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This chapter describes the contribution of multifactorial experimental studies in understanding the decline of Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) populations in Alaska. It identifies the major causes of Stellar sea lion declines such as decreased adult survival, decreased juvenile survival, decreased fecundity, and increased emigration. It then discusses some of the proximate causes for population decline, such as direct killing, increased predation, and environmental change. It also describes laboratory experiments that test the potential role of nutritional stress in the decline of Steller sea lions.

Over the last twenty-five years, archaeologists have compiled a substantial zooarchaeological record of pinnipeds on the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts. Archaeological studies have also shown that patterns of pinniped species abundance and distribution in the late twentieth century do not necessarily reflect conditions in the ancient past, while recent biological studies demonstrate range expansion of some species subsequent to the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. Archaeologists disagree over what the zooarchaeological record reveals about Native American hunting during pre-contact times. Did pinnipeds regularly use mainland breeding areas prior to human use? Did Native Americans club pinnipeds on their terrestrial breeding areas or use watercraft and specialized technologies to hunt at sea? Did Native American hunting cause changes in pinniped or sea otter behavior and migration patterns? This chapter explores Native American use of seals, sea lions, and sea otters in the estuaries of northern Oregon and southern Washington.

This chapter reviews the current trends of pinniped populations worldwide and summarizes the known or suspected reasons for recent declines. It evaluates trends in pinniped populations attributed to natural biological processes in terms of reproductive strategies, physiological limitations, and the resultant susceptibility to disturbance in prey resources and predation brought about by these factors. Increasing populations include most of the southern hemisphere fur seals, the California sea lion, harbor seal populations off the west coast of the United States, and the northern elephant seal. Populations in decline include northern and southern sea lions, the northern fur seal, the southern elephant seal in parts of the Southern Ocean, and the harbor seal in southwest Alaska. The tropical monk seals are either stable at low levels or in decline. Population trends for polar species are poorly known, although by and large these species appear to be both abundant and fairly stable.

This chapter proposes a classification of today's whales according to three different formats: the analog whale, the digital whale, and the simulated whale. The analog whale would be a whale of the waves, rising, though mostly falling. As the type of the ANALOG, think of the whale fall, the sunken carcass of a whale, which in its deep death can give rise to an ecology all its own. The cetacean understood as a linear sequence of DNA, of discrete nucleotide bases, fits into the category of the digital whale. Under the simulated whale, we can place the fiberglass whale made by the marine biologist Jenifer Hurley, of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, to train sea lions to film migrating whales. The chapter suggests that all of these representations of whales in their migrations toward death reach toward another format: the virtual.

The biogeography of northern fur seals has been of interest throughout their prehistoric range, which stretched from southern California to the Bering Sea. This chapter traces the history of pinniped hunting in Northern California and examines the record from Stone Lagoon. It analyzes the evidence for continuous hunting of large sea lions up to European contact and offers an explanation for the continued hunting of otariids in northern California despite the fact that some of these pinnipeds were no longer hunted in central California and parts of Oregon. The culture history of northwestern California is broken into three general periods: the Borax Pattern (7000–3500 cal BP), the Mendocino Pattern (3500–1500 cal BP), and the Gunther Pattern (1500–150 cal BP). With the exception of one site dating to the Borax Lake Period, all coastal sites in the northwestern portion of the state date to either the Mendocino or Gunther Patterns. This chapter examines these two patterns in order to establish the timing of the initial hunting of sea lions in the region.

This chapter describes the recordings of the Shipp family. On May 13, 1939, Luella and her husband John Shipp opened the door of their house to strangers in search of musical information: New York-based folklorist Herbert Halpert and his locally appointed colleague and guide, Abbott Ferriss, a member of the Mississippi unit of the Federal Writers' Project. The researchers were there to record John's mother, Mary Shipp, forty-seven, and four of his siblings, who made up the Shipp family quartet: brothers Isaac (twenty-three) and Allison (fifteen), and their sisters Christine (twenty) and Katherine (eighteen). Christine and Katherine also recorded the piece “Sea Lion Woman.”

Archaeological remains show that Steller sea lions and northern fur seals were crucially important to the subsistence strategies of most prehistoric Aleut. The hunting of otariids in the western Gulf of Alaska (GOA) was fundamentally disrupted by the insertion of Aleuts in the Russian fur trade in the eighteenth century and the subsequent entry of Aleut into the “world system.” This chapter investigates the history of changing otariid populations in the western GOA and discusses the methodological and theoretical issues necessary to interpret these shifts within a conservation biology framework. Specifically, it establishes a baseline record of shifting otariid abundance in the Western Gulf of Alaska and assesses it against changes in human behavior, otariid behavior, and climatic regimes. It also explores the use of zooarchaeological quantification techniques and related foraging theory for interpreting variability in the frequencies of prehistoric animal populations. This analysis is conducted on a high-resolution faunal record from the Sanak Island, on the western Gulf of Alaska, which spans approximately 4,500 years. The chapter also examines the relationship between otariid abundances and changes in palaeoclimate.

This chapter analyzes element and cut mark frequencies to determine the response of Aleut processing and transport strategies to variations in marine mammal abundance. It argues that during times of declining encounter rates for large-bodied marine mammals, the inhabitants of Sanak Island exploited marine mammal carcasses more intensively, an activity that should be detectable in element distributions, cut mark location, and cut mark intensity. Frequencies of marine mammal remains in the last four temporal contexts in the Sanak Island sequence appear to be linked to climatic and population shifts. This chapter focuses on the latter half of the post-Neoglacial to speculate on the relationship between climate changes and their impact on consumption strategies in marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and sea otters. The findings illustrate the importance of investigating patterns of marine mammal transport and butchery as part of historical ecological analyses.

The origin and evolutionary history of pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses) is traced in this chapter. Also covered are their adaptations—major structural and functional innovations such as blubber and fur, flippers and locomotion on land and in the water, and deep-diving physiology. Key aspects of pinniped biology and behavior, including polygynous mating systems, postpartum estrus and delayed implantation, and life history parameters, including precocial young and the production of fat-rich milk, are discussed.

This chapter examines limb sketches by focusing on the work of cartoon animator Chuck Jones. From pinniped to pachyderm, limbs differ dramatically in order to accomplish crucial functions, and zoos are well suited to the study of this diversity. Creatures held captive in zoos or animated with exaggeration in cartoons can get close looks, affording an investigator the opportunity to figure out whether, for example, elephants have knees or seals have heels—and maybe even hips. In his autobiography, Chuck Amuck, Jones recounted the story of animating Rudyard Kipling's tale “The White Seal” as a Disney production. To improve his animation, Jones went to the San Diego Zoo, where he observed sea lions. This chapter imagines a sketching tour of a zoo guided by Jones and his animator team and considers sketching animal limbs from torso to toe tip as a way to engage zoo visitors in comparative anatomy. It also discusses the importance of limbs and classification on the basis of limb anatomy.

This chapter offers remarkable evidence of vocal flexibility in pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses), species whose learning capabilities are surprising indeed, and discusses published experiments and new observations on their vocal usage and production learning capabilities. It shows that some pinnipeds can learn to alter the contexts in which they emit natural vocalizations, as well as modify their call structure along several structural dimensions, to an extent not known to occur in most terrestrial mammals. The chapter suggests that pinnipeds do have some degree of voluntary control over their sound emissions and reveals that the walrus observations exhibit plasticity in sound production in a particularly vocal species with a strong potential for complex communicative interactions during development.

This chapter examines the British historical counterfactuals surrounding the critical period, from the summer of 1940 through the winter of 1941, when a German invasion and/or occupation of Great Britain was widely anticipated. Starting with the 1930s’ debates over appeasement, an interest in how Britain might have been subjugated by Nazi Germany has remained a staple topic in the country’s historical and political discourse. Nazi Britain counterfactual speculations were used at a number of critical junctures in British history during the last half of the twentieth century. Winston Churchill’s 1940’s speeches about the coming invasion created a heroic image of how his countrymen would react, and after the war, alternate histories of how Britons would have behaved during a Nazi occupation have been important to the concept of national character. That concept describes what historical actors (individual and collective) were capable of doing under different circumstances, not just what they did under the circumstances they happened to face. As Britain’s role in the world shrank, its population diversified, and its place in Europe was questioned, the desire for national uniqueness kept reviving speculation about the might-have-been wartime subjection.

This chapter focuses on experimental approaches to the conservation of endangered species. It presents an overview of case studies on Hawaiian tree snails, amphibians, leatherback turtles, Cuban iguana, New Zealand birds, Australia's endangered marsupials, and Alaska's sea lion populations. It identifies some of the factors that threaten their survival and some of the approaches used in their management and recovery. It also emphasizes the important contribution of experimental biology to biodiversity conservation.

This chapter focuses on James Fenimore Cooper's second book The Spy. It explains that this book was a tale of national origins and suggests that his designs on the English reading public indicates that he was imitating the larger outlines of Walter Scott's career. It analyzes how Cooper actually wrote and produced The Spy in 1820 and 1821 and how he settled on its subject. This chapter also considers Cooper's work in writing book reviews for Charles K. Gardner and the completion of this next novel The Sea Lions.

This chapter examines the intentions and strategic reasoning behind significant German offenses during the Second World War, with a general description of unit movements and outcomes. Emboldened by success in France, Hitler was confident in attacking Russia, Ukraine, and the Caucasus. The intent was to plunder oil and other resources and obtain access to ports, thereby providing support for his “new order.” Wehrmacht leaders were shocked by the Russian response, having vastly underestimated the enemy. The Wehrmacht’s once powerful U-boat fleet and air force were eclipsed by the Allies. Fortress Europe could not stand. With Churchill’s determination, the US entry into the war, and Operation Overlord, the anti-Hitler coalition inexorably gained ground. Ultimately, Müller notes, it was Allied air superiority that helped defeat the Wehrmacht on land, on water, and in the air. The last bonds between Hitler and his Wehrmacht dissolved with Hitler’s suicide on 30 April 1945. The actual dissolution of the Wehrmacht came soon after, with its leaders’ unconditional surrender.

While HEW and USDA pondered these appellate court decisions, we turned our attention to several more local DDT problems. From a New York Times article (May 3, 1970), we learned that the Olin Chemical Corporation was manufacturing about 20% of the nation’s DDT in buildings owned by the federal government and leased to Olin on the site of the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama. A DDT-contaminated effluent from this plant was leaking into the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge at concentrations known to inhibit reproduction of birds and fish. The refuge also served as a drinking water supply for the city of Decatur, implying a human health hazard as well. Downriver fisherman were also eating their catch, thus concentrating DDT to higher levels as well. In October 1969, the federal Water Quality Administration had recommended a stricter pollution control standard for the Olin plant. Olin said it could not meet that standard, and the Army then overruled the Water Quality Administration’s recommendation. So on June 5, 1970, EDF, along with the National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation, sued in Federal District Court against Olin, the Department of the Army, and the Corps of Engineers seeking to stop the DDT-contaminated discharge. The complaint was written by EDF’s new attorney, Edward Lee Rogers. I supplied the scientific support, which was easy, since it was similar, although steadily expanding, to the Wisconsin hearings and the USDA and HEW cases. Only three days later Olin threw in the towel! On June 8 Olin decided to close its DDT plant and no longer make DDT. DDT apparently was not worth defending. They said they had reached that decision shortly before our case was filed. True or not, it was a quick and easy victory. We needed it. We had won by winning. Even as the legal briefs went back and forth between EDF, USDA, HEW, and the appeals court, another DDT battle was brewing in California. For years scientists had been puzzled by the extremely high levels of DDT contamination along the coast of Southern California compared with other marine environments.

Nearly five decades ago a group of volunteer scientists and citizens launched a campaign to save birds from the ravages of DDT. They went to court at the local level, then through several states and finally to Washington, DC, overcoming legal barriers and challenging unexpected new issues along the way. By the 1970s, DDT and five other pesticides had been banned. Viewed from the 21st century, these actions produced significant and permanent accomplishments: Preventing cancer—Techniques and procedures for evaluating and regulating carcinogens, which followed the DDT precedents, have been adopted by international treaty. Citizen standing in court—The DDT case broke down the standing barrier, allowing citizens to go to court to protect their environment. It fostered the development of environmental law as we know it today. Recovery of the birds—Populations of iconic bird species, including the Bald Eagle, that had been decimated by DDT, have now recovered their former abundance. Creation of the Environmental Defense Fund—EDF, spawned by the “DDT wars,” has grown into one of the nation’s largest and most influential environmental advocacy organizations. Top authorities in chemical carcinogenesis testified that DDT caused cancer in laboratory animals and that it was, therefore, a possible carcinogen in humans. The precedents set by DDT for identifying and regulating carcinogens then became the basis for banning another five dangerous chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides: aldrin, dieldrin, heptachlor, chlordane, and mirex (see Chapter 12). EDF had established a very high standard for protection of public health against these carcinogens, as confirmed by two EPA administrators. In 2001 the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (the POPs Treaty) was signed by 151 nations to ban the “dirty dozen,” which included all of the “dirty half-dozen” singled out and banned thanks to EDF’s actions 23 years earlier. There was one exception to the total bans: DDT could be used for only malaria control. In 2009, nine additional POPs were added to the list. By 2013, 179 nations were party to the POPs Treaty, although the United States has not yet ratified it.