Fur Seal Pictures, Photos, Photography

The Guadalupe fur seal (Arctocephalus townsendi) is a fur seal. It is one of six members of the Arctocephalus genus, but the only one to be found in the northern hemisphere. Sealers reduced the population to just a few dozen by the late 19th century, but the species had recovered to 10,000 in number by the late 1990s. Most individuals can be found on Mexico's Guadalupe Island which is located 180 miles (290km) from Baja California in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Individuals of both sexes are dark brown or dusky black, with the guard hairs on the back of the neck being yellowish or light tan. Pups are born with a black coat similar to that of adults. Observations suggest that reproductive males are faithful to particular sites over a number of years.

The northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus) is an eared seal found along the north Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk. There are estimated to be around 1.1 million Northern Fur Seals across the range, of which roughly one half breeds on the Pribilof Islands in the east Bering Sea. The northern fur seal's range overlaps almost exactly with that of Stellar sealions, with which they occasionally cohabit reproductive rookeries. The only other fur seal found in the northern hemisphere is the Guadalupe fur seal which overlaps slighly with the northern fur seal's range in California. Northern fur seals have been a staple food of native northeast Asian and Alaskan Inuit peoples for thousands of years. The arrival of Europeans to Kamchatka and Alaska in the 17th and 18th centuries, first from Russia and later from North America, was followed by a commercial fur trade. An estimated 2.5 million seals were killed from 1786-1867. This trade led to a decline in fur seal numbers. Restrictions were first placed on fur seal harvest on the Pribilof Islands by the Russians in 1834. Shortly after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the US Treasury authorized to lease sealing privileges on the Pribilofs, which were granted somewhat liberally to the Alaska Commercial Company. From 1870 to 1909, sealing proceeded to take a significant toll on the fur seal population, such that the Pribilof population reached a low of 216,000 animals in 1912. Significant harvest was more or less arrested with the signing of the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911. A successive convention was signed in 1957 and amended by a protocol in 1963. Currently, there is a subsistence hunt by the residents of St. Paul Island and an insignificant harvest in Russia.

Photographing fur seals is limited to visiting the locations where they have large breeding colonies. The Pribilof Islands are difficult and expensive to visit, while Mexico's Guadalupe Island is even more difficult to access.