This section describes contemporary sea lion hunting methods by the Aleut of the Pribilof and Aleutian islands, based on key respondent interviews conducted in all of the Aleutian and Pribilof Island communities as part of this current study. General descriptions of sea lion hunting have been previously presented for the Pribilof Islands (Veltre and Veltre 1981a), Unalaska (Veltre and Veltre 1981b), and Atka (Veltre and Veltre 1983). This section provides additional ethnographic information about the unique practices in the Aleutian-Pribilof region, particularly the shore-based hunting methods practiced along the rugged shorelines of the Pribilof Islands. The section describes hunting patterns by community, including St.Paul, St. George, Unalaska, Atka, Akutan, and Nikolski.
On St. Paul Island, much of the hunting for sea lion (qawax) is done at Northeast Point, located at the extreme opposite end of the island from the community of St. Paul. Hunters today generally drive their trucks to the point, where they park and post themselves at lookout stations. Access to sea lions is not easy. Because of high winds and drifting snow, four wheel drive trucks are generally necessary. The wind at Northeast Point is usually blowing onshore, carrying with it a great deal of salt spray. There is an abundance of surf and a considerable amount of loud pounding on the beach.
In addition to Northeast Point, other areas on St. Paul Island used for hunting sea lions are Reef Point, Sea Lion Neck, outer Gorbatch Bay, and on the opposite side of the peninsula from Gorbatch Bay. A sixth place is Sea Lion Rock, but this place is largely inaccessible due to great offshore rocks that are usually only half submerged. Only in calm weather at very high tides do hunters venture there in skiffs.
Sea lion hunting on St. Paul Island generally begins in September and ends in May. In February and March the ice pack moves down from the Bering Sea, usually bringing more marine mammals. One man says that hunting gets easier near the end of April when more animals start ridding together, often 10 to 15 at a time. Most hunting takes place on weekends, to avoid conflict with jobs hunters may hold during the week. The best time to see sea lions is early in the morning and then again late in the evening. During the middle of the day they seem to feed somewhere farther offshore.
One hunter described shore-based hunting methods used at Northeast Point. "We hunt with the current and the wind. We do not hunt sea lions when the wind is offshore, blowing out. You have to face the wind in order to hunt because if you kill a big sea lion and it sinks, you watch the current, and then about an hour or so later it will come ashore and you pick it up. And if you don't find it, you tell the other hunters, and then the other hunters keep an eye out for it, and they will grab it or call you on the radio and let you know your sea lion is on the beach." Hunters stand patiently for hours, scanning the water for the heads of male sea lions as they are swimming or "riding" the waves. Some hunters use binoculars if conditions are dry enough, but others disdain this device. The sea lions commonly swim parallel to the shore of St. Paul Island, going from east to west and then south, or from south to north along the east side of the island. On the north and west sides of the island the sea lions remain too far offshore to hunt. When they are traveling west from Walrus Island and south to Otter Island they cannot be hunted once they pass Northeast Point. Because of this pattern of movement, most of the hunting is done at Northeast Point and on the south and east sides of the island, where sea lions have an established swimway that is within rifle range.
Hunters do not shoot every animal they see. Careful hunters in particular are highly selective. Sea lion hunters report they are reluctant to shoot females of any size, and they try to avoid large males, the latter being called "garbage can heads." In the words of one man, "We hunt the male sea lions only. We don't go after the females. We tell them apart by the shape of the head. The female has got a smoother shaped head and narrow. The male would look more like a bulldog-shaped head, and a little more hair to it. Medium-sized ones are what we like." . . .
According to one hunter, female sea lions (qawam ayagaa) are not taken on St. Paul because of a strong conservation ethic. From the time when boys begin to hunt they are cautioned against taking females of any species, especially pregnant females. There is a strong belief that it is necessary to preserve females for reproduction. When females are shot by hunters, it is usually by accident.
When a juvenile male or yearling (qawaadax) comes along, hunters aim and take a shot, hoping to hit the sea lion at the time when its head pokes above water for a gulp of air. An animal which has its lungs full of air is much more likely to float after it has been shot than one that has emptied its lungs by exhaling.
Some St. Paul hunters like to call sea lions, imitating their barking and growling. "We call sea lions with a growl. And then the sea lion starts looking, and then you keep doing that until the sea lion gets close into the beach. That's the way you bring it in. That all depends on how strong the wind is blowing too. You stand on the bluff and kind of move around like you're a sea lion. At times when they get close to the beach then you have to hide. If we're on a bluff we don't mind, but if you're in the rocks, then you have to hide, kind of sneak up to them."
After the animal has been shot, hunters must again be patient. Because the heavy seas preclude the use of a skiff, they cannot easily retrieve their kill. They must wait for the wind and tidal currents to bring the carcass to shore. Depending on the location of the kill, the sea lion may wash up within a few hours, or it may not show up for a day or two. Being a good shot does not in itself make a good hunter. An experienced hunter reads the wind and water to correctly predict when and where his kill will wash up. If it is high tide the animal will drift north; if it is low tide it will drift south. However, even for the most experienced hunter, due to the vagaries of winds and tides, not every animal is retrieved. Sometimes the sea lions get caught in the rocks or sink into kelp beds and are only found after a big storm breaks them free. Struck and lost rates for sea lion at St. Paul were 29 percent in 1992 and 15 percent in 1994; the first is within the middle range for communities hunting sea lions, while the latter is on the low end of the range for struck and lost sea lions.
If the hunter is lucky, the sea lion will soon float within range of his qayux, or "sea dog". The qayux is a retrieval device comprising a short piece of wood and hooks. In one design, the wood piece is formed from the stubby end of a baseball bat to which four large halibut hooks are lashed. The qayux is attached to a piece of heavy coiled line about 30-40 feet long. When tossed accurately, the qayux will snag the floating sea lion and enable the hunter to pull it quickly ashore.
Throwing the qayux effectively takes a considerable amount of practice. If the sea lion is only a few yards offshore, a hunter can hold the qayux in the palm of his hand and toss it underhanded, playing out the coiled line. This method limits the distance the qayux can be thrown but improves accuracy. For more distant retrievals, hunters whip the qayux on the end of a two or three foot piece of line. If they are right handed, they will hold the coiled line with the left hand and whip the short end with the right hand. The whipping action can be done vertically in a clockwise direction, or horizontally in a clockwise direction. When the qayux reaches its maximum velocity, it is released with the right hand and then with the left hand, so that the coiled line will play out. It is not uncommon for the qayux to sail out 30 or 40 feet when this whipping motion is used. The qayux is also useful for retrieving harbor seals and ducks.
Not every sea lion floats, however, and it may happen that some other hunter will find the sea lion after it washes up the next day. The meat is considered to be edible for up to three days after the animal has been shot, due to the cold water conditions around St. Paul. Any hunter attempting to salvage a dead sea lion from a previous day will examine the animal's eyes to determine whether it is still edible.
The sharing of sea lion meat after the kill is an important part of the community ethic. Hunters enjoy each other's company on the lookout areas and share the kill among the group that happens to be assembled the particular day. "We'll meet at Northeast Point in a group. You go out by yourself, and then before you know it, here comes one of your buddies. Then we're sitting there talking away until we see a sea lion. So before the day ends there will be four or five of us out there hunting sea lion, and then we share what we shoot."
It is customary that anyone can salvage a dead sea lion that washes up, but the person doing the salvaging usually shares the meat with the person who shot it, if it can be traced. Whoever retrieves an animal tends to keep the sea lion liver, the heart, the flippers, and some shoulder steaks. They are most likely to give away the backstrap and the breast meat to elders. The skin, tailbone, and head are discarded back into the sea, but the vertebrae are often used for soup. Some hunters will salvage the teeth since there are three or four ivory carvers in the village, and they sometimes use the sea lion's and fur seal's teeth for making jewelry. One man says, "We talk to each other on the VHF, and when you're coming in, a party that's coming in might let you know that it's got extra sea lion on the truck, and if you need it, meet them someplace, or they go by the house and drop it off. We do a lot of our communication by radio."
Shore-based hunting methods on St. George Island are similar to those described for St. Paul in the previous section. However, on St. George Island, hunting is more geographically dispersed than on St. Paul Island. In the words of one veteran hunter, "We hunt sea lions on the south side of the island, in Zapadni Bay, depending on when the wind and current is right. Same thing on the north side of the island at North Rookery, Stariya Artel, Tolstoi, and Sea Lion Rocks. If we hunt them in the summer, we go to the South Rookery, where you have to walk - it's quite a ways back there. We try to stay away from the fur seal rookery where they're mating and having pups. We have to pack the sea lion meat out a mile and a half to two miles." Some people bone out the meat before packing it, but others haul the bone out along with the meat. Sometimes before they can return to the kill site for another load, the foxes will get into the meat. To prevent this they recommend tying the meat up inside a canvas sack.
On St. George, the season is somewhat shorter than on St. Paul. Hunting traditionally begins in January and ends in May. Sometimes in the summer months sea lions are taken on St. George during the fur seal roundups. Since sea lions often occupy the same beaches as fur seals and compete with fur seals for haulout space, occasionally one or two get caught in the drives and are clubbed along with the fur seals. One hunter says that in recent years sea lions have moved away from Dolnoi and Tolstoi. On the south end of the Dolnoi side they are now hauling out in bird rookeries for the first time in modern memory.
At the Northwest Rookery, hunters who shoot sea lions must scramble down the cliffs and attempt to snag their kill with a qayux This is dangerous work during the winter months since the rocks are covered with frozen salt spray and are extremely slippery. Hunters must be careful not to fall into the ocean. Once retrieved to the shore, hunters at times can attach a cable on their truck's winch to the sea lion carcass to help pull it up the face of the cliff.
Some St. George hunters are persuaded that the sea lions can actually smell the hunters' cigarette smoke in the wind, and that the animals try to sneak by the hunting sites whenever they get a whiff of this smoke. There is usually an attempt to curtail smoking on the hunting grounds.
According to respondents, sea lion hunting on St. George Island has diminished rather sharply in recent years. Since the mid-1980s hunters have noticed declining numbers of animals. There are fewer taken now because fewer are seen. Hunters feel more obligated now to share their catch because sea lions are getting so scarce it is a treat to get some. Sea lion hunting effort on St. George may also be reduced because in recent years there has been a boom in wage employment associated with harbor development on the west side of the island. With more men working full-time, they have less time to go hunting, especially in mid-winter during the tanner crab season.
At Atka, more sea lions currently are harvested per capita than most any other Alaskan community -- 0.42 sea lions per person in 1992, 0.29 in 1993, and 0.55 in 1994. In contrast with the shore-based hunting on the Pribilof Islands, a majority of the hunting is generally done on the ocean with skiffs. Atkan hunting parties make day trips to hunt, returning back to the village by dusk. Parties may include several skiffs, and each skiff has at least two men and usually three, a skiff driver and one or two gunners. Hunting sea lions is also done on unisalus, concealed hunting stations similar to duck blinds. During turbulent seas when skiff travel is risky, hunters may walk or ride four-wheelers to these stations, although some stations are distant from the village and can only be reached by skiff. Hiding in the rocks, they wait for sea lions to swim by in shallow water, and if they shoot and hit one, they try to retrieve it from shore with a qayux. In Atka, women sometimes participate in sea lion hunting, something not common elsewhere.
Atka hunters do most of their hunting along the capes and reefs of Amlia Island on the Bering Sea or north side, and on the Pacific or south side of Atka Island as far as a haulout called Saguugux. They also visit a haulout known as Yasis; on the south side of Amlia Island. A primary strategy for hunting by skiff is to locate sea lions swimming in deep water and drive them into the shallows. When sea lions move into shallow water, they are shot and retrieved with a qayux. The Atka qayux is a banana- shaped piece of yellow cedar wood with a knob on each end. Around the middle a large halibut hook is lashed to the shank, and from the leading end there is a piece of line with a lead sinker or an old padlock attached. The Atka qayux is designed in such a way that it sinks with the hook facing the bottom of the ocean. This makes it very easy to snag sea lions which are sinking or lying on the bottom or under the kelp.
After retrieving a sea lion, hunters cut the throats of the animals and bleed them to make sure they are dead before loading them into the skiff. To grip the slippery animal, qanasis or slits are cut into hide at certain places so that the animal can be grasped and .pulled over the gunwales. Once the animal is in the skiff, a slit is made in the stomach to let the body heat escape. Gutting and cleaning are usually done right at the kill site to reduce the weight of the animal. Atkan elders advise taking care of nearby sea lion rookeries and haulouts by not leaving any dead animals on them. This is the unwritten "law of the land". The sea lion's liver is used by some hunters to assess the healthfulness of the animal. One Atka hunter said he worries about contamination from Russian nuclear waste dumping. "When I catch a seal or sea lion, I first check the liver. Same with fish. If it is no good, then I get rid of them". Use of sea lion in Atka has been previously described by Veitre and Veltre (1983).
The age structures of animals harvested at Atka differ from those harvested at St. Paul - rather than juveniles, adults are usually harvested: 65 percent in 1992, 61 percent in 1993, and 62 percent in 1994. Females were about half or more of the harvest - 54 percent in 1992, 67 percent in 1993, and 52 percent in 1994. This suggests that Atka hunters are using different selection criteria from St. Paul hunters. At Atka, young male sea lions are thought to taste better than females. Females are often taken because they reportedly spend more time on the surface of the water than males, providing opportunities for a good shot.
Hunting activity by season at Atka displayed considerable variability from 1993- 1994. The peak hunting month in 1992 was September, in 1993 it was November, and in 1994 it was April. This is because local sea lion movements and sea lion abundance are highly variable around Atka. Hunters generally rely on frequent sightings around the village before .going out, and these sightings tend to vary from season to season and from year to year. As in St. George, it is noticed that the best hunting seems to occur early in the morning and again early in the evening.
Expert subsistence hunters are extremely knowledgeable about marine mammal anatomy. The technical anatomical terms are an important part of local indigenous knowledge systems. The terms used at Atka for sea lion body parts are presented courtesy of Moses Dirks, a linguist and Aleut culture expert with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who was born and raised in Atka. Comparable Alutiiq terms used at Old Harbor on Kodiak island are also presented courtesy of George Inga Sr., who worked with Craig Mishler using the orthography developed by Jeff Leer of the Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
Courtesy of George Inga Sr., Old Harbor
head - naskoq eye - iingalak nose - oajiiwak mouth - kanuk jaw - tamluk teeth - hoodit tongue - uluq whisker- unguk ear- kyudaq neck - uyagoq throat (trachea) - iigiyaq shoulder - tuuzhik chest - kaadiq breast - amaq front flipper - iibik tail flipper- iitrak claw- stuq back/backstrap - pagoq hide - amiq fat/blubber- ogoq short tail - nanilmoq bumyoq male genitals - ci'iq female genitals - ucuq anus - utuk hair- cuuluk meat - kamuq rib - cakiq bones - naneq heart - umuan liver - arik kidney - cakiak lung - areq intestines - keloq stomach - akshaq gall bladder- cungaq blood - auk belly button - kallajik
Orthography is adapted from Jeff Leer, A Conversational Dictionary of Kodiak Alutiiq. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, 1989.
Courtesy of Moses Dirks, Atka
head - kamgix eye - dax nose - angusix mouth - agilgix jaw- husix tooth - agalux tongue - umsux whisker- inglaakus ear - tutusix neck - uyux throat (trachea) - tunuulux shoulder- qanglix chest - simsix breast - maqdax front flipper- chax tail flipper- kitax claw - qagalgix back/backstrap- hachix skin/hide - igluqax fat/blubber- chadugnax short tail - tihmaqux male genitals - qatxax female genitals - chiichix anus - idigasix hair- chngax meat - ulux rib - sakiigix skeleton - qagnax heart - kunuugix liver- aagix kidney - daaxtux lung - humgix intestines - iiliigis stomach - kimlax gall bladder- chitxix blood - aamgix lymphatic gland - tuhmux
Orthography is taken from Knut Bergsland, comp., Aleut Dictionary. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, 1994.
Sea lion hunting methods at Unalaska, Akutan, and Nikolski follow patterns like those described for Atka in the previous sections. At Unalaska, sea lions are commonly hunted along the west side of the harbor, from Eider Point and Devilfish Point out to Cheerful Cape. One hunter in Unalaska reported that he banged two rocks together, making a clicking sound that aroused the curiosity of both harbor seals and sea lions and brought them within rifle range. One man in the skiff pounded the rocks while another waited with a rifle poised for the sea lion's head to pop up. One salvage method formerly used at Unalaska for sea lions that have sunk in deep water involved using a series of halibut hooks and sinkers attached to a longline. The hooks were pulled along the bottom of the ocean by two skiffs moving parallel to one another. This method was apparently accomplished with the assistance of a gunner positioned on top of a cliff who did the shooting and who set a marker or pointer so that the skiff drivers could locate the sea lion after it was shot.
Akutan hunters commonly use a .12 gauge shotgun for shooting sea lions. A smaller gauge tends to only wound the animal. One hunter asserted that hunting sea lions was tricky. "They are smart. Sometimes when we are chasing them, they will just dive underwater until we go by; then they head in the other direction. They are fast animals." For this reason it is better to have two skiffs than one. in Akutan, sea lion meat is often called "black meat". One hunter invites others to share in his success by calling people and saying, "Come on down and get some black meat."
Sea lions were reported taken for subsistence at Nikolski in 1992 and 1993, but not in 1994. At Nikolski, hunters report they usually hunt sea lions right in Nikolski Bay, although they have historically gone over to hunt them on the rookery at Anangula. One Nikolski hunter summarized their method for hunting both harbor seals and sea lions: "We try to hunt from the boat using binoculars. When we see one, we motor up to it. One person runs the boat; the other person does the gunning. Then we shoot them when running. We use a qayux to retrieve the sinking seal or sea lion, then pull them into the boat. Usually we have three people in the boat to help get them in. We cut out a handle out of the meat and pull them into the boat. We bleed the animal out in the bay and butcher it back here in the village." If a sea lion is too big and heavy to lift into the boat, it may be towed to the beach and butchered there, but one hunter said that by grabbing one flipper and putting an oar under it, a big bull sea lion can be gently rolled into the skiff.
At Unalaska and Akutan, juvenile sea lions were commonly selected for harvest. The proportions of the harvests which were juvenile at Unalaska were 60 percent (1992), 50 percent (1993), and 55 percent (1994); at Akutan, juveniles comprised 83 percent (1992), 39 percent (1993), and 36 percent (1994) of the harvest. By contrast, all the sea lions taken at Nikolski in 1992 and 1993 were adults. The majority of sea lions taken at Unalaska were males: 54 percent (1992), 66 percent (1993), and 81 percent (1994). However, one hunter said he preferred to shoot females because they are not as wary of humans, do not dive under as long as males, and prefer shallower waters. Akutan hunters, like those in St. Paul, do not generally target females. Males comprised the largest percentage of the sea lion harvest at Akutan: 75 percent (1992), 75 percent (1993), and 82 percent (1994). At Nikolski, males were 43 percent of the harvest in 1992 and 100 percent in 1993.
From this review of hunting methods, hunting seasons, and gender selection, it becomes clear that there is a considerable degree of diversity between communities of the Aleutian and Pribilof islands. Hunters in the Pribilofs primarily target juvenile males and do their hunting almost exclusively from the shore. Those in the chain communities target both males and females (although males predominated at Akutan and Unalaska) and do most of their hunting from skiffs.
The Aleut qayux enjoys widespread use, though the design differs: the qayux used in the Pribilofs is made to float, while the qayux developed in the chain communities is made to sink. While marine mammal hunting in most communities seems to peak during the fall months, each community displays somewhat different hunting seasons. One consistent pattern is that sea lion hunting is low in the summer months (May, June, and July) when sea lions are having their pups and are hauled out at the rookeries. Still, there are exceptions to this also, as when sea lions on the Pribilofs are taken incidentally during summer fur seal roundups. The variety of sea lion hunting methods in the Aleutians and Pribilofs reflects the unique adaptations of communities to local conditions over time. . . .
. . . Regional comparisons suggest that subsistence takes are influenced by number of local factors, of which prey abundance is but one variable.
For instance, in the North Pacific Rim, subsistence takes of harbor seal have shown an increase between 1992 and 1994. This increase probably reflects a rebound of subsistence hunting following the depression of subsistence activities triggered by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound in 1989. That event severely disrupted subsistence hunting patterns in communities in close proximity to the spill center. Families reduced their subsistence activities the year of the spill because of the uncertainties of the health safety of consuming wild foods harvested from oiled areas. Subsistence productivity levels have shown signs of recovery since the disaster, including a resurgence of marine mammal hunting. This resumption of traditional patterns is probably responsible for the observed increases in takes in an area where populations of seals and sea lions are thought to be declining. Nevertheless, this rebound has not brought seal harvests to prespill levels in two communities. The 1994 seal harvest in Tatitlek was still half of harvest levels documented in 1987 and 1988 by the Division of Subsistence, and the 1994 seal harvest in Chenega Bay was a quarter of that documented in 1984 and 1985. In Port Graham and Nanwalek, which are farther from the oil spill center, seal harvests in 1994 were similar to levels documented before the spill in 1987.
In the Kodiak Island area, seal harvests in 1994 (161 seals) were lower than those recorded a decade before - 478 seals in 1982 and 262 seals in 1986. Sea lions harvests in 1994 (55 sea lions) were about a quarter of recent historic levels - 232 sea lions in 1982 and 202 sea lions in 1986. Harvests in 1994 were lower in all six Kodiak Island communities compared with levels in 1982. In this case, lower takes of marine mammals may be only partially associated with disruptions by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Communities farther away from the spill center experienced less severe spill effects (Fall and Utermohle 1995). The declines in marine mammal harvests in Kodiak Island probably were due in part to the lower availability of seals and sea lions in community hunting areas. . . .