HARP SEAL

 

The harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus), also known as Saddleback Seal or Greenland Seal, is a species of earless seal, or true seal, native to the northernmost Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean. Originally in the genus Phoca with a number of other species, it was reclassified into the monotypic genus Pagophilus in 1844. In Greek, its scientific name translates to "ice-lover from Greenland," and its taxonomic synonym, Phoca groenlandica translates to "Greenlandic seal." This is the only species in the genus Pagophilus.

Sub Species

Two subspecies are recognized: 

P. g. groenlandicus of the eastern Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic, east to Jan Mayen, and including waters around Greenland and Iceland; and 

P. g. oceanicus of the White and Barents Seas, south to Norway and east to about 110° E in north central Russia.

Distinctive characteristics

The harp seal's head appears somewhat long, wide, and flattened. The long muzzle tapers slightly, and in adults, can appear upturned. The eyes are close-set and there is a slight dip to the forehead. The flippers are relatively small. The foreflippers are slightly pointed and angular, with a short row of digit endings. The claws are strong and dark.

The ontogeny of pelage patterns is the most complicated of any pinniped, and in most stages is the species' most distinctive feature. The new-born’s pure white coat, which can be stained yellowish for the first few days by amniotic fluid, persists for about 12 days during which time they are known as “white coats.” At this stage they are difficult to distinguish from other northern phocids born in a similar lanugo pelage. The “grey coat” and “ragged jacket” stages follow when the underlying juvenile pelage and spotted pattern shows through the lanugo, and then appears as the lanugo is moulted. From approximately 3- to 4-weeks-old through about age four, harp seals are known as “beaters,” and then as “bedlamers.” At this stage they have a counter shaded coat that is darker bluish gray above, fading to light silver gray below, with an irregular low density of spots and blotches scattered over the entire body.

The adult pattern is complex and varied. The base color is silvery-white to light gray. Initially the harp pattern of the adult appears as a faint shadow of what it will become, as the seals transition to the black harp pattern, which consists of a wide and irregular crescentric band with ragged edges dipping down each side before rising up onto the back to fuse over the shoulders. The head of adult harps is hooded, with the face, chin, upper neck and top of the head being black. This hood also has ragged margins. Seen from above, the pattern resembles a large irregular “V” with curving arms. Black marks may also occur at the insertions of the hind flippers. Many adults retain dark spots and have incompletely-formed harp patterns on their backs that never fully darken and do not develop a hood. These animals are known as “spotted harps.”

Dental formula    I 3/2, C 1/1, PC 5/5.

Size

Adult males are up to 1.9 m in length and average 135 kg in weight, females up to 1.8 m and 120 kg. Pups are born at about 85 cm and almost 10 kg.

Life Span

Both male and female live up to 30 -35 years.

Gestation Period    350 Days.

Can be confused with

Harp seals in adult pelage are unlikely to be confused with any other animal. The silvery-white body, emblazoned with a conspicuous black harp pattern and hood, is unique. However, the “bed lamer” and “spotted” harp patterns are more generic, and pose some possibility for confusion with the harbor, ringed, gray, hooded, and bearded seals that share their range. The irregular spots of the bed lamer and spotted harp phases are generally lower density and randomly scattered over the entire body. Harbor seals tend to have more spots and markings dorsally than ventrally, and are often more strikingly counter shaded. Harp seals lack the rings that characterize ringed seals. Bearded, hooded and gray seals are all much larger as adults and have distinctive large heads with larger or unique features. Bearded seals lack spots, have very dense mystacial vibrissae, and have squared-off foreflippers. Hooded seals have large heads with a wide muzzle at all ages. Young hooded seals are strikingly counter shaded dark, bluish-gray above and lighter gray below, and have no spots. Adult hooded seals are large with medium to large irregular spots over the entire body, and dark, sooty faces and foreflippers. Gray seals are also large heavy-looking animals at all ages with proportionately large heads and a large muzzle that is wide and thick, with a robust, often convex bridge.

Distribution

Harp seals are widespread in the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans and adjacent areas from Hudson Bay and Baffin Island east to Cape Chelyuskin, in northern Russia. Vagrants reach New England, New York, and northern Europe. There are regular appearances of large numbers of animals in the coastal waters of central and northern Norway for feeding. The most famous of the four main breeding aggregations is the "Front," near the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and waters off north-eastern Newfoundland and southern Labrador. Harp seals live chiefly in pack ice, but can be found away from it in summer.

Ecology and behavior

Harp seals congregate to whelp (pup) on pack ice, where they form huge concentrations. Pups are born from late February to mid-March. Mating occurs in the water from mid to late March. Adult animals follow the ice north to haul-out for periods to molt following the breeding season.

Harp seals are migratory, and following the breeding season and molt, follow the ice north in summer to feed in the Arctic. They are very active in the water and sometimes travel in tight groups that are quite large and can churn the water like fast moving dolphin schools.

Predation

The Main Predators of harp seals are polar bears, killer whales, Greenland sharks and walruses. Humans also kill harp seals for food, fur and oil.

Feeding and prey

Harp seals feed on a wide variety of crustaceans and fishes, with more than 130 species reported in their diet. Capelin, arctic cod, and polar cod are preferred fishes. Atlantic cod, which is a mainstay of North Atlantic fisheries and has been severely reduced in numbers, makes up a small percentage of the diet. Dive durations averaged 16 minutes, and an average maximum dive depth of 370 m was recorded during a study of seals carrying dive recording instruments.

Exploitation

All three harp seal populations are commercially hunted for oil and fur. They are most often hunted on their breeding grounds. Considering the large concentrations of harp seals during breeding season, the hunt in Canada has been described as the largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world. The size of the harp seal hunt in Canada was aided by government subsidies in the 1990s and increased significantly during this time. Since 1997, the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for harp seals in Canada is limited to 275,000, and the reported total killed in 1999 was 244,552. In 2000, only 91,602 harp seals were killed, in spite of the extended hunting season that year. This reduction was attributed to low demand for pelts, high fuel and ammunition prices, and increased insurance rates. In addition, access to harp seal breeding grounds was difficult in 2000 because of an early spring that melted the ice. It is believed that the number of harp seals killed each year is underreported by an estimated 38-89%.

In Greenland, harp seal hunting is unregulated. Combined with the number of seals killed as fishery by catch, estimates of around 465,000 harp seals in the northwest Atlantic population were killed each year from 1997-1999. These figures exceed the birth rate and therefore there are concerns that harp seal populations are declining. Harp seals are killed at the same rate as they were between 1950-1970 when the northwest Atlantic harp seal population declined by as much as 50%.

Juvenile “white coats” were often killed for their fur in Canada and in the Arctic, however public outcry in 1983 influenced the European Economic Community to ban the import of white coat products, and in Canada, commercial hunting of white coats has been banned since 1987.

Unfortunately, it appears that Canadian sealers are searching for new markets in Canada and internationally, and hope to persuade the United States and the European Union to lift trade barriers on seal products. Not only is harp seal oil marketed, male harp seal genitals are exported to Asia as “aphrodisiacs”. Seal leather, fur, and meat products are also produced and sold. However, there were no government subsidies for seal meat in 2000, and the seal industry admitted before the 2000 hunt began that the demand for both seal meat and seal pelts was down. In 2001, it was official government trade statistics revealed that only 51% of Canada’s 2 million pelts from harp and hooded seals killed between 1982-1999 were sold, further demonstrating the low demand for seal pelts.

Conservation groups have been very active in Canada defending the need to protect seals. They have documented inhumane activities such as seals being skinned, cut open, and dragged with hooks while still alive, clubbed and left to suffer for long periods before being killed. Video footage has been taken of a Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaker ramming seals while clearing the ice to give the sealers better access to the ice floes. Sealers have been prosecuted for such behavior, however, an ongoing battle between the sealing industry and conservationist photographers is ongoing, and sealers have requested that photographers be banned from recording the hunt altogether.

Harp seals are subjected to intensive commercial hunting during the spring at both their West and East Ice breeding grounds, hunt quotas for these populations being jointly managed by Norway and Russia. For the 2001 sealing season Norwegian vessels were allocated hunt quotas of 15,000 adult harp seals on the West Ice (2 non-suckling pups deemed equal to 1 adult) and 5,000 adult harp seals on the East Ice (2.5 non-suckling pups deemed equal to 1 adult). An average of 14,778 harp seals were killed by Norway between 1991 and 1996. The totals dropped however to 7,163 and 2,716 in 1997 and 1998 respectively. The 1999 season saw a further reduction in the number of seals killed to 781 pups and 1,172 older seals, only two vessels taking part in the West Ice hunt and, for the first time in many years, no Norwegian vessels sealing on the East Ice. However the 2000 season saw a massive increase, a total of 18,678 seals being killed, of which 12,321 were on the West Ice (6,328 non-suckling pups and 5,993 older seals), and 6,357 on the East Ice (2,253 non-suckling pups and 4,104 older seals).

In Norway, killing of suckling pups is regulated, nevertheless, killing of new-born seals still suckling after the regulatory cut-off date were still legally killed. Another inhuman treatment in Norway has been documented when seals targeted to be shot from the boat to then be killed by a hakapik escaped injured into the water before death.

Like Canada, the Norwegian sealing industry depends on government subsidy, and the market for seal products is poor. The sealing industry is fledgling with fewer experienced sealers and a poor international market. Pelts are the primary reason for seal hunts in Norway. The market for meat is small and limited to the city of Tromsø.

In Russia, the seal hunt is also government-subsidized. Here, the white pelts of baby seals are dyed black and sold as hats for which there is little demand. In spite of the European Union ban on the import of harp seal white coat products, there are reports that they are being imported from Russia illegally. The number of pups killed by Russian sealers in 1999 was 34,850, all white coats. The quotas for white coat pups in 2000 was 63,500, and in 2001 76,000.

There have been reports that many white coats in Russia are not properly killed and are transported while injured to processing areas. In January 2000, a bill to ban seal hunting was passed by Russian parliament 273 votes to 1, however it was vetoed by President Vladimir Putin.

Harp seals, like many other seal species, are blamed by the fishing industry for declining fish stocks, such as cod, particularly in the northwest Atlantic. Subsequent analysis has shown that the decline in fish stocks is more likely caused by over-fishing and discarding juvenile cod as bycatch. In spite of this evidence, Canadian fishing interests and provincial government ministers in Newfoundland are calling for a massive cull of several million harp seals. Additional research has shown that the harp seal diet consists of over 120 species of fish and invertebrates, and therefore such a massive reduction in harp seal populations would have a negative impact on the marine food web, and therefore, on commercially fished species.

Somewhat ironically, over-fishing will likely reduce harp seal populations naturally as food sources decline. Evidence exists that harp seal populations in the Arctic and Barents Sea declined when the number of capelin declined in the Barents Sea. As a result, harp seals migrated into Norwegian coastal waters and approximately 80,000 of these seals died in Norwegian gillnet fisheries exceeding the usual bycatch rate of 500-2,000.

In Canada, harp seals are also at-risk of entanglement where an estimated 17,000 are killed in lumpfish gillnets in Newfoundland each year. Additionally, in the north-eastern United States about 400 harp seals are estimated to be killed each year by entanglement in multispecies sink gillnet fisheries.

Like harbor and gray seals, increased sightings of harp seals were reported in 2001 along the eastern seaboard of the United States, including a large number in need of rescue. The cause of this increase is unknown, but may be attributed to changing distribution or availability of harp seal prey, increased seal populations resulting in greater competition for food, and increased commercial fishing in the north forcing seals south to look for food.

Harp seal populations, particularly those feeding in the St. Lawrence River estuary, are at-risk of environmental contamination. Additionally, the ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence has been breaking up and melting earlier each year due to warmer winters, which may be attributed to global warming, has resulted in increased mortality of harp seal pups born on the ice. Inadequate ice floes result in decreased birthing grounds, and pups can drown or be crushed by the breaking ice.

Threats and status

Harp seals have been at the centre of controversies between environmentalists, sealers and governments for decades. Commercial hunting has been ongoing since the 1600s, with harp seals being particularly sought after when easily reached populations of walrus, gray and harbor seals had been dramatically reduced. Harp seals were taken primarily for oil, pelts and meat. As recently as 1999, over 460,000 animals were taken in Canada.

Attempts have been made to link harp seals with the demise of the once vast stocks of Atlantic cod, but this species is not an important component of the seal’s diet. Despite this fact, efforts are continuously being made to justify reducing numbers of harp seals in response to pressures stemming from this complex fisheries management issue. Overfishing, and alteration of marine ecosystems poses an ongoing threat to the health of harp seal populations, as does global warming and changes in sea ice patterns, and accumulation of toxic contaminants in the marine environment.

Factors hypothesized include

The direct and indirect effects of large-scale commercial fisheries on key prey species, long –term ecosystem shifts, and changes in behavior by a primary predator, the killer whale, or a combination of these factors.

IUCN status    Least Concern

 

White Coated Pup