Incidental Catch of a Ribbon Seal (<i>Phoca fasciata</i>) in the Central North Pacific

Abstract

On 30 June 1981 a juvenile male ribbon seal ... was incidentally caught in the central North Pacific ... by the Japanese salmon fishing vessel Hokucho Maru No. 2. ... Before the crew cast the seal overboard, one of us (WTE) was able to photograph it ... recover its baculum and measure standard length (Scheffer, 1967) and blubber thickness. ... To our knowledge, the record we report here is only the fifth pelagic record of a ribbon seal and the first pelagic sighting south of the Aleutian Islands in the central North Pacific.