The political economy of the Northern Fur Seal

Abstract

The commercial harvest of Northern Fur Seals (Callorhinus ursinus)breeding on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea has gone on with few interruptions for almost 200 years. Since 1910 this harvest has been carried out exclusively by the US federal government acting as an operating authority. At the same time the management of all Northern Fur Seals, those associated with Ostrov Tyuleniy [Robben Island] and Komandorskiye Ostrova [Commander Islands] as well as the Pribilofs, has been subject to the provisions of a series of international agreements dating back to 1911. These provisions also apply to small breeding populations of Northern Fur Seals on several of the Kuril'skiye Ostrova [Kuril Islands] and on San Miguel Island in the eastern North Pacific (US National Marine Fisheries Service, 1980, p 10–12). The most recent in this series, the Interim Convention for the Conservation of Northern Fur Seals of 1957, formally expired on 14 October 1980. But on the same date, the parties to the 1957 Convention (Canada, Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States) initialled a Protocol extending the Convention, with some minor modifications, for another four years. The Protocol is currently awaiting ratification by Japan and the United States, a process that may take some time. In the interim, the parties are proceeding under an informal agreement to act as though the Protocol were in force, although this may become increasingly difficult if ratification does not occur by the summer of 1981 when the next harvest would normally occur.