Word: fur
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Fall down and you're history," says veterinarian Terry Springer as we crawl out on a rickety catwalk over a beach in Alaska's Pribilof Islands. Below us, thousands of fur seals flop around in a frenzy. The 600-lb. bulls herd their harems to protect them from rival males emerging from the brisk waters of the Bering Sea. As the big males toss the 110-lb. females around like beach toys, my first thought is that male fur seals have not yet embraced feminism. Springer, though, has no time for such anthropomorphic musing. The Colorado State University scientist...
...just academic information. For as the seals and other marine mammals go, so goes the whole Bering Sea ecosystem. Spanning the oceanic divide between the U.S. and Russia, it is one of the richest and most commercially productive marine environments on earth, teeming with pollack and halibut, fur seals and Steller's sea lions, horn puffins and murres. The seals and seabirds depend on catching fish, and so do humans. More than 2,000 boats from the U.S., Russia, Japan, Norway, China, Poland and the Koreas haul in an annual catch worth roughly $1 billion. The portion taken...
...surface, that business is healthy: the pollack catch has stayed near record levels. But signs of overfishing and an ailing ecosystem can be seen higher up in the food chain. The fur-seal population has not increased despite a longstanding ban on commercial hunting. The number of Steller's sea lions, which feed mostly on pollack, has plunged 80% since the 1970s, and seabirds such as the red-legged kittiwake are also in trouble...
...WHAT FUR? BECAUSE...
...store sold used fur coats and live plants in the '70s, and ethnic clothing from Mexico and India in the early '80s, but the Square's changing consumer made those lines obsolete, says owner Bill Giarrusso...