US Northern Fur Seal Pup Count Continues To Decline - Off 9% In 2004-06 Count - ENN

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- America's northern fur seal pup population continues a marked decline this decade, federal biologists reported Friday. The number of pups born between 2004 and 2006 in Alaska's Pribilof Islands, home of the world's largest rookeries, fell by 9 percent from the previous two year estimate, according to researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"We have seen a significant decline in the abundance of fur seals on the Pribilof Islands starting about 1998, and we have not been able to identify the factors responsible," said Doug DeMaster, director of NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

Less pollock, herring, squid and other seal food because of global warming or commercial fishing are possibilities, as is increased predation by killer whales. Entanglement in marine debris, parasites, disease and pollutants may have contributed to past or present declines, according to federal researchers.

The Pribilofs are a group of five islands in the Bering Sea about 300 miles from the mainland. St. Paul is the largest at just more than 40 square miles and St. George, 47 miles to the south, is just under 35 square miles. The remote points of land in the Bering Sea are the breeding grounds for more than half of the world's northern fur seals. Just 15 years ago, they accounted for 74 percent of the population.

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