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With their backward-turned rear flippers and blubbery bodies, Arctic pinnipeds like the bearded, ringed, and spotted seals can look clumsy — though charming — as they wiggle across the ice. But in the ocean, where they spend much of their time, they’re as graceful and athletic as can be. Not only do their strong flippers and smooth bodies help them speed through the water; oxygen stores in their blood and muscle let them stay beneath the surface for long periods of time. Still, no seal can always be in the water — Arctic seals need the ice’s solid surface to carry out basic survival activities, from resting to molting to raising young. So as sea ice dwindles due to global warming, so does the hope for these seals’ long-term survival.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Not listed
PETITIONED: 2008
RANGE: Arctic and subarctic waters including the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas off Alaska
THREATS: Global warming, oil and gas development, the proliferation of shipping routes, ocean acidification, fishery bycatch mortality, oil spills, ocean noise pollution, hunting, ocean contamination, human disturbance
POPULATION TREND: Accurate abundance estimates for all three seal species are lacking, but previous estimates are of more than a million ringed seals worldwide, perhaps 750,000 bearded seals, and perhaps 250,000 spotted seals. Though the specifics of population trends are difficult to determine, it is evident that all three species have experienced or are experiencing population declines.
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SAVING THE BEARDED, RINGED, AND SPOTTED SEALS
Thanks to global warming, the sea-ice habitat of the bearded, ringed, and spotted seals isn’t just melting — it’s melting fast, at a rate topping the predictions of the most advanced climate models. Ice in the ranges of all three species has been declining significantly during the seals’ breeding and molting seasons. Summer sea-ice extent in 2007 plunged to a record minimum most forecasts didn’t see coming until 2050. The Bering, Okhotsk, and Barents seas — prime seal habitat — are projected to lose at least 40 percent of their winter sea-ice area by mid-century, with the remaining ice sure to be thin and short-lived.
Global warming is scary news for seals in many more ways than one. Besides degrading and eliminating necessary sea-ice habitat — reducing seals’ ability to successfully breed, raise young, and molt — warming depletes their prey, makes them more vulnerable to predators and disease, and leads to increased shipping activity (which brings with it even more dangers). Add to all this the ever-increasing threats of oil and gas development, hunting, pollution, and commercial fishery bycatch, and the implications are overwhelming. All three of these Arctic seals need federal protection based on the threat of global warming alone.
The Center is determined to help these seals get that protection, so in May 2008 we filed a scientific petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requesting that the bearded, ringed, and spotted seals be listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. These three species join the ribbon seal, the Pacific walrus, Kittlitz’s murrelet, 12 penguins, the elkhorn and staghorn corals, the American pika, and of course the famous polar bear as species the Center has worked to defend from climate-change threats. Unfortunately, the list won’t end there.
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Contact: Shaye Wolf
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