DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD

In recent years, numerous new uses have been identified for the specimens in museum collections.Indeed, the application of new analytic techniques to these specimens has transformed museums into veritable time machines, enabling us to reconstruct not only past flora and fauna, but entire ecosystems, and to test hypotheses about the processes that link organisms. Thus, for example, both diet compositions and phylogenies can be retrieved from bits of bones, via isotopes of Carbon and Nitrogen, and the DNA they contain, thereby complementing the morphological studies that were en vogue at the time the collections were started.

For the power of new techniques and studies to be unleashed, the locations and contents of available collections need to be identified. Various initiatives are underway to do just so, such as the one presented here, which should have an immense impact on research.

The decline of Steller sea lions in the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands is a puzzling mystery. Clues to resolving what has happened to them may well be locked in the bones of sea lions sitting in museums and private collections around the world. As such, the available collections of Steller sea lion artifacts and their contents that are listed in the following pages will help researchers to go back in time to test hypotheses about changes that occurred to sea lions and their ecosystems.

The value of such work cannot be overrated and is only made possible because of museums and the dedicated individuals who prepare and maintain the collections.

Daniel Pauly
Director Fisheries Centre UBC

ABSTRACT

We examined or obtained information on specimens of Steller sea lions in museums and other collections. We report on 1740 specimens (complete or partial skulls) in 44 collections in Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. At least several hundred other specimens also exist, mainly in Japan and Russia. Collection dates range from 1842 to the present. Geographically, specimens are well represented in both "Western" and "Eastern" regions (separated at 144 W longitude): 509 and 956, respectively. Collection localities within Alaskan regions 2 (Eastern Gulf of Alaska) to 8 (Eastern Bering Sea) are represented by 290 specimens; another 566 specimens are from Japan and Russia and 462 from Alaska region 1 (Southeastern Alaska) southwards. Thus specimens are well spread across the species' breeding range, including areas of population decline. Representation is also good for the period of population decline and earlier periods: 442 specimens are from before 1960, 352 from 1960-69, 370 from 1970-79, and 487 from 1980 onwards. There are some problems with quality of data, and with seasonal and geographic representation, but we conclude that ample specimens exist to permit research pertinent to population declines in parts of the species' range.

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