HARP SEAL -- Updated 27 March, 2015

UPDATE:  A news report stated that around halve a million seals will be slaughter and not only for their fur but their bladder and various parts for the medical Asian \market.  Half a million must have an awful impact on the seal population.  The demand will stop when their is not more seals. Human beings will not come to their senses before then.

HARP SEAL PUP

The big brown eyes and the creamy coat makes the harp seal pup so adorable. This also played part with the public putting pressure on to changed the law for the killing of pups.

How can any one kill such a beautiful, adorable pup?

HARP SEAL ADULT

The evolution of millions of years changed the harp seal from a land animal into what it is today. It is thought in those days it could have been related to Bears. When they adopted their new habitat their limbs have become fins.

Seals bodies, for protection from the icy cold water, are covered with blubber. It is a fatty tissue and makes the body stream line. The seal is able to swim at a high speed.

Harp seals cover a great distance and swim between the Arctic which is their summer feeding ground. From there they migrate to North Atlantic for their winter and breeding grounds. They often leap out of the water like dolphins.

All seals are known for great divers. They hyperventilate which if filling their blood and tissue with dissolved oxygen before they dive. After that they breathe out to lessen buoyancy which leaves only little air in their lungs.

Most seals have only a five minutes dive but it has been known that harp seals can dive up to 15 minutes.

COATS AND COLOURS

The colours of their coats can vary. It also changes when the seals get older. The adult seal has a light silvery grey but its face is black. He also has a horseshoe shaped black band which runs along the flanks and across the back. Females coats are paler and may also be spotted.

HABITAT AND DIET

Most of the time the harp seal is swimming in the open seas between the Arctic and Atlantic. It also had been spotted off costs of Europe and Asia from Severnaya Cemlya and Cape Chelyuskin to the North of Norway, including the Kara Swa, Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, White Seas, Spitzbergen (Svalhard) and Jan Mayen island. Another place is east and west Greenland, Baffin Island, Southampton Island, Labrador, the east coast of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence.  Stragglers are sometimes in Hudson Bay and off the north cost of Iceland.

Adult harp seals hunt in groups. They diet is fish like capelin, herring, redfish and arctic cod. Young harp seals hunt alone for crustaceans and small fish.

Fisherman complain about the amount of fish they eat but research shows that the harp seal eats on average only Can $ 15 worth of fish a year.

FAMILY LIFE

The harp seal breed on the Arctic icefields. They chose an area which has hammock-like ice which gives some protection to the pups. Their most favoured breeding grounds are the White Sea, the Greenland Sea north of Jan Mayen island and the Newfoundland area.

The females don’t come out of the water till the pup is to be born. When they come on land they create big communal nursery. They make a hole in the ice to have an access to the sea below. At two weeks after the birth the female comes into oestrus.  There then leave the icefield and joins the noisy males. The males were gathering near the breeding ground. They were hoping to attract a female when their birth is over.  A male harp seal mates only with one female.

When the new pup is born it is 90cm long and weighs 6-10kg. Its coat at birth is of long, white- silky fur.  This beautiful coat costs many their live.  Because after a week it moults then when they four weeks old their coat is so different with its spotted, black or dark grey colour.

The baby suckles for about 10 to 12 days growing thick blubber. It sustains them till it learns how to hunt themselves.

After the breeding season is over they go back into the ocean to feed. It had been noticed they don’t cross
the Atlantic.  Seals from White Sea are not found in the northwest of the Atlantic. Seals from Newfoundland hardly venture further than the south of Greenland.

SEAL HUNTERS AND CONSERVATION

Seal hunters killing each year pups aged between two and ten days. It is that snowy white coats which is so in demand and sold to the fur trade.  Animals' lovers have been fighting this cruel killing for decade.  It still goes on both side of the North Atlantic.

Unfortunately, for the seal hunters and the fisherman it is a great harvest. They have the opinion as long 250,000 pups are born a cull of 90,000 is justifiable. The arithmetic is made in the east of the Atlantic. None of them will listen and stop. The only way to stop it if the demand for that beautiful seal coat drops.

In spite of all that killing which is disgusting and goes without saying. Only one thing the species is not threatened form extinction. At least at the moment. Even the seal hunters only kill a quota to make sure the species will not decline in number. Norway, Canada and Greenland agreed to a quota.

Apparently the real threat comes from increasing number of fisher boats.  The capelin is the most important fish for the harp seal but they are being fished in increasing tonnage by man.