Which Federal Regulatory Agency Is Ultimately Responsible For Enforcement Of The Animal Welfare Act?
Harbor Seal
Harbor seals in Chatham MA - Photo: NOAA Fisheries
Harbor seals in Chatham MA - Photo: NOAA Fisheries
About the Species
Harbor seals are 1 of the most common marine mammals along the U.S. W and Eastward Coasts. They are ordinarily seen resting on rocks and beaches forth the coast and on floating ice in glacial fjords with their head and rear flippers elevated in a "assistant-like" position.
Land-financed bounty hunters one time hunted harbor seals in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Maine because they were considered competitors of fishermen. This hunting program ended in 1960.
Harbor seals, like all marine mammals, are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Population Condition
In the United States, NOAA Fisheries has identified 16 stocks of harbor seals. Twelve of these stocks are in Alaska, and the other iv are the California, Oregon-Washington coastal, Washington inland waters, and the western Due north Atlantic stocks. In Alaska, there are the Aleutian Islands, Pribilof Islands, Bristol Bay, N Kodiak, Due south Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet/Shelikof Strait, Glacier Bay/Icy Strait, Lynn Canal/Stephens Passage, Sitka/Chatham Strait, Dixon/Cape Decision, and Clarence Strait stocks. The Bristol Bay stock in Alaska includes a modest population of freshwater harbor seals that live in Iliamna lake , located in Southcentral Alaska .
Each stock has experienced dissimilar population trends over the past 30 years. Along the West Coast, stocks are stable or unknown and the population in New England appears to exist stable. Individual breeding and molting colonies can number in the thousands in some of these areas. While most of the 12 harbor seal stocks in Alaska are stable or increasing over the past viii years, seals in the Aleutian Islands, Glacier Bay, and Icy Strait regions have likely declined. There is a small but apparently stable population of less than 500 harbor seals in the Pribilof Islands.
Acquire more than about our estimates for population size in our stock assessment reports
Protected Status
MMPA Protected
- Throughout Its Range
Advent
Harbor seals are part of the truthful seal family. All true seals accept short forelimbs, or flippers. They also lack external ear flaps and instead have a pocket-size hole (opening to the ear canal) on either side of their head.
Harbor seals weigh up to 285 pounds and measure upwardly to 6 feet in length. Males are slightly larger than females, and seals in Alaska and the Pacific Ocean are generally larger than those found in the Atlantic Bounding main.
Harbor seals take brusk, dog-like snouts. The colour of each seal'due south fur varies but there are ii bones patterns: light tan, silverish, or blue-grey with dark speckling or spots, and a night background with light rings. Harbor seals molt (shed hair) in the mid to late summer for ane-2 months, spending more fourth dimension out of the water.
Behavior and Nutrition
Harbor seals haul out (rest) on rocks, reefs, beaches, and globe-trotting glacial ice when they are not traveling and/or foraging at sea. They haul out to regulate their body temperature, molt, interact with other seals, requite nascency, and nurse their pups. These seals as well haul out in groups to avoid predators and spend less time being watchful for predators than those that haul out alone.
Harbor seal pelvic bones are fused, preventing them from moving their hind flippers under their pelvis to walk on state like bounding main lions. Instead, they move by undulating in a caterpillar-like motion. This behavior does non mean they are injured.
Harbor seal pups can swim at birth. They can also swoop for up to 2 minutes when they are simply 2 to 3 days sometime and past the end of their starting time calendar month of life embark on journeys of over 100 miles from their natal expanse. Female parent harbor seals sometimes raise their pups in nurseries—groups of mothers and their immature—that help protect the seals from predators.
The harbor seal'due south diet consists mainly of fish, shellfish, and crustaceans. Harbor seals complete both shallow and deep dives while hunting, depending on the availability of prey. They can sleep underwater and come up for air one time every 30 minutes.
Where They Live
Harbor seals alive in temperate coastal habitats forth the northern coasts of North America, Europe, and Asia. They occur on the U.S. East and Due west coasts. On the Eastward Coast, harbor seals are found from the Canadian Arctic to the Mid-Atlantic. Harbor seals are found all along the West Coast of North America, from Baja California, Mexico to the Bering Sea. They have long been considered non-migratory and typically stay within fifteen to 31 miles of their natal expanse, but tracking data have shown they sometimes travel 62 to 486 miles from their tagging location, often to exploit seasonally bachelor food or give birth to pups.
Earth map providing approximate representation of the harbor seal range
Lifespan & Reproduction
Harbor seals reach sexual maturity between 3 and 7 years old. While females usually give nascency during the spring and summertime, the pupping season varies past location. Along the West Coast, pups are born before in the s than in the north. The only exception is harbor seals in the inland waters of Washington, which are born ii months afterward than seals forth the outer declension of Washington.
Harbor seals mate in the water. Females are significant for almost x months. Pups weigh almost 24 pounds at nativity and are fix to swim within minutes. They nurse for 4 to six weeks on milk that is 50 percent fat. Like adults, seal pups booty out to remainder and regulate their body temperature. Adult females forage during lactation.
Threats
Entanglement
Harbor seals tin become entangled in fishing gear and other types of marine debris, either pond off with the gear attached or becoming anchored. They can become entangled in many different line-fishing gear types, including gillnets, trawls, purse seines, or weirs. In one case entangled, seals may drown if they cannot reach the surface to breathe, or they may drag attached gear for long distances every bit they swim, ultimately resulting in fatigue, compromised feeding ability, or serious injury, all of which may lead to reduced reproductive success and even expiry.
Illegal Feeding and Harassment
Illegal feeding of harbor seals can lead to many issues including habituation, aggression, negative impacts to fisheries, entanglement, injury, and death. Harassment, including repeated exposure to vessel traffic and other disturbance, can degrade important nursery, molting, and haul out areas for harbor seals. Increased vessel traffic can as well crusade altered beliefs, increased energetic expenditures, and increased exposure to stress. For example, in Alaska, vessel traffic tin can displace seals from ice floes, putting pups at risk from increased time spent in cold water and separation from their mothers.
Larn more than near the Alaska harbor seal arroyo guidelines in glacial fjords (PDF, 2 pages)
Habitat Degradation
Harbor seals are susceptible to habitat loss and deposition. Physical barriers, which may include shoreline and offshore structures for development (e.g., for oil and gas, dredging, pile driving), can limit access to of import migration, breeding, feeding, molting, or pupping areas. Oil and gas development, commercial and recreational development (including resort development), and increased vessel traffic may displace seals or their prey that would normally use those areas.
Chemical Contaminants
Contaminants enter ocean waters from many sources, including oil and gas development, wastewater discharges, agronomical and urban runoff, and other industrial processes. In one case in the environment, these substances move up the nutrient chain and accrue in top predators such equally harbor seals. These chemicals do not degrade. Harbor seals accrue contaminants, which threaten their immune and reproductive systems, in their blubber, blood, and organs (for example, liver or brain). These chemicals can exist passed on to their pups during pregnancy and in milk.
Vessel Collisions
Inadvertent vessel collisions tin injure or kill harbor seals. Harbor seals are vulnerable to vessel collisions throughout their range, but the risk is much higher in some coastal areas with heavy vessel traffic.
Scientific Classification
| Kingdom | Animalia |
|---|---|
| Phylum | Chordata |
| Class | Mammalia |
| Order | Carnivora |
| Family | Phocidae |
| Genus | Phoca |
| Species | vitulina |
Last updated by NOAA Fisheries on 04/19/2022
What We Do
Conservation & Management
NOAA Fisheries is committed to the protection of harbor seals. Targeted management actions taken to secure protections for these seals include:
- Reducing contaminants
- Minimizing human interactions and associated injury and bloodshed through various public outreach efforts
- Reducing vessel collisions and disturbance through educational materials
- Overseeing marine mammal health and stranding response
- Working with Alaska Native Organizations to conserve and promote the sustained health of harbor seals to ensure that they remain a viable subsistence resource
- Implementing oil spill response plans in the event of a spill
Learn more most our conservation efforts
How Yous Tin Assistance
Report Marine Life in Distress
Report a ill, injured, entangled, stranded, or dead fauna to make sure professional responders and scientists know about it and can take advisable action. Numerous organizations effectually the country are trained and prepare to answer. Never approach or endeavor to save an injured or entangled animal yourself—information technology can be unsafe to both the beast and you.
Larn who you should contact when you see a stranded or injured marine animal
Written report a Violation
Call the NOAA Fisheries Enforcement Hotline at(800) 853-1964 to written report a federal marine resource violation. This hotline is available 24 hours a 24-hour interval, 7 days a week for anyone in the United States.
Yous may too contact your closest NOAA Office of Law Enforcement field role during regular business hours.
Keep Your Distance
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Featured News
Premature harbor seal pup built-in with lanugo (natal fur) in Haines, Alaska. NOAA Permit 18786.
NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Specialist Kim Raum-Suryan at the Graves Rock Steller body of water panthera leo rookery near Glacier Bay National Park in Southeast Alaska.
Elkhorn Slough meanders seven miles inland from Monterey Bay, California, harboring the largest tract of tidal salt marsh in California outside of San Francisco Bay. Credit: Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve
Source: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/harbor-seal
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