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I am working as a consultant with the World Wildlife Fund on their NSF-funded Coastal Communities in Science project.  The main idea behind the project is to get Alaskan coastal, mostly Native communities involved in science.  Coastal communities in Alaska have long been sought out by western scientists:  as a source of ethnographic information regarding subsistence cultures, as starting-off points for scientific expeditions, and occasionally as a source of labor in support of these expeditions.  But rarely have the Western scientists stopped to ask what the locals are interested in.

WWF's project is designed to remedy that, but in a unique way.  The goal is not just to get members of coastal Alaskan communities involved in science.  The goal is to actually empower community members to design and conduct their own scientific investigations.  WWF's Bering Sea Ecoregion Program in Anchorage received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation in 2004, and have programs running in four communities:  Hooper Bay, Unalakleet, St. Paul, and St. George (see map).

My involvement with the project has been as an advisor to the communties of St. Paul and St. George, which together constitute the Pribilof Islands.  As with the projects run in the other communities, both St. Paul and St. George are focusing their investigations on issues concerning their subsistence economy.  Specifically, they are both trying to understand the causes and significance of severe population declines of northern fur seals and Steller sea lions on their islands.  There are four main projects we are working on, each of which will be described below:

Monitoring the Age Structure of the Subsistence Harvest of Seals and Sea Lions. St. Paul is carefully monitoring the age structure, or harvest profile, of the animals that are killed each year by subsistence hunters.  The overall number of animals harvested each year is a fraction of a percent of the total population.  Thus, the subsistence harvest does not seem to be a likely cause of the population declines.  Nevertheless, close monitoring of the harvest will allow the community of St. Paul to scientifically document changes in the population structure as the population dynamics either shift back to positive growth, stabilize at current (but depleted) levels, or continue to decline.  The way St. Paul is generating their data is to collect teeth from animals killed in the subsistence harvest.  Once the teeth are cleaned, they are cut and polished using diamond-edged blades and lapidary wheels.  Seal and sea lion teeth grow in annual rings, much like a tree (see image of sectioned fur seal teeth at left). 

The number of rings can be counted in the cut sections of teeth for an extremely accurate estimate of the age of the animal.  The age data are then coupled with other biological data collected from the harvested animal and maintained in a database.  Any major changes in the age composition of the harvest will signal a major change in the age composition of the overall population.
 
 

St. George also conducts a subsistence harvest, but their investigation is looking at growth structures in thin sections of teeth.  Growth patterns of northern fur seals are strongly influenced by the availability of food.  By looking at the growth lines in teeth collected during the subsistence harvest, the community of St. George hopes to be able to draw inferences about the current state of the food supply for fur seals.  The specific growth lines St. George will be looking at are deposited during the first four  months of life while the pup is fully dependent on mom's milk.  Adult female fur seals are only able to nurse for 3-5 days at a time before they need to replenish their nutritional stores.  To do that, they go out into the Bering Sea on foraging trips that last 1-10 days, depending on how close and how abundant their prey are.  They repeat several cycles each summer of nursing their pup and foraging.  When prey are abundant, females are able to stock up more quickly and can complete more cycles before weaning their pup at 4 months.

Analyzing a Fossil Northern Fur Seal and Steller Sea Lion Rookery.  Another aspect of the St. George project is utilizing ancient bone samples to determine the long-term patterns of marine mammal habitat use in the Pribilofs.  There is a fossil seal colony preserved at Staraya Artil, on St. George Island that dates to about 2000 years before present.  So far, we have mapped and collected over 1000 bones and teeth.  Most of the bone samples are from northern fur seals and Steller sea lions.  But we have also identified walrus and sea otter from the paleontological samples.  Today, Staraya Artil is only occupied by northern fur seals, who use the site as a breeding colony.  Indeed, the ancient samples include bones from adult males, adult females, and from pups, indicating that  fur seals have been breeding at Staraya Artil for a long time.  What is less clear is how the sea lions and walrus used the site 2000 years ago.
 

Learning About and Teaching Skeletal Anatomy of Seals. In addition to generating some really interesting scientific studies, the Coastal Communities in Science project is also working with the local science teachers to enhance science education opportunities for the local middle school and high school students.  Because the projects all revolve around skeletal anatomy in one way or another, that has been a major focus of the curriculum development.  We are coordinating with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, WA, to obtain complete skeletons of northern fur seals and Steller sea lions that have died naturally.  We will be working with the complete skeletons to learn more about skeletal anatomy and also to construct fully articulated skeletal mounts with the help of Lee Post.