SEAL FACT SHEET - World Animal Foundation

SEAL FACT SHEET
KINGDOM:
Animalia
PHYLUM:
Chordata
CLASS:
Mammalia
ORDER:
Carnivora
SUBORDER:
Caniformia
FAMILIES:
Odobenidae, Otariidae, Phocidae
Seals are carnivorous aquatic mammals with front and hind feet modified as flippers, or fin-feet. The name seal is
sometimes applied broadly to any of the fin-footed mammals, or pinnipeds, including the walrus, the eared seals (sea lion
and fur seal), and the true seals, also called earless seals, hair seals, or phocid seals. More narrowly the term is applied
only to true seals.
CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF ALL SEALS:
Pinnipeds have streamlined bodies, rounded in the middle and tapered at the ends, with a thick layer of fat beneath the
skin. Their limbs are short and their feet are long and webbed, forming flippers. The sea lions and fur seals (family
Otariidae) and the walrus (family Odobenidae) are able to turn their hind flippers forward for walking on land; they swim
chiefly by a rowing action of the long front flippers. The true seals (family Phocidae) are unable to rotate the hind flippers.
They progress on land by wriggling on their bellies, pulling themselves with the short front flippers; in the water they are
propelled by a side-to-side sweeping action of the hind flippers.
Nearly all pinnipeds are marine, and most inhabit cold or temperate regions. Some spend most of the year in the open
ocean, while others inhabit coastal waters and spend varying amounts of time on shores, islands, or ice floes.
Occasionally they ascend rivers. All pinnipeds leave the water at least once a year, at breeding time. In nearly all species
the females give birth a year after mating, so that the births take place on land, just before breeding begins. The pups are
nursed during the period, usually of several months duration, spent on land. Some species spend most of the year far
from their breeding grounds; the northern fur seals make particularly lengthy migrations each year. Most pinnipeds have
diets of fish and shellfish; many are bottom feeders, with physiological adaptations for deep diving. They have acute
hearing and some, if not all, make use of echolocation (sonar) for underwater navigation.
TRUE SEALS:
True seals are called earless seals because they lack external ear projections; they have functional inner ears. They have
short, coarse hair, usually with a close, dense undercoat. Their color and pattern vary with the species. Many are spotted.
The pups of most species have fluffy coats of a light color. True seals are generally polygamous and gregarious, but most
do not form harems at breeding time, as do the eared seals. Some species have definite migrations, but in most the seals

spread out after breeding, singly or in groups, over a wide area of ocean. Some polar species migrate in winter to avoid
the advancing ice; members of other species winter under the ice, surfacing through holes to breathe.
Most true seal species fall into one of three geographical groups: northern, antarctic, and warm-water species. Nearly all
are marine, but the Baykal seal (Pusa siberica) is confined to the freshwater Lake Baykal of Siberia, and the Caspian seal
(P. caspica) to the brackish Caspian Sea. In addition, several populations of the normally marine harbor seals and ringed
seals are found in freshwater lakes. The northern seals include two species of temperate coastal waters: the common
seal, or harbor seal, of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and the larger gray seal of the North Atlantic. The former is
the only seal frequently seen off U.S. coasts. The Greenland seal, or harp seal, is found in the arctic Atlantic; the ribbon
seal in the arctic Pacific. The small ringed seal and the larger bearded seal are circumpolar arctic species. Antarctic seals
include the voracious leopard seal, which feeds on penguins and other sea birds, and the Ross, Weddell, and crabeater
seals. The warm-water seals are the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Hawaiian species of monk seal. A fourth group
includes the elephant seal and hooded seal. There are two elephant seal species, one of the Northern and one of the
Southern Hemisphere. They are distinguished by their immense size and trunklike snouts. The hooded seal, distinguished
by an inflatable bladder over the snout, is found in the arctic Atlantic.
SEALING:
Each year thousands of seals are killed in Canada. The seals suffer painful and lingering deaths. The weapon used is a
club, the brutal hakapik. Sometimes the seals are skinned alive. Sealers often use sharpened steel hooks to drag the
creatures on board their vessels. Seal-clubbing is justified by the Canadian government because its victims are adversely
affecting the profits of the Newfoundland fishing industry.
A harp seal can be legally killed as soon as it has begun to moult its white hair, around 2 weeks after birth. Adult seals are
also killed. The seal hunt is one of the very few hunts that occurs in the spring when young are being born. As a result,
roughly 80% of the seals killed in the commercial hunt are 'young of the year' - between approximately 12 days and 1 year
old. Younger seals (ragged jackets and beaters) are usually killed on the ice with clubs or hakapiks (a device resembling a
heavy ice-pick). Later in the season, beaters and older seals are usually shot with a rifle, both on the ice and in the water.
It is also legal to use a shotgun firing slugs. It is illegal to deliberately capture seals using nets, although seals are often
caught incidentally in nets set for other fisheries.
Six species of seals, including the harp, hooded, grey, ringed, bearded and harbor, are found off the Atlantic coast of
Canada. Harp and hooded seals are the two most common species hunted commercially. Although harp seals make up
95% of the commercial hunt, they are not the only seals hunted in Atlantic Canada; there is also a quota for 10,000
hooded seals, and in recent years small numbers of grey seals have been hunted for commercial use. In addition to the
commercial hunts, seals of all species are taken for subsistence purposes in Labrador and the Canadian Arctic, and harp
and hooded seals may be killed for personal use by residents of sealing regions. The seal hunt quota was introduced in
1971.
The majority of seal pelts are still exported to Norway for processing. The seal pelts are either used for furs or leather. A
small amount of seal meat, particularly the flippers, is consumed locally by Newfoundlanders, and some claim it to have
an aphrodisiac effect. Seal penises are shipped to Asian markets and can sell for upwards of $500 US each. Penises are
often dried and consumed in capsule form or in a tonic.
Seal hunting is inhumane. Groups have campaigned on the issue for years and their evidence shows all the horror of the
hunt – dragging conscious seal pups across the ice with sharpened boat hooks, stockpiling of dead and dying animals,
beating and stomping seals, and skinning seals alive. In 2002, an international team of veterinary experts attended the
hunt. They observed sealers at work from the air and from the ground, and performed post-mortems on 73 seal
carcasses. Their study concluded that: 79% of the sealers did not check to see if an animal was dead before skinning it; In
40% of the kills, a sealer had to strike the seal a second time, presumably because it was still conscious after the first
blow or shot; Up to 42% of the seals they examined were likely skinned alive.
Many people remember the worldwide protest that arose in the 1970s over Canada’s killing of whitecoat seal pups (under
two weeks old). The massive protest, with international campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt during the 70s & 80s,
led to the European Union ban on the importation of whitecoat pelts in 1983, and eventually to the Canadian government
banning large-vessel commercial whitecoat hunting in 1987. Canada's cod fishery collapsed in the early 90s, and some in
Canada blamed the seals, despite the fact that the greatest cause was clearly decades of over-fishing by humans. The
collapse of fisheries around Newfoundland, due to mismanagement, is a major driver in the expansion of the seal hunt.
Although the Canadian seal hunt is the largest in the world and has the highest profile internationally, sealing is also
carried out in a number of other countries across the world including Greenland, Namibia, Russia, Norway, and Sweden.