2012 Alaska Fur Seal Investigations

July 01, 2012

The northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus) population in the Pribilof Islands Archipelago (on St. Paul and St. George Islands, Figs. 1-3) makes up approximately 50% of the world population. Smaller breeding colonies are located on the Kuril and Commander Islands in Russia, Bogoslof Island (Figs. 1 and 4) in the southeastern Bering Sea, and San Miguel Island (Fig. 5) off California. The rookeries at San Miguel and Bogoslof Islands probably originated in the late 1950s (DeLong 1982) and 1980 (Lloyd et al. 1981), respectively.