Mixed Media: A History of Seals and Seal Hunters at the “End of the World”

My paper will trace the history of pinnipeds, principally southern fur seals, and their hunters in the waters and islands in and around Patagonia.  Both the seals and the people who hunted them were boundary-crossers, creatures who divided their time between land and sea, and who ranged widely across latitudes, ocean depths and currents. In fact, some scholars have credited sealers and whalers with helping to define modern understandings of islands and continents, particularly Antarctica.  Consequently, this paper, based on original research and secondary sources, attempts both to describe the ecologies and labors of hunting pinnipeds for American, Asian, and European markets and consider the extent to which an environmental history of seals and sealing compels historians to modify conventional geohistorical categories and names.