Snow Seals Views
When the mating ends, females gather in groups to give birth. Young harp seals are born on the ice, and mothers identify their own offspring from the multitudes by their smell. The young seals are famous for their snowy white coats. This fluffy fur is highly valued and has drawn hunters to the Newfoundland breeding grounds for two centuries. During the past several decades these grounds have become the scene of a human conflict between sealers and outraged environmentalists and animal rights activists. Modern hunts are better regulated than in the past, but the harp seal remains perhaps the most commercially important seal, with hundreds of thousands killed each year.
Many different species of seal live in both Antarctica and the Arctic, and life cycles vary considerably among species. Some species depend entirely on the presence of sea ice to survive. Many give birth and nurse their pups on the ice, and they look for food near the ice edge and under the ice. Most seals never leave the ice pack, creating open breathing holes all winter, and they make lairs under snow mounds to protect newborn pups from polar bears and from the cold air above (Krajick 2001).
Ringed and bearded seals often use holes in the ice to breathe, and they congregate along the edges of the ice. Ringed seals use fast ice and sometimes dense pack ice for giving birth. They require sufficient snow cover on the ice to construct birth lairs, and the sea ice must be stable enough in the spring to rear the pups. Some ringed seals in the Okhotsk Sea regularly give birth on the exposed sea ice surface (Pagophilus.Org 2001). Unlike the harp seal, the ringed seal does not migrate to open water in the winter.
Snow seals, formally known as Harp seals, do not have ears: They lack external ear flaps. Snow seals weigh around 300 pounds--but can weigh as much as 400--and call the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean home. These seals breed throughout the Arctic north of Russia, Canada and around Greenland.References:NOAA Fisheries: Harp Seal
Snow Seals Images
