Tribal and federal crews tag about 1,300 fur seal pups on St. Paul and St. George

Tribal and federal researchers on St. Paul and St. George islands put tags on about 1,300 northern fur seal pups in September to study how many survive, NOAA Fisheries said in its tribal newsletter released Monday.

The crews, from the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, the Traditional Council of St. George Island and NOAA Fisheries, also tagged about 90 adult females at five breeding areas on the two islands. Those radio tags track how long the females spend on foraging trips, a measure of how much food is available, and how human disturbance affects their time on shore.

The team collected scat to study what the seals eat, and blood, hair and other samples to check their health and exposure to pollutants and disease. Along the way, it freed a pup tangled in a rubber gasket.

The Pribilof Islands' northern fur seals have been designated depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act since 1988. The research is part of long-term monitoring under the stock's conservation plan, revised in 2024, which lists survival, movement, diet, disease and pollutant exposure as areas needing more study to understand the population's decline.

The two tribal governments co-manage subsistence use of the seals with NOAA under agreements signed in 2000 and 2001. On St. George, a cooperative agreement pays Island Sentinels to monitor fur seals and their habitat.

Both islands have seen fur seal die-offs recently. In August 2025, 21 were found dead on St. George, and NOAA linked the deaths to saxitoxin from a harmful algal bloom. Ten died in a similar event on St. Paul a year earlier.