Fur Seal Act of 1966

Thanks for saving me!

The Fur Seal Act of 1966 prohibits the taking, including transportation, importing and possession, of fur seals and sea otters. It also prevents humans from entering fur seal rookeries.

This act excludes Indians, Aleuts and Eskimos who live on the coasts of the North Pacific Ocean and use seals for subsistence purposes.

How it all began...

Instead of helping the seal population, these regulations led to offshore, open water sealing, decimating the herd.

In the early 1800s, due to widespread seal slaughter, the United States leased the rights to fur seal harvesting on the islands to the Alaska Commercial Company and declared the rights of the Bering Sea off-limits to sealers of any nation.

Henry Wood Elliott was an American water colorist and a naturalist whose job was to determine the most profitable manner of managing the great seal herds of the Pribilof Islands for a sustainable harvest.

It began in 1872, when Elliott calculated that 100,000 bachelor males could be harvested per year (out of approximately 4 million seals). While this seemed to be enough, many greedy seal hunters began to slaughter the females. In doing so, the hunters initially killed three seals, the female, a nursing pup on shore who relied on the mother for food, and a seal embryo.

Elliott returned to the Pribilof Islands in 1890 and was outraged at the incompetence of both government officials and commercial interests. As a result, he became an advocate of fur seals and saved the fur seal population from extinction.

Henry Wood Elliott to the Rescue...

The prohibition of sealing due to Elliott’s persistence and the cooperation of Russia, Japan, Great Britain and the U.S. led to the Pacific Fur Seal Treaty of 1911. This treaty was the first international treaty for wildlife conservation and a forerunner of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972-which gave NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) control of marine mammals.

http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Quarterly/amj2007/images/feature_furseals.jpg

http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/feb2007/canada_seals_mailout_picture.jpg

http://www.scoodog.com/2008/03/this-year-both-seals-and-humans-die.html

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/features/elliott.htm

http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/events/fursealtreaty/welcome.html