Candace and the Fur Seals

by Scott Edward Anderson

In the foggy dusk of a summer night on St. Paul Island, in the middle of the Bering Sea, Candace Stepetin and Bruce Robson crawl through the knee-high grasses towards the beach at Lukanin Point. A northern fur seal was spotted near the point earlier in the evening. He was described as a sub-adult male (or SAM) and was last seen wearing an unbecoming mess of thick green twine around his neck.

Candace and Bruce spring into action when they locate the seal. Using a long hickory pole at the end of which they have fashioned a loop of rope, Bruce slips the loop over the seal's head and pulls him away from the beach. The idea is to get the seal far enough away from the beach so as not to spook and stress the hundreds of other seals.

Working as a team, Bruce keeps the powerful 100-pound seal inert and relatively under control, while Candace removes the netting. She seems to calm the seal by gently stroking a spot above his belly. Then, stretching the twine to the point where she can slip a pair of shears under it, she cuts. With each inch of twine she removes, Candace roughs the hairs of the seal to be sure she hasn't accidentally caught skin in the sharp blades. Then she smoothes back the hair with the care one reserves for a beloved pet.

Once free, the seal heads quickly for the coast. "Quickly" is not quite the right descriptive. In the water fur seals are as graceful as dolphins; on land they lumber with a comical clumsy gait. Entangled SAMs are fairly common on the island and it's important they be disentangled. Discarded fishing nets or plastic packing materials often get wrapped around the seal's neck and can eventually choke it to death. As the seal grows in size, we are told, the net slowly constricts and cuts into the flesh.

Candace Stepetin, now in her first year of college, is a "graduate" of Adolescents of the Aleut Nation's Gateway program and a past participant in a stewardship camp operated by the Pribilof Islands Stewardship Program. The camp is a partnership between the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Tanadgusix Corporation, St. Paul's IRA Tribal Council, The Nature Conservancy of Alaska, the City of St. Paul, and the Pribilof School District. The program and its youth camp are designed to increase understanding of the natural sciences and stewardship, and its relationship to the core values of the Pribilof Aleut culture.

The next morning Candace is busy entering information into the Stewardship Program's new Gateway 2000 computer supplied by the Conservancy in conjunction with the Alaska chapter of the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society. She is cataloguing and quantifying northern fur seal entanglement sightings into a database created by Bruce Robson, a NMFS biologist studying fur seal ecology. Born and raised on St. Paul Island, Candace has been working with Bruce for the past two summers, since 1996.

The Pribilofs are often referred to as the "Galapagos of the North." Located in the middle of the Bering Sea, eight hundred miles west of Anchorage and two hundred miles north of the Aleutian chain, these fog-enshrouded, wind-swept islands are home to an unparalleled abundance of seabird and sea mammal life.

The Pribilofs were formed 400,000 years ago by volcanic eruption that poured successive layers of basalt and other igneous matter onto the ocean floor. The natural abundance of the islands is as dramatic as their formation. In addition to harboring one of the largest seabird colonies in the northern hemisphere, the Pribilofs are one of the few breeding areas for red-legged kittiwakes, and one of the largest colonies (an estimated 1.5 million) of thick-billed murres in the world. As if that isn't compelling enough, roughly one million northern fur seals (70-74% of the world's population) come annually to the Pribilofs to give birth and breed again. Fur seals travel up to 7,000 miles--from as far away as San Diego--to reach the Pribilofs during the summer months.

The fur seals are what brought the Aleuts here in the first place. Or rather, the Russians brought the Aleuts here to "harvest" fur seals for the worldwide fur market. When the United States annexed Alaska in 1867, in what was known as "Seward's Folly," it was largely because the fur seals on these islands had such a high market value. For almost 200 years the Pribilof Aleut people had been involved in the commercial harvest of seals when, in 1985, the commercial harvest was put to an end. The Pribilof Aleuts were suddenly deprived of what had been their livelihood, indeed their way of life. The lifestyle changes dictated by the National Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 may have stopped a culture in its tracks. One unintended consequence was the disconnection to traditional ways of knowing that may in turn have contributed to a breakdown of community, an increase in alcoholism, and changes in the island landscape. A smaller-scale harvest of sub-adult males continues today only for subsistence purposes. It is managed by the Tribal Government of St. Paul and NMFS and is regulated to meet strict humane standards.

Life on the island is determined by equal parts weather and whim. The Stewardship Program is no exception to Mother Nature's timetable: one moment there's an entangled seal found on Lukanin Point, next the weather has cleared enough for halibut fishing. Now the plane from Anchorage is able to land and deliver the day's mail and visitors, or the elders are ready for a walk to teach youth camp participants the Aleut names for plants and natural habitats.

The subsistence seal harvest is another island activity that is unpredictable. It's a volunteer effort and the whole community gets involved. The conditions must be right and there must be a critical mass of volunteers and a quota of requests for seal meat. My third encounter with Candace Stepetin is at the selected harvest site on this day, working alongside the other members of the seal harvest team, many of whom are her family.

Later in the summer, Candace and others will lead disentanglement teams on their own, after Bruce has finished his summer field season and returns to Washington State. These young people exemplify a growing ethic of stewardship on the island, one that blends western science and traditional ways of knowing. The islanders care deeply about their island home and all its inhabitants, which is what true stewardship is about. Candace and at least two other graduates of the Stewardship program's youth camp are now pursuing college degrees in natural sciences or related fields. At the time I wrote this essay, Candace was in her first year at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Rose Merculief was attending the United States Coast Guard Academy in Rhode Island, and Pamela Lestenkof was also at UAF. How much of their success and interests can be credited to their involvement in the stewardship program is hard to say. But for these three bright young Pribilof Aleuts, their new experiences and knowledge will have great impact on the community when they return. Perhaps someday Candace will join Bruce as one of the NMFS biologists stationed on her St. Paul homeland, or maybe Rose Merculief will Captain a Coast Guard cutter that patrols the Bering Sea waters surrounding the islands. Who can say?

Before my trip to St. Paul, I had thought of the Stewardship Program as a small, if important, gesture that may not have an impact on broader, complex conservation and management issues in the Bering Sea. On the plane home to Anchorage, however, I began to realize just how wrong that view was. This fragile island, with its sand dunes and rocky volcanic outcroppings, with its plethora of sea mammals and seabirds, and its people, needs a longer term, grassroots investment in Bering Sea ecosystem protection. The ethic being fostered by the Stewardship Program and its camp has the potential to reach far and wide. From spreading awareness about the dangers of rat infestation on Bering Sea island ecosystems to providing future generations of Pribilof Aleuts with skills and knowledge that may lead to a seat at the management table. This is not only stewardship of an incredible natural wonder, but of a people and their future.

(This text has been revised since its original publication.)