Marine Mammals
Marine mammals constituted a potentially significant resource for the prehistoric peoples of coastal San Diego County. Species that were present in the regional waters included cetaceans (whales, porpoises, and dolphins), seals, sea lions, and sea otters. However, the use of these resources may have been limited by difficulties in their procurement or the vulnerability of some species to overexploitation.
The ethnographic record is generally of little help concerning the use of marine resources. The Luiseño are said to have exploited marine mammals for food (Bean and Shipek 1978:552). Early in the historic period, the Yuman speakers of northwestern Baja California hunted sea otters to use their pelts for clothing (Sales 1956); the Russian trade for sea otter pelts may have been involved in this practice, although the technology that was used was aboriginal.
George Shumway, Carl L. Hubbs, and James R. Moriarty (1961:104) reported the conspicuous absence of marine mammal remains at the early Archaic-period Scripps Estates Site in La Jolla, while noting that such remains “occur (often plentifully) in some younger middens along the coasts of southern California and Baja California”.
Claude N. Warren (1964, 1968) proposed that marine mammal exploitation, to the extent that it occurred, was characteristic of the later portions of the Archaic period, after about 3000 B.C., and of the southern rather than the northern portion of the county.
William R. Hildebrandt and Terry L. Jones (1992) reviewed the evidence concerning prehistoric exploitation of pinnipeds and sea otters throughout the California and Oregon coasts. They argued that the marine mammal species that establish rookeries on land would have been a relatively attractive resource, in optimal foraging terms, but that those species would have been quite vulnerable to overexploitation. The archaeological evidence suggested to Hildebrandt and Jones that mainland rookeries were a major focus of earliest coastal adaptations and that exploitation tended to shift to non-rookery species (such as harbor seals and sea otters) when rookery species became scarce or locally extinct. Responding to criticisms by Roger H. Colten (1993) and by Colten and Jeanne E. Arnold (1998), additional evidence of overexploitation in central and southern California was adduced by Jones, Hildebrandt, Douglas J. Kennett, and Judith F. Porcasi (2004).
A sampling of faunal evidence from San Diego County suggests that marine mammal hunting was practiced during both the Archaic and Late Prehistoric periods. In general, marine mammals appear to have been a fairly minor resource, particularly during the later period. One exception may be the Spindrift site in La Jolla (SDI-39), at which marine mammal bone (Mirounga angustirostris, Zalophus californianus, Enhydra lutris, and Delphinidae) represented 30% of the analyzed bone, by weight (Arter and Roeder 2010).
| Site | Period | Marine Species | Mammal NISP | Percent Marine | References |
| SDI-48 | Archaic | Callorhinus ursinus; Enhydra lutris; Phoca vitulina; Zalophus californianus |
143 | 18.2 | Gallegos and Kyle 1988 |
| SDI-811 | Late | Enhydra lutris | 439 | 0.7 | Hudson 1996 |
| SDI-4513 | Late | Tursiops truncatus | 107 | 0.9 | Christenson 1989 |
| SDI-4609 | Late | Enhydra lutris | 1298 | 0.2 | Lippold 1983 |
| SDI-4609 | Late | Zalophus californianus | — | — | Carrico and Gallegos 1988 |
| SDI-5017 | Late | Enhydra lutris | 89 | 7.9 | Winterrowd and Cardenas 1987 |
| SDI-5353 | Late | Enhydra lutris | 1898 | 0.7 | Koerper et al. 1992 |
| SDI-10728 | Archaic | Enhydra lutris | 926 | 0.2 | Wake 1997 |
| SDI-10945 | Archaic | Enhydra lutris; Phoca vitulina; Zalophus californianus |
25 | 16.0 | Pigniolo et al. 1991 |
| SDI-13325 | Archaic | Arctocephalus townsendi; Enhydra lutris; Zalophus californianus; Phoca vitulina |
1007 | 5.5 | Byrd et al. 1995; Porcasi and Andrews 2002 |
PROSPECTS
Future archaeological investigations may be able to clarify the extent of marine mammal exploitation during various periods of prehistory, the hunting strategies that were used, and the impacts of expolitation on the natural populations.
| Taxon | Common Name | Comments |
| Arctocephalus townsendi | Guadalupe fur seal | mate and give birth in rookeries |
| Balaena glacialis | northern right whale | — |
| Balaenoptera acutorostrata | Minke whale | — |
| Balaenoptera borealis | Sei whale | — |
| Balaenoptera musculus | blue whale | not common in coastal waters |
| Balaenoptera physalus | fin whale | — |
| Callorhinus ursinus | northern fur seal | mate and give birth in rookeries |
| Delphinus delphis | common dolphin | — |
| Enhydra lutris | sea otter | associated with kelp beds; nonmigratory |
| Eschrichtius robustus | gray whale | — |
| Globicephala macrochynchus | pilot whale | frequently beach in groups |
| Grampus griseus | Risso’s dolphin | usually pelagic, not coastal |
| Kogia breviceps | pigmy sperm whale | — |
| Lagenorhynchus obliquidens | white-sided dolphin | — |
| Lissodelphis borealis | northern right whale dolphin | usually pelagic, not coastal |
| Megaptera novaeangliae | humpback whale | — |
| Mirounga angustirostris | northern elephant seal | mate and give birth in rookeries |
| Orcinus orca | killer whale | — |
| Phoca vitulina | harbor seal | give birth in rookery; common inshore |
| Phocoenoides dalli | Dall’s porpoise | — |
| Physeter macrocephalus | sperm whale | — |
| Pseudorca crassidens | false killer whale | — |
| Stenella attenuata | Pacific spotted dolphin | — |
| Stenella coeruleoalba | blue and white dolphin | mainly pelagic |
| Tursiops truncatus | bottlenosed dolphin | — |
| Zalophus californianus | California sea lion | mate and give birth in rookeries; common inshore |
| Ziphius cavirostris | Cuvier’s beaked whale | — |
Source: Jameson and Peeters (1988)