Evolution of Marine Mammal Hunting: A View from the California and Oregon Coasts

Marine mammals constitute ... an integral part of the marine ecosystem usually as top predators. Hunting of cetaceans and pinnipeds for skins, meat and blubber has of course gone on from the earliest recorded times. At various periods ... the hunting of them intensified to the point at which it caused serious depletion. Al­ though accurate records are not available, there is little doubt that many marine mammal populations were reduced to a small fraction (perhaps no more than a tenth or so) of their former levels. Some like the sea otter, disappeared from parts of their range . . .