Harp seal
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Harp seal ( Pagophilus groenlandicus ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Pagophilus | ||||||||||||
| JE Gray , 1844 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Pagophilus groenlandicus | ||||||||||||
| ( Erxleben , 1777) |
The harp seal ( Pagophilus groenlandicus , Syn . : Phoca groenlandica ) is a seal from the dog seal family that is widespread in the Arctic .
features
The males of the harp seal have a particularly distinctive coloration. They are silver-gray, have a black head and a black, horseshoe-shaped marking that runs from the shoulders over both flanks. Since this resembles a harp in shape, this seal is called "harp seal" in English. Females have similar but much paler markings that sometimes dissolve into a blotchy mark. Harp seals grow to be 170 to 180 cm long and weigh 120 to 140 kg.
habitat
Harp seals are common in the Arctic Ocean . At the beginning of the Holocene , when it was significantly warmer than today, they also appeared on the coasts of the North and Baltic Seas, so their range is not tied to polar conditions. Today there are three separate populations:
- on the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence , outside of the breeding season also on all Atlantic coasts of Canada and Greenland
- north of Jan Mayen in the Greenland Sea , outside the breeding season on the coasts of Svalbard and East Greenland
- in the White Sea , outside the breeding season in the Barents Sea and Kara Sea
Way of life
Prey animals are mainly fish and crabs. They dive up to 200 meters deep.
During the breeding season in January and February, the seals migrate to the ice to give birth to their offspring. Here they gather in loose colonies of tens of thousands of animals. In the pack ice they keep open breathing holes about 90 cm wide, which are shared by up to 40 animals. The females maintain a distance of about two meters from one another. Males fight among themselves for the females with teeth and their fins. The harp seals live monogamous and mate on the ice. They give birth to their young in regions of drift ice and also live on the edge of the pack ice. The young are suckled with extremely fatty milk for up to 12 days after birth, so that they gain almost two kilograms in weight every day. The young animals (“whitecoats”) do not have a thick pad of fat, their heat regulation takes place through constant tremors. Similar to polar bears , the white fur consists of transparent, hollow hair that conducts the sun's heat directly to the black skin and warms it. After weaning, the young remain alone on the ice for about another 10 days until the white young animal hair falls out and is replaced by the characteristic silver-gray color with black markings.
After giving birth, the females are mated by the same male again. The gestation period is accordingly about 11.5 months, including a 4.5 month dormancy period during which the embryo does not develop.
Threat and protection
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There is said to have been a global population of nine million harp seals; this would have made the harp seal the most individual species of seal in the world after the crabeater . While it has always been hunted by the Eskimos and other peoples of the northern polar region, commercial seal hunts by Europeans did not begin until the 16th century. In the 19th century it took on these proportions, which decimated the total population considerably.
The harp seals “whitecoats” were hunted by the hundreds of thousands for their fur and beaten to death with clubs. In Newfoundland in particular, almost all of the offspring in a year were often killed, and the population was threatened with extinction. The market for seal skins collapsed as a result of international protests, especially the IFAW ( International Fund for Animal Welfare ) efforts, and the Canadian government largely banned the commercial hunt for seal pups due to international pressure. Under strict regulations, however, up to 325,000 seals are still officially killed annually by Canadian seal hunters, on the grounds that the seals endanger the fish stocks. These are no longer the young animals, since 1987 the animals can only be shot after the coat has changed. In order to give the seal hunters a new livelihood, IFAW organized nature trips to the seal colonies shortly after the seal hunt was stopped. “Sealwatch” is now a very popular holiday pleasure among nature lovers and photographers.
The ongoing seal hunt in Canada is the target of protests by animal rights activists every year. But Russia also continues to allow harp seals to be hunted. After Vladimir Putin's personal intervention , however, only adult animals are allowed to be hunted.
In December 2014, the government of Norway decided to remove the subsidy for the Norwegian seal hunt in the amount of 1.42 million euros from the state budget. In the meantime, one or two ships from Norway take part in the seal hunt off the east coast of Greenland and in the northern fishing areas south of Franz Josef Land every year.
See also
literature
- Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World . 6th edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 .
Web links
Killing "whitecoats" on Russian seal "farm"
- Pagophilus groenlandicus onthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Kovacs, K. (IUCN SSC Pinniped Specialist Group), 2008. Retrieved October 13, 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ U. Schmölcke, A. Glykou: Pelicans, turtles, sturgeons and harp seals in Schleswig-Holstein: Exoticism on the Stone Age Baltic Sea. In: Schr. Naturwiss. Ver. Schleswig-Holst. , Volume 69, 2007, pp. 41-52.
- ↑ Foreslår kvote på 26,000 grønlandssel i 2019. Accessed April 5, 2019 (Norwegian).