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Keep Trawlers Away From Nursing Fur Seals
Final signature count: 11
11 signatures toward our 30,000 goal
Sponsor: Free The Ocean
Northern fur seal mothers need dense pollock schools to feed their pups. Industrial trawlers should not compete with them in critical feeding grounds.
Northern fur seals return each year to St. Paul Island in Alaska’s Pribilof Islands to give birth and nurse their pups. NOAA Fisheries says northern fur seals spend most of the year at sea but return to rocky or sandy beaches for resting, molting, reproduction, and rearing their young.4
During the summer pupping season, mother seals must repeatedly leave their pups on land, forage at sea, and return with enough energy to nurse. For St. Paul fur seals, local pollock are a key food source.1
But conservationists say the same waters used by nursing mothers are also being targeted by the Bering Sea’s massive pollock trawl fishery. In April 2026, the Center for Biological Diversity sued NOAA Fisheries, arguing that the agency failed to prevent northern fur seals from declining because of prey competition with industrial trawlers.1
The St. Paul Population Is In Serious Decline
NOAA Fisheries lists northern fur seals as protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Pribilof Islands/Eastern Pacific stock is designated as depleted.4 NOAA says the Pribilof Islands support about half of the world’s northern fur seal population and that continued declines at St. Paul Island have driven the overall stock estimate down over time.4
The Alaska Fisheries Science Center says the Pribilof Islands were once home to about 75% of the world’s northern fur seals, but populations have shown a dramatic decline in recent decades, with pup production in 2016 reaching the lowest level recorded in 100 years.5
Alaska Public Media, republishing Alaska Beacon, reported that the lawsuit centers on St. Paul Island, where nursing females rely on pollock to feed their pups, and that the Center cites a 70% decline on St. Paul since the 1970s.2
Federal Fishery Managers Must Act
SeafoodSource reported that the lawsuit asks the court to force NOAA Fisheries to ban pollock trawling around St. Paul Island during the summer pupping season.3 The Center says summer and fall pollock trawl fishing grounds overlap directly with the feeding areas used by mother seals.1
A 2021 study in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering found support for an inverse relationship between pollock catches and first-year fur seal pup survival, with lower estimated pup survival during years of high pollock catch.6
NOAA Fisheries and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council should use that science to protect fur seals now. Industrial trawling should be restricted around St. Paul Island during the pupping season, and fishery rules should be updated so the pollock fleet does not undermine recovery of a depleted marine mammal population.
Fur seal mothers should not have to compete with factory-scale trawlers while their pups wait hungry on shore.
Sign now to urge NOAA Fisheries and federal fishery managers to keep industrial trawlers away from northern fur seal feeding grounds during the pupping season.
