Sea Otters and the Maritime Fur Trade

Abstract

AbstractThe Maritime Fur Trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries influenced countries of the North Pacific Rim, including China, Japan, Russia, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Especially affected was Alaska, which probably would belong to Canada if the fur trade had not inspired Russian adventurers to colonize it in the eighteenth century. That event changed the lives and cultural history of maritime Native people, especially the Aleuts (Unangan and Sugpiaq), who were conscripted (enslaved) to hunt sea otters for Russian traders from the mid-1700s until the United States purchased Alaska in 1867. After Russia withdrew from the territory, American (and, to a lesser extent, British and Japanese) hunters pursued sea otters throughout their original range, often as poachers. Sea otter populations reached the brink of extinction until the signing of the International Fur Seal Treaty in 1911, which included protections for sea otters. In hindsight, the rush for the otters’ “soft gold” was a predictable boom and bust cycle, a cautionary example of unsustainable resource use, and a socioeconomic driver of Western—mainly American—involvement in the Pacific region starting in the eighteenth century. The trade’s profound effects on the population biology of this important marine predator and the littoral community of the Pacific Rim are still apparent today.KeywordsAlaskaAmericaCaliforniaChinaExtinctionFur tradeJapanMaritimeRussian AmericaSea otter