble and McAtee 1923, 107, citing Elliott 1875, 153). Northeast Point was the major sea-lion rookery on St. Paul Island (Preble and McAtee 1923, 107; and, Osgood et al. 1915, 120). According to various authors, at least three sea-lion rookeries existed at St. George Island, presumably at Sea Lion Point (near Garden Cove), East Rookery and Tolstoi Point. A sea-lion rookery may have existed at Sea Lion Rock (Preble and McAtee 1923, 107; Osgood et al. 1915, 120; and, Hanna 2008, 180). “But they [sea lions] were subjected to indiscriminate slaughter on the islands from 1867 to 1914 when the first steps were taken to prevent the total extermination of this very interesting species from the group. In 1916, a few more than 400 animals of all classes, males, females, and young were counted at the height of their breeding season, and in 1922, it was estimated that there were about one thousand.” (Hanna 2008, 181) During at least the mid-twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty-first century, a rookery existed at Walrus Island. The Pribilof Islands represent the northern most occurrences of Steller sea-lion rookeries in the eastern Bering Sea (AFSC 1996).

Sea otters, abundant at the time of Russian discovery of the Pribilof Islands in 1786, were nearly exterminated from the Pribilof Islands by the early to mid-nineteenth century. Purportedly, as many as 5,000 sea otters were taken from St. Paul Island during the first year of its human settlement (Preble and McAtee 1923, 105 –106). “A dead one was picked up on the beach of St. Paul in 1895 and another on St. George somewhat later.” (Hanna, 2008, 181) NOAA filmed a single sea otter feeding in the nearshore waters of St. George Island during 2004.

At the time of Russian occupation of the Pribilof Islands, walrus are believed to have been present in sufficient numbers to allow the taking of many each year. St. George, St. Paul, and Walrus Islands appear to have been walrus haul outs. According to a very old man, Eoff Philemonoff, interviewed during 1899 at St. George, many walrus lined the beach between Sea Lion Point and Tolstoi Point.²⁹ Observations of walrus remains found on the islands have been overwhelmingly of male walrus, therefore no indication exists that walrus breed on these islands (Elliott 1976, 93, 97; Hanna 1923; Preble and McAtee 1923, 106). Human inhabitation of St. George and St. Paul Islands is credited with the disappearance of walrus from these islands. The last report of a significant walrus haul out on the Pribilof Islands was Elliott’s 1872 observation of at least 150 males on Walrus Island (Elliott 1976, 94). Preble and McAtee (1923, 107) summarized walrus sightings at the Pribilof Islands up through 1918. Walrus continue to occasionally appear on the islands, although more typically as weakened or dead animals. Two dead walruses were found in January 2006 on St. George beaches, one near Tolstoi Point and the other near East Rookery (Andrew Malavansky 2006, pers. comm.). These occurrences perhaps corresponded with the pack ice, including a raft of ice approximately one mile by two miles that approached within two miles of St. George Island. Bones still commonly appear in the dunes and beaches about Northeast Point on St. Paul.

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Observations of Marine Mammals on the Pribilof Islands in the Early Twentieth Century

“Of the whalebone whales, the bowhead, right whale, and sulphur bottom may be noted. A sperm whale floated ashore on St. George Island in 1914 and another on St. Paul Island in 1919.”
“An old log record indicates that one [bearded seal] was obtained many years ago by the natives of St. George Island, but no specimen was ever saved until 1917–18 when Mr. C. E. Crompton obtained the skin and skull of one on the same island and forwarded them to the U.S. Museum.”
The presence of several bearded seals on a St. George Island beach in 1900 was postulated to be associated with ice pack about the island that year.
“In 1915, a harbor porpoise was found at Northeast Point, St. Paul Island and the following winter a school of 13 was forced on shore on St. George Island by drift ice.”
“One of these beautiful animals [ribbon seal] was taken 84 miles west of St. Paul Island in 1896; a native of St. George, George Merculief, shot one from shore in 1900 and another was seen at the Myak of that island, hauled up with the other hair seals, during the winter of 1916.”

“Two small rookeries of these animals [hair seals, Phoca richardii pribilofensis] are found on St. George Island; one is located on the south side of the island under Red Bluffs, near Cascade Point; and the other is near the Myak, a high steeple rock near the northwest end of the island. Both are in places absolutely inaccessible from the land side and it is seldom indeed that a boat is able to visit these inhospitable, rock bound shores. There are also two rookeries on St. Paul Island; one is on the north shore where the ancient Russian village of Marunich was located…The other rookery is at the Southwest Point of the island where, likewise offshore rocks are occupied.”³⁰

Marine Invertebrates

Insects and Arachnids

Fossils