Dozens of Seals Turn Up on Icy Streets in Canada. Here's Why.

By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | January 11, 2019 03:12pm ET

An icy town in Newfoundland is dealing with some surprise visitors: a pod of around 40 harp seals.

The seals are stuck 4 to 5 miles (6 to 8 kilometers) from the ocean, according to local fishing guide and bar owner Brendon FitzPatrick, who shared photographs of the animals on Twitter. The animals likely swam into inland bays and streams chasing fish and got disoriented, FitzPatrick wrote on Twitter, adding that this is the highest number of seals seen on shore in the area.

"In the beginning, they were kind of aggressive," Sheila Fitzgerald, the mayor of Roddickton-Bide Am, told NPR. As the days have dragged on and the fish in the town's brooks have become less plentiful, the seals have become more lethargic, Fitzgerald added.

Roddickton-Bide Am is a town of just under 1,000 people situated near the northern tip of Newfoundland. The area is a common wintering site for harp seals. Officials from Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DPO) told the newspaper The Northern Pen that there is little offshore ice near northeastern Newfoundland this year, possibly part of the overall trend of major Arctic melting. With limited sea ice to rest on, the seals may be hauling out closer to the coast, which makes them more vulnerable to following streams inland and getting stuck when streams and bays ice over.

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Declining Sea Ice Strands Baby Harp Seals

July 22, 2013 — Young harp seals off the eastern coast of Canada are at much higher risk of getting stranded than adult seals because of shrinking sea ice cover caused by recent warming in the North Atlantic, according to a Duke University study.

"Stranding rates for the region's adult seals have generally not gone up as sea ice cover has declined; it's the young-of-the-year animals who are stranding (those less than one year old)," said David Johnston, a research scientist at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

(Credit: Courtesy of IFAW)

"And it's not just the weakest pups -- those with low genetic diversity and presumably lower ability to adapt to environmental changes -- that are stranding," he said. "It appears genetic fitness has little effect on this."

The study, published online this week in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PLoS One, is the first to gauge the relative roles that genetic, environmental and demographic factors such as age and gender may be playing in harp seal stranding rates along the U.S. and Canadian east coasts in recent years.

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'Dramatic' loss of harp seals amid warming: study

WASHINGTON — Harp seal pups off the coast of eastern Canada are dying at alarming rates due to a loss of winter ice cover, according to US scientists who questioned on Wednesday if the population will be able to recover.

The study by researchers at Duke University shows that seasonal ice cover in the harp seal breeding regions of the North Atlantic Ocean has declined about six percent per decade since 1979, when satellite data began.

The result has been entire generations of newly born seal pups dying due to their disappearing habitat, said the study published in the open access science journal PLoS ONE.

"The kind of mortality we're seeing in eastern Canada is dramatic," said co-author David Johnston, a research scientist at the Duke University Marine Lab.

"Entire year-classes may be disappearing from the population in low ice years -- essentially all of the pups die," he said. "It calls into question the resilience of the population."

For recent data, researchers looked at satellite images of winter ice from 1992 to 2010 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a prime breeding region off the east coast of Canada, and compared them to yearly reports of dead seal pup strandings in the region.

They also compared stranding rates to records of a climate phenomenon known as the North Atlantic Oscillation, which controls the intensity and track of westerly winds and storms and exerts a major influence on sea ice formation.

They found that years of weaker NAO and lighter ice cover showed higher death rates among seal pups.

While harp seals have adapted to the earlier spring melts in recent years by developing shorter 12-day nursing periods, it remains unclear if their population can sustain itself against sea ices losses over time.

"As a species, they're well suited to deal with natural short-term shifts in climate, but our research suggests they may not be well adapted to absorb the effects of short-term variability combined with longer-term climate change and other human influences such as hunting and by-catch," Johnston said.

The team also looked back at data from 1950 to 1972 which showed that NAO weather changes were tied to big declines in the seal population, followed by period of recovery from 1973 to 2000.

"But there's a caveat: regardless of NAO conditions, our models show that sea ice cover in all harp seal breeding regions in the North Atlantic have been declining by as much as six percent a decade over the study period," added Johnston.

"The losses in bad years outweigh the gains in good years."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hsCyhCVoTEZAyNZE73rWRGFpSGNw

Russia bans imports of Canadian seal products

Death knell for the Canadian seal hunt: Russia bans trade in harp seal pelts


19 December 2011. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has applauded the news that Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Russian Federation have banned the import and export of harp seal skins. Canada claims that Russia is one of the last two major remaining markets for Canadian seal products, reportedly receiving up to 90% of Canada's exports of seal pelts. IFAW says this is a major victory in the campaign to end commercial sealing, and that it should send a strong message that this is an industry whose time has passed.

"Russia ended its own hunt of harp seals in 2009, after listening to the concerns of the people who felt it was a cruel and unnecessary slaughter," said Robbie Marsland, UK Director of IFAW. "We are extremely pleased that the Russian government has taken the next logical step by banning all trade in harp seal pelts from other countries as well."

Russian market was key for Canadians
The Russian market has long been hailed by the Canadian government as the main market for Canadian seal products. With the European Union ban on non-Inuit seal products still in place, a long-promised seal meat deal with China still unsigned, IFAW says the Canadian government and the sealing industry should acknowledge the reality that markets for seal products are disappearing.

"The writing is on the wall" said Sheryl Fink, Director of IFAW's Seal Programme. "The Canadian government knows seal products are not wanted, and has had ample time to transition sealers out of this industry with compensation. Instead they have done nothing but dispute the rights of other nations by challenging seal product bans at the WTO. As Russia follows in the steps of the EU and closes its doors to seal products, it's time to say enough is enough and stop the seal slaughter once and for all."

"Canada will continue to be shunned by the international community as long as it persists with the outdated, inhumane slaughter of seal pups," continued Fink.

IFAW opposes the seal hunt as it is cruel and unnecessary. The seals are clubbed or shot and skinned so that their fur can be used to provide luxury products for the fashion industry. IFAW has been campaigning to end commercial seal hunting for more than 40 years, and its work helped bring about the end of the Russian seal hunt in 2009. At the time, Russia's Minister of Natural Resources Yury Trutnev said, "The bloody seal slaughter, the killing of the defenceless animals, which can't be even called a ‘hunt,' is now prohibited in Russia as it is in most developed countries. It is a serious step towards the conservation of biodiversity in Russia." Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also called seal hunting a "bloody industry" and something that "should have been banned years ago."

Timeline of shrinking markets

1972 US Congress passes Marine Mammal Protection Act, which bans the importation of seal products.

1983 IFAW helps win crucial ban in Europe on importation of newborn (whitecoat) harp seal and hooded seal (blueback) products.

1987 Canadian Government bans commercial hunting of whitecoats and bluebacks in Canadian waters.

1990 With IFAW's involvement, South Africa ends the hunt for Cape fur seals.

2006 Mexico bans the import and export of marine mammals, including seals.

2007 IFAW campaigns result in Belgium and the Netherlands adopting national bans on the import of seal products.

2009 Russia bans the killing of harp seal pups under 12 months of age.

2009 European Union bans the import of all seal products, with an exemption for Inuit-derived skins.

2010 IFAW continues its fight to protect the EU ban, and continues to expose the cruelty of commercial hunts to governments around the world.

2011 Deal between Canada and China to allow export of seal meat products postponed

2011 Belarus, Kazhakhstan, and the Russian Federation ban the import and export fur skins of harp seals and their whitecoat pups

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/harp-seal-skins.html