0 a type of seal (= a mammal that eats fish and lives partly in the sea) with ears, found in the Pacific and southern oceans, that has often been hunted for its thick fur:
In the Galapagos Islands, fur seals were hunted almost to extinction.
Great white sharks prey on Algoa Bay's penguins and fur seals.
Antarctic fur seals crowded onto island beaches to mate each summer.
Within half a century of Cook's voyage, seal hunters killed more than a million fur seals, at a rate of about 250,000 a year when hunting peaked around 1822.
The commercial harvest of fur seal pelts drove Alaska's history for more than a century.
The local fur seal population is in decline.
