A toxic bloom killed fur seals off St. George with the highest saxitoxin level ever recorded in the species

Northern fur seals are dying in the Pribilof Islands from a marine toxin, and one that washed up on St. George last summer carried the highest level of saxitoxin ever recorded in the species. Now the tribal monitors who track the island's fur seals are set to get another year of federal funding to keep watching a population already in trouble.

Last August, NOAA Fisheries biologists confirmed 21 dead northern fur seals on St. George, part of a broader die-off that also killed dozens of seabirds and fish. Testing found saxitoxin, a toxin produced by a harmful algal bloom, in all eight seals sampled. "One seal had the highest level of saxitoxin ever recorded for a northern fur seal," research biologist Kathi Lefebvre said in a NOAA account of the findings. The year before, 10 fur seals died on neighboring St. Paul Island under similar circumstances.

The seals can least afford it. The Eastern Pacific stock of northern fur seals was declared depleted in 1988 and now numbers about 600,000.

The federal money, about $99,000 to the Aleut Community of Saint George Island, keeps the island's local monitors on the job for another year. Working out of the tribe's eco-office, they sample tissue, track the seal harvest, watch fur seal and Steller sea lion habitat, and assist federal research, the kind of on-the-ground eyes that documented last summer's die-off as it happened.