SAVING BEARDED, RINGED, AND SPOTTED SEALS
With their backward-turned rear flippers and blubbery bodies, Arctic pinnipeds like bearded, ringed and spotted seals can look clumsy — though charming — as they wriggle across the ice. But in the ocean, where they spend much of their time, they're as graceful and athletic as can be. 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.
BACKGROUND
Climate change is scary news for seals in many more ways than one. Besides degrading and eliminating necessary sea-ice habitat, 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. Winter sea ice in the Bering, Okhotsk and Barents seas — prime habitat for bearded, ringed and spotted seals — is projected to decline by at least 40 percent by midcentury.
OUR CAMPAIGN
To make sure these beautiful mammals have ice to haul out on, in 2008 the Center filed a scientific petition with NOAA Fisheries requesting that all three species be listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. A few months later, the Fisheries Service reacted positively to the petition, announcing it would decide whether the seals merit federal protection by May 2009. It missed that deadline, but after we sued, in 2012 the Fisheries Service at last finalized protection for bearded and ringed seals. Ten years later the agency designated critical habitat for both species.
We’re still working to make sure NOAA Fisheries develops recovery plans for bearded and ringed seals. And we’re ready to step in (again) to defend the seals’ protections from any state — we’re looking at you, Alaska — or industry groups that want to strip protections.
We’ve also had a long list of successes defending these seals from the oil industry, which never stops trying to drill in their pristine Arctic home, as well as commercial fishing, which reduces prey availability and can entangle and kill seals.
The Center will never stop safeguarding these seals and their home from Big Oil, climate change, fisheries, and every other human activity that threatens them.
Check out our press releases to learn more about the Center’s actions for bearded seals, ringed seals and spotted seals.
NATURAL HISTORY
FAMILY: Phocidae
DESCRIPTION: Bearded seals get their name from their thick, elegantly curled, and very abundant whiskers. They’re the largest Arctic pinniped after the walrus, averaging 7.2 feet in length and 484 to 572 pounds in weight. Bearded seals range in color from silver gray to dark brown and have a distinctively robust body, square-shaped fore-flippers, and two pairs of mammary glands for nursing pups.
HABITAT: Bearded seals are found in Arctic and subarctic seas in shallow water where their bottom-living prey are most abundant. They prefer drifting pack ice where the ice is in constant motion and avoid continuous, thick, landfast ice and unbroken, heavy, drifting ice where there are few breathing holes.
RANGE: Bearded seals occur in a patchy circumpolar distribution around the perimeter of the Arctic Ocean and the subarctic seas, with a northern limit of 85°N in the Arctic Ocean and southern limits of 45°N in the Okhotsk Sea and 55°N in Hudson Bay.
MIGRATION: Among Pacific bearded seals, seals of the Bering-Chukchi Sea population move between the Bering Sea in the winter and the Chukchi Sea in the summer to follow the pack ice year-round, while those in the Okhotsk Sea appear to be resident throughout the year. Among Atlantic bearded seals, populations in the Barents, Kara, and White seas appear to follow the sea ice year-round. In summer, some populations move significant distances, while others make more local movements.
BREEDING: Females bear a single pup in March through May and nurse the pup on the ice for about three weeks. Most females breed again within two weeks of weaning their pup. Males produce elaborate underwater songs to attract females and maintain underwater territories. Gestation lasts until the next spring, when another pup is born.
LIFECYCLE: Female bearded seals reach reproductive maturity at ages three to six, slightly before males. Both sexes are thought to live about 20 to 25 years, although the oldest reported seal was 31 years old.
FEEDING: Bearded seals feed on the bottom of shallow waters on a variety of small ocean prey — primarily crabs, shrimp, clams, and snails — using their whiskers as feelers to find food in the soft bottom sediments.
THREATS: The primary threat to bearded seals is global warming, which melts the sea ice they depend on for giving birth, nursing pups, resting, and molting, and which depletes their prey through ocean acidification. Global warming exacerbates other threats to these seals, including oil and gas development, shipping activities, fishery bycatch mortality, oil spills, ocean noise pollution, hunting, ocean contamination, and human disturbance.
POPULATION TREND: Population trends for bearded seals are generally unknown because there are few repeated or reliable abundance estimates. Populations in the Bering and Okhotsk seas experienced significant declines in the 1950s and 1960s due to overexploitation by commercial sealing. Population surveys in the 1970s and 1980s don’t indicate that bearded seal populations rebounded after commercial sealing in these regions was limited in 1970.
FAMILY: Phocidae
DESCRIPTION: Ringed seals, the most widespread Arctic marine mammal, have plump bodies decorated with prominent gray-white rings scattered across a light or dark gray coat. Adults vary widely in size, but in Alaska, males average 4 feet in length, and females average 3.6 feet. The average weight of adult Alaska ringed seals is 110 pounds, although pregnant females may exceed 220 pounds.
HABITAT: Ringed seals depend on sea ice to give birth, nurse pups, and haul out to complete the annual molt of their fur. Sea ice and snow also afford protection from polar bear and Arctic fox predators and provide insulation and shelter from extreme Arctic temperatures.
RANGE: Ringed seals have a wide circumpolar distribution in the seasonally and permanently ice-covered waters of the Northern Hemisphere, northward to the North Pole. In the North Pacific, they extend southward to the Bering Sea and southern Okhotsk Sea. In the North Atlantic, they extend southward to Newfoundland to the west and the Baltic Sea to the east.
MIGRATION: In winter to early summer, adult ringed seals occupy breeding areas primarily on stable landfast ice over the continental shelf along Arctic coasts, bays, and interisland channels. Younger seals usually occupy the outer, less-stable ice areas. As the sea ice retreats in late spring and summer, ringed seals in many regions move northward. During summer and fall, when the sea-ice extent is at a minimum and has disappeared from many regions, ringed seals of all ages occur along the edge of the permanent pack ice, on near-shore ice remnants, or in open water.
BREEDING: Females give birth to a single pup in a snow lair on the landfast ice or pack ice during March and April and nurse their pup for five to seven weeks. Mating generally occurs in the water one month after females have given birth. Gestation lasts until the next spring, when another pup is born.
LIFECYCLE: Female seals reach sexual maturity at 4 to 8 years of age, while males do so at 5 to 7 years. Average life expectancy is 15 to 20 years, though seals can live at least 43 years. Ringed seals’ delayed maturity, low reproductive rates, high adult survival, and high longevity make them slow to recover from population declines.
FEEDING: Ringed seals primarily eat fishes of the cod family (especially Arctic and saffron cod), krill, shrimp, and other small crustaceans. The Arctic cod is the dominant prey in most localities.
THREATS: The primary threat to ringed seals is global warming, which melts the sea ice they depend on for giving birth, nursing pups, resting, and molting, and which depletes their prey through ocean acidification. Global warming exacerbates other threats to ringed seals, including oil and gas development, shipping activities, fishery bycatch mortality, oil spills, ocean noise pollution, hunting, ocean contamination, and human disturbance.
POPULATION TREND: Ringed seals are the most abundant Arctic seal and are thought to number more than 1 million individuals. Population trends for ringed seals are difficult to detect because there are few repeated or reliable abundance estimates. However, population declines have occurred in populations for which trends have been analyzed. Ringed seals in the Canadian Arctic are suffering reproductive failures, higher pup mortality, and decreased body condition due to earlier snow melt and breakup of sea ice.
FAMILY: Phocidae
DESCRIPTION: Spotted seals are of medium size and are distinguished by their vivid markings of brownish to black irregularly shaped spots, sometimes encircled by a faint ring, scattered over a lighter base coat. Adults average 5.2 feet in length and range from 143 to 253 pounds in weight.
HABITAT: Spotted seals occur in the seasonally ice-covered subarctic and marginal seas adjacent to the North Pacific Ocean. These seals rely on the dispersed floes of the sea-ice front and fringe during winter and spring as a platform for birthing and nursing pups, as well as for molting and resting.
RANGE: Spotted seals are found primarily along the continental shelf of the Beaufort, Chukchi, Bering, and Okhotsk seas and south to the northern Yellow Sea and western Sea of Japan.
MIGRATION: Spotted seals move between breeding areas on the sea-ice front in winter and spring to coastal habitats during the ice-free season in summer and fall. Spotted seal breeding aggregations in winter and spring are found in eight relatively distinct offshore regions in the Bering and Okhotsk seas, the northern Sea of Japan, and the northern Yellow Sea.
BREEDING: Spotted seals are annually monogamous. Males and females form pairs 10 days before the female gives birth, and pairs stay together until mating occurs after the pup is weaned. Females in the Bering and Okhotsk seas give birth in April and nurse their pups on the sea ice for three to six weeks.
LIFECYCLE: Females reach sexual maturity at 3 to 6 years, males at 5 to 6. The maximum lifespan of spotted seals is at least 35 years.
FEEDING: Spotted seals’ diet is very varied, but principle foods for adults are schooling fishes, crustaceans, and cephalopods. Pups feed mainly on invertebrates and small fish. The spotted seal diet varies not only with the seals’ age, but also with region and season.
THREATS: The primary threat to spotted seals is global warming, which melts the sea ice they depends on for giving birth, nursing pups, resting and molting, and which depletes their prey through ocean acidification. Global warming exacerbates other threats to spotted seals, including oil and gas development, shipping activities, fishery bycatch mortality, oil spills, ocean noise pollution, hunting, ocean contamination, and human disturbance.
POPULATION TREND: Population trends for spotted seals over recent decades are difficult to assess, since reliable populations estimates aren’t available for most populations. The Bering-Chukchi Sea spotted seal population is thought to have declined since the early 1980s, likely due to unfavorable sea-ice conditions and altered food web dynamics.
