What do baby harbor seals eat

This hunting program ended in Harbor seals, like all marine mammals, are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Twelve of these stocks are in Alaska, and the other 4 are the California, Oregon-Washington coastal, Washington inland waters, and the western North Atlantic stocks. The Bristol Bay stock in Alaska includes a small population of freshwater harbor seals that live in Iliamna lake , located in Southcentral Alaska.

Each stock has experienced different population trends over the past 30 years. Along the West Coast, stocks are stable or unknown and the population in New England appears to be stable.

Individual breeding and molting colonies can number in the thousands in some of these areas. While most of the 12 harbor seal stocks in Alaska are stable or increasing over the past 8 years, seals in the Aleutian Islands, Glacier Bay, and Icy Strait regions have likely declined. There is a small but apparently stable population of less than harbor seals in the Pribilof Islands.

Learn more about our estimates for population size in our stock assessment reports. Harbor seals are part of the true seal family. All true seals have short forelimbs, or flippers. They also lack external ear flaps and instead have a small hole opening to the ear canal on either side of their head.

Harbor seals weigh up to pounds and measure up to 6 feet in length. Males are slightly larger than females, and seals in Alaska and the Pacific Ocean are generally larger than those found in the Atlantic Ocean. Harbor seals have short, dog-like snouts. Harbor seals molt shed hair in the mid to late summer for months, spending more time out of the water.

They haul out to regulate their body temperature, molt, interact with other seals, give birth, and nurse their pups. These seals also haul out in groups to avoid predators and spend less time being watchful for predators than those that haul out alone. Harbor seal pelvic bones are fused, preventing them from moving their hind flippers under their pelvis to walk on land like sea lions.

Instead, they move by undulating in a caterpillar-like motion. This behavior does not mean they are injured. Harbor seal pups can swim at birth. They can also dive for up to 2 minutes when they are only 2 to 3 days old and by the end of their first month of life embark on journeys of over miles from their natal area. Mother harbor seals sometimes raise their pups in nurseries—groups of mothers and their young—that help protect the seals from predators.

Harbor seals complete both shallow and deep dives while hunting, depending on the availability of prey. They can sleep underwater and come up for air once every 30 minutes. Harbor seals live in temperate coastal habitats along the northern coasts of North America, Europe, and Asia. They occur on the U. East and West coasts.

They have long been considered non-migratory and typically stay within 15 to 31 miles of their natal area, but tracking data have shown they sometimes travel 62 to miles from their tagging location, often to exploit seasonally available food or give birth to pups.

Harbor seals reach sexual maturity between 3 and 7 years old. While females usually give birth during the spring and summer, the pupping season varies by location. Along the West Coast, pups are born earlier in the south than in the north.

The only exception is harbor seals in the inland waters of Washington, which are born 2 months later than seals along the outer coast of Washington. Harbor seals mate in the water. Females are pregnant for about 10 months. Pups weigh about 24 pounds at birth and are ready to swim within minutes. They nurse for 4 to 6 weeks on milk that is 50 percent fat.

Like adults, seal pups haul out to rest and regulate their body temperature. Adult females forage during lactation. Harbor seals can become entangled in fishing gear and other types of marine debris, either swimming off with the gear attached or becoming anchored.

They can become entangled in many different fishing gear types, including gillnets, trawls, purse seines, or weirs. Once entangled, seals may drown if they cannot reach the surface to breathe, or they may drag attached gear for long distances as they swim, ultimately resulting in fatigue, compromised feeding ability, or serious injury, all of which may lead to reduced reproductive success and even death.

Illegal feeding of harbor seals can lead to many problems including habituation, aggression, negative impacts to fisheries, entanglement, injury, and death. Harassment, including repeated exposure to vessel traffic and other disturbance, can degrade important nursery, molting, and haul out areas for harbor seals. Increased vessel traffic can also cause altered behavior, increased energetic expenditures, and increased exposure to stress.

For example, in Alaska, vessel traffic can displace seals from ice floes, putting pups at risk from increased time spent in cold water and separation from their mothers. Learn more about the Alaska harbor seal approach guidelines in glacial fjords PDF, 2 pages. Harbor seals are susceptible to habitat loss and degradation. Physical barriers, which may include shoreline and offshore structures for development e. Oil and gas development, commercial and recreational development including resort development , and increased vessel traffic may displace seals or their prey that would normally use those areas.

Contaminants enter ocean waters from many sources, including oil and gas development, wastewater discharges, agricultural and urban runoff, and other industrial processes. Download the audio file. Pacific harbor seal pup Bogey was found alone just below the ninth hole of the famous Pebble Beach Golf Links. Once at our hospital, Bogey was fed a nutritious fish-mash smoothie five times a day. After months of care, Bogey was released back to his ocean home with other harbor seals his age.

Pacific harbor seals are found north of the equator in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. They favor nearshore coastal waters and are often seen on rocky islands, sandy beaches, mudflats, bays and estuaries.

The worldwide harbor seal population is estimated to be , individuals. In , it was estimated that about 34, of them live in California. In California, harbor seal pups are born between February and April and weigh about 20 to 24 pounds at birth. If born prematurely, harbor seals retain a whitish fluffy lanugo coat, which is usually shed in utero before birth.

Maintain a minimum distance of 90 m feet from any marine mammal in the water or on the shore to prevent a disturbance. Avoid areas closed to visitors during the pupping season, from March 1 through June Drakes Estero and the mouth to Drakes Estero are closed to boating, canoeing, and kayaking.

Double Point and the western end of Limantour Spit are closed to all visitor access. Tomales Point is a harbor seal pupping area, but is not closed. Please use care not to disturb the animals at these places and keep a distance of 90 m feet away. Download the maps below indicating closed areas or ask for one at a visitor center. If you see a harbor seal adult or pup that you think is in distress, do not touch or approach it.

Contact a park ranger and give the exact location and a description of the animal, making note of its behavior, color, size length and girth , and any particular markings or tags. Volunteers monitor the population of harbor seals in spring and summer. The data that they gather help scientists follow trends in the population, assess their health, identify disturbances to the harbor seals and protect, and preserve this valuable resource. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of provides federal protection not only to harbor seals, but also to northern elephant seals, California and Steller sea lions, whales, porpoises, sea otters and other marine mammals.

This law prohibits killing or harassing these shy creatures in any manner. From to , Pacific Coast Science and Learning Center Science Communication Interns produced a series of podcasts, videos, and audio-slide shows exploring science from Bay Area national parks. Two of these The Natural Laboratory multimedia products focused on harbor seals.

View the video about how to tell pinnipeds at Point Reyes apart or listen to the podcast about how pollution is impacting harbor seals below. Is that a seal or a sea lion? See and hear key differences between these marine mammals, and characteristics that make each unique. Also, get a glimpse of how San Francisco Bay Area National Parks keep track of the seal species that make their homes along our coasts. A The Natural Laboratory podcast produced by the Pacific Coast Science and Learning Center in in which John Cannon interviews three marine biologists about the effects of agricultural and industrial contaminants on harbor seals, and how what we learn from these studies can be extrapolated to the contaminants' impact on humans.

Show 10 40 per page. These two-page summaries provide information about the questions that the researchers hoped to answer, details about the project and methods, and the results of the research projects in a way that is easy to understand. Please note that if you are calling between pm and 10 am, park staff may not be available to answer your call.

Explore This Park. Point Reyes National Seashore California. Info Alerts Maps Calendar Reserve. Alerts In Effect Dismiss. Dismiss View all alerts. Harbor Seals. Harbor Seal Pup When you walk along a trail overlooking the numerous pocket beaches of Point Reyes, you may catch a glimpse of shy harbor seals Phoca vitulina.

Top of Page How to Identify Harbor Seals The harbor seal, northern fur seal, California sea lion, Steller sea lion and northern elephant seal are the five species of pinnipeds a visitor might see at Point Reyes. What eats harbor seals? Top of Page Harbor Seals Are Vulnerable to Disturbance When seals and other pinnipeds haul out, they are extremely vulnerable to human disturbance. How You Can Help If you see a lone pup, do not touch, move or otherwise disturb it.

Protecting Marine Mammals The Marine Mammal Protection Act of provides federal protection not only to harbor seals, but also to northern elephant seals, California and Steller sea lions, whales, porpoises, sea otters and other marine mammals.

Any human action that causes a change in the behavior of a marine mammal is considered harassment. Multimedia From to , Pacific Coast Science and Learning Center Science Communication Interns produced a series of podcasts, videos, and audio-slide shows exploring science from Bay Area national parks. Elephants, Seals, and Lions, Oh My! Duration: 3 minutes, 52 seconds. Audio Transcript. I'm John Cannon. The round, mottled bodies and whiskered snouts of harbor seals are a common sight on beaches around Point Reyes and San Francisco Bay.

As a species, they've done fairly well in most places, managing to adapt to living in undisturbed areas near humans. But a hazard lurks beneath the surface, a danger that's far more sinister than even the great white sharks that patrol these waters. Runoff from agriculture and industry, chemicals from streets and sewers, and bacteria and pathogens have found their way into the water and the food chain as a result of how we humans use our environment.

In the long run, these contaminants have the potential to do a lot of damage to harbor seals and to other species, like us. Infiltrating the miniscule droplets of oil found in single-celled marine plants called phytoplankton, these particles work their way up the food ladder, first through the organisms that graze on phytoplankton, then to the carnivores. Each step along the way creates high contaminant concentrations.

And studies have shown that these industrial chemicals can cause problems with immune function and the reproductive system in seals and humans. By the time a harbor seal gets a hold of a rockfish or a crab, those chemicals have accumulated in the prey animal's fat, sometimes to a dangerous level.

Harbor seals, with their thick ribbon of blubber, serve as a repository for these contaminants. But if seals are eating crabs and rockfish and other things in San Francisco Bay that are dangerous to them, what about us? We humans eat a lot of the same foods. In a way, we are predator of fish and crabs. So, that describes our position on the food chain or, in scientist's terminology, our trophic level. JC: That's Denise Gregg. She's studying the effects of contaminants on harbor seals. Armed with this research, scientists might be able to someday better understand how those chemicals in the water affect not only sea life, but also us.