The studies of [Greenwood], Newcombe and Fraser (1918: 1-39) show that the Steller sea lions eat a great variety of marine fish and other sea life. Included in their diet are squid, starfish, crabs, clams, mussels, salmon, herring, flounder, rock cod, sea bass and dogfish. They seem not to be selective in their food habits but eat the food most easily available at the time. Unfortunately this is occasionally salmon in nets or traps and for this reason fishermen usually kill sea lions on sight. The number of sea lions along the coast of Washington has been greatly reduced by shooting and dynamiting the animals on their hauling-out grounds. There is no doubt that sea lions do occasionally eat salmon, especially in traps or nets. They also become entangled in the nets, and damage them. On the other hand, investigations of their food habits have shown that they do not eat any great number of salmon or other important food fishes. They are a relatively harmless and exceedingly interesting animal and might well be preserved in numbers exceeding their present population.
Until relatively recent times the sea lion was an important source of food to the Indians living along the ocean coast. The bones of sea lions are often the most numerous vertebrate remains in shell mounds.
The Steller sea lion now breeds only in a few places along the coast of Washington. They are polygamous and each of the stronger bulls has eight or ten cows in his harem. Fierce battles between bulls are said to take place in the breeding season, late in May. A single pup is born after a gestation period of about one year. Pups are darker in color than adults.
Callorhinus ursinus cynocephalus (Walbaum)
Alaska fur seal
Siren cynocephalus Walbaum, Petri Artedi Sueci Genera Pisc., p. 560, 1792.
Callorhinus ursinus True, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., 7 (1884):607, 1885.
Callorhinus alascanus Jordan and Clark, Fur Seals and Fur Seal Islands of the North Pacific, pt. 3, p. 2, November, 1899.
Callotaria ursina cynocephala Stejneger, George Wilhelm Steller, Harvard Univ. Press, p. 285, 1936.
Type locality.—Pribilof Islands, Alaska.