The Tragedy of the Sea Mink
A few days ago, I was out for nature walk. It is my usual custom to go out in the late afternoon, but on this day a heavy storm interrupted my usual routine. I waited until the rain stopped, and then headed out. It was in that period of the day in when afternoon begins to sink away into dusk. The long shadows of the sun reached across the meadows and fields. A three deer wandered out to graze in the tall May grass. The birds sang their last songs of the day as they headed back for their roosting places. In the distance I could hear my neighbor's young cockerels crowing, sometimes interrupted by raucous calls of his three guinea fowl. My young golden retriever loped ahead of me, spooking the deer and forcing them to run deep into the thickets from whence they came. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some movement near the old farm pond. When I turned my eyes to glance upon the movement, I noticed a chocolate-brown animal that was about the same size and shape as a domestic ferret. As my brain began to analyze what I was seeing, I realize that I had come across a mink. It was foraging in the newly mown grass, searching for little insects and small mammals that were either chopped up or exposed by the mowing machine. When it noticed that I was looking at it, the mink dashed towards a stand of shrubs that abutted the neighbor's property.
The mink I saw was an American mink (Neovison vison). This species is the only remaining species of true mink. The European mink (Mustela lutreola) is now classified with the ferrets and polecats. Indeed, a European mink once mated with a European polecat and produced fertile offspring. The American mink was introduced to Europe largely through escapes from fur farms. It has out-competed the European mink to such a level that now European mink are critically endangered.
However, there was a third species of mink. This animal was a true mink, a native of North America, and a very close cousin of the American species. Some authorities classified it as a subspecies of American mink, but as we shall see, it had some distinctive features that separated it from its chocolate-colored and black relatives. This species lived exclusively on the coast of New England, the Maritimes, and probably Newfoundland. Because it was so closely associated with saltwater and the littoral environment, the species is now known as the sea mink (Neovision macrodon). It possessed a better pelt than its inland cousin that was usually of a lovely reddish color, and it is because of this superior pelt that the sea mink is no more. It was trapped out of existence for the fur trade.
Early Accounts
It seems the earliest accounts of the sea mink come from Sir Humphrey Gilbert's description of the species found in Newfoundland and its environs. One interesting animal he lists as native to this part of the world is a "fyshe like a greyhound." Now in the sixteenth century, a "fyshe" was any animal that lives the life aquatic. Because the sea mink tended to be found near the water it was called a "fyshe." The more interesting part of that description is that the animal looked like a greyhound. The sea mink had a more gracile body than the American mink. Perhaps it had evolved longer legs to help it swim better, which is the opposite track that the otter family has taken in their evolution into becoming water creatures. We really don't know.
Another account of this animal comes from Newfoundland proper. The famous eighteenth century naturalist Joseph Banks was told by a local that he had seen a strange animal come out of the water. It was larger than a fox, but it had a most unusual shape. The local claimed the animal looked very much like an Italian greyhound, which is a small breed of sight hound now much coveted as a pet. The naturalist Farley Mowat found that both of these descriptions were of the sea mink, for he found it very interesting that both accounts talked about a greyhound-like marine creature. It is very possible that both descriptions are talking about the sea mink.
Now, early settlers and explorers to this part of the world referred to the sea mink as a type of marten. After all, this animal was not the color of the dark brown European mink. It was also larger. Its pelt was twice as large as the American mink's, and the animal itself was often described as being at least 1/3 larger than the American mink.
French trappers referred to four species of otter that were found in this part of the world. There winters and brown otters. These are probably American otters, which come in brown and nearly black forms. Then there are red and smooth otters. It is probable that the smooth otter was the American mink, an the red otter was most likely the sea mink.
Unclassified until the Twentieth Century
The greyhound fish, the water marten, the fisher cat, and the sea mink were all names used to describe the species. However, science had not catalogued it until the twentieth century. Strange bones were found in a kitchen midden in Maine. These middens were used by the Indians of the Maine coast as trash heaps. The bones were similar to the American mink, but it was a lot larger. The animal was called the giant mink until zoologists began to scour the historical record and found those accounts of the larger red-colored mink that lived on the coast.
Today, most taxonomists consider the sea mink to be a distinct species. Its larger size and descriptions of its reddish fur and stronger musky odor than the American mink lend credence to its separate species classification. However, it is possible that this animal was a subspecies of American mink. It is also possible that the sea mink is not the same animal described as a "water marten" or a "fyshe like a greyhound." It is possible that there was once mustelid species native to this part of North America that was unlike any other species. It is possible that the accounts are about very different animals.
Extinction
Because this animal was not classified until the twentieth century, there are lots of debates that can be had about its exact taxonomy. Why? Well, as I pointed out earlier, the sea mink is extinct. There is some debate as to when the species became extinct. After all, if the species is not fully classified and is easily mistaken for a more common species, determining when it went extinct using historical records is a very difficult task. The last known red mink pelt was sold in Maine around the year 1860. However, a red mink pelt was reported to be sold in Maine in the 1880's (although the animal could have been trapped decades earlier), and the traditional account of the last sea mink is of an individual trapped on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, which is very close to the Maine/New Brunswick border, in 1894. All of these accounts are before the discovery of sea mink bones in the midden in 1903, which led to its full classification.
The animals were widely trapped for their fur. They were probably one of the first species to be over-exploited by Europeans. In Maine, locals used to hunt them with dogs. Now, the mink usually was to fast for the dogs to catch. However, the dogs could easily trail its distinctive odor to its lair. Once the dogs had found the mink's lair, they would alert their human companions, who would either dig up the den or try to smoke the mink out. If that failed, the burrow as relatively shallow, they would shoot black pepper into the den with firearms. If that didn't work and the den were within very rocky terrain, they would just blast the mink's den open using powder charges. So much did they want the sea mink's pelt that they were willing to risk damaging the pelt or even injuring themselves in order to procure the red fur.
Because of such poor management of fur-bearers in those days, this animal became extinct before it was fully known to science. That means that we really have a poor understanding of where this animal fits into the natural history of this continent. Because it looked and smelled differently from the American mink, we think of it as a distinct species. I find it rather interesting that most people have heard of exotic species that have gone extinct, such as the dodo and the moa, but very few North Americans have heard of this animal that one foraged along the rocky shores of New England and Atlantic Canada. Perhaps it is because this species was not catalogued until it had been extinct for a least a decade, or maybe it is because confronting our own past exploitation of nature is still too difficult to discuss. I don't know. However, our failure to recognize the sea mink as a unique North American species and offer it the protection that it deserved caused this animal to disappear from the shoreline.
When I saw that American mink dash into the stand of shrubbery, I thought of how strange that the fates of these two species was so different. The sea mink disappeared because of the fur trade, but the same trade allowed the American mink to expand its range. Not only is the American mink common in North America, but it has been introduced to much of Europe, where it escaped fur farms and colonized the countryside. They were also intentionally stocked by the Soviet Union in attempt to get them established as a wild fur-bearer. That attempt worked a little too well. The range of the American mink continues to spread in Europe.
I hope that American mink I saw does not discover the fowl that are kept beyond the shrubbery. If he does, then he might follow the sea mink into extinction. I like sharing my habitat with wild creatures, and this little mink adds to the variety of species with whom I share this forest and pasture land. I will remember the sea mink every time I see his little tracks in the mud or snow, and his kind is safe in the world of man. It is very sad story that the sea mink simply could not survive such unfettered exploitation.