By the early 1800s, hunters stationed at Russian colonies, extending from coastal Siberia across the Komandorski, Aleutian, Kodiak, and Pribilof archipelagos and into southern Alaska, had depleted much of the sea otter population in the North Pacific. In searching for new regions that supported sizeable populations of profitable sea mammals, along with other commercially exploitable resources,

the RAC began making plans to extend its colonial reach southward into Alta California (Lightfoot, 2003:15–17). The earliest inroads the RAC made in exploiting the substantial E. lutris populations in Alta and Baja California were made jointly with American merchants between 1803 and 1812. They initiated a “contract” PCI-32765 research buy hunting system in which the Americans provided the ships to sail southward into California waters, while the RAC allocated the hunters to harvest the sea mammals. The latter were highly skilled indigenous huntsman from

the Aleutian Islands, Kodiak Island, and Prince William Sound, who were the backbone of the Russian fur trade enterprise in the North Pacific. American skippers transported the Native Alaskan hunters, selleck screening library along with their harpoons, skin boats (baidarkas), and other gear, to California waters where they successfully participated in at least 11 joint hunts ( Table 1), with the pelts split evenly between the Russian and American merchants ( Khlebnikov, 1994:8–10). In 1808 and 1811, the RAC sent its own boats, crews, and native hunters to Alta California to harvest sea otters, as well as Glutathione peroxidase to scout for possible places to establish a permanent colony in Alta California.

The Russians returned to northern California in 1812 to found the Ross Colony, which served as the base of operation for Russian sea otter hunts in California (Fig. 1). It also served as an agrarian enterprise for growing food for Russian colonists in Alaska, as well as a mercantile center for trading with Spanish-Mexican California, particularly with the Franciscan missionaries who had extensive surpluses of grain and meat that the RAC purchased as foodstuffs for its North Pacific outposts (Farris, 2012). With the founding of the Ross Colony two kinds of hunting expeditions took place in Alta and Baja California. One involved teams of Native Alaskans in their baidarkas sweeping the waters north of the Russian settlements to Trinidad Bay and south along the Sonoma and Marin county coasts ( Fig. 1). They also portaged skin boats over to San Pablo and San Francisco Bays to harvest substantial sea otter populations from these interior waters ( Ogden, 1933:40). The other expeditions involved the use of Russian ships that carried the Native Alaskan hunters, skin boats, and hunting equipment to more distant waters in southern California and Baja California where sea otters thrived.