Latest True seals Stories
VANCOUVER, May 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ - The US National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) has announced it will conduct a 12-month assessment of the biological status of harbor seals in Southwest Alaska's Lake Iliamna, in response to the Center for Biological Diversity's (CBD) November 2012 submission of a "Petition to List Iliamna Lake Seal, a Distinct Population Segment of Pacific Harbour Seal (Phoca vitulina richardsi) under the Endangered Species Act". NMFS is the lead federal...
Acclaimed celebrity chef Brian Malarkey has signed on to The Humane Society of the United States’ Protect Seals campaign to bring Canada’s commercial seal slaughter to an end. (PRWEB) March 21, 2013 Acclaimed celebrity chef Brian Malarkey has signed on to The Humane Society of the United States’ Protect Seals campaign to bring Canada’s commercial seal slaughter to an end. Malarkey joins more than 6,000 top chefs, restaurants and food businesses that have teamed up with HSUS’...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Members of two Arctic Seal species will be protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) due to vanishing ice and snow in their habitats, officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on Friday. The NOAA Fisheries division has declared the Ladoga subspecies of ringed seals, which live in northwest Russia, will be listed as endangered and three others, the Arctic, Okhotsk, and Baltic...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A duck will carefully wade into the water before allowing her ducklings to follow suit. Bears will leave their young undercover before beckoning them into a clearing they have deemed safe. Your own mother would insist upon taking you by the hand before venturing across a city street. These are all protective acts of mothers in the animal kingdom. But not every mother necessarily subscribes to this model of parenting....
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Scientists reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that the ringed seal is being threatened by shrinking sea ice in the Arctic. The ringed seal uses ice to build caves for its young, which need at least 8-inches of snow drifts on sea ice in order to be supported. Without sea ice, the platform that allows the snow to pile up disappears, reducing the area where seals can raise their pups. The researchers were responding...
The new Hawaiian Monk Seal Hospital is expected to be finished by spring 2013 and will usher in the beginning of an initiative to help the critically endangered population of Hawaiian monk seals. Sausalito, CA (PRWEB) September 12, 2012 Sick and injured Hawaiian monk seals will get a second chance at survival thanks to a soon-to-be built hospital that will serve as the main hospital for the Hawaiian Islands chain, dedicated to the rescue and care of this critically endangered species....
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Environmentalists are going to extreme measures to try and save seals by taking on the government in court. The Center for Biological Diversity claim the National Marine Fisheries Service has illegally delayed listings for the ringed seal and the bearded seal. The agency proposed listing the seal species as threatened back in December 2010, but the National Marine Fisheries Service missed the statutory deadline to formally list...
Bioluminescence may play a key role in successful foraging for southern elephant seals, a deep-sea predator, according to research published Aug. 29 in the open access journal PLOS ONE. The authors of the study, led by Jade Vacquié-Garcia, monitored the diving behaviour of four female southern elephant seals in the southern Indian Ocean that were also equipped with light detectors. The researchers found that increased bioluminescence was correlated with higher foraging intensity,...
SAN MARCOS, Calif., July 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Six-year-old "Micro-Activist" Connor Berryhill weighs about one-tenth as much as a full-grown Hawaiian monk seal. That doesn't stop him from gathering yards of discarded netting and piles of plastic debris, which could have ensnared the much larger and critically endangered monk seals, during a recent visit to the Hawaiian island of Kaua`i. Such efforts are par for the course for this kindergartener who has also pitched in...
Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com Researchers at the University of California - Santa Cruz (UCSC) have used tracking devices to learn more about previously unknown behaviors of Northern elephant seals. Their study, published May 15 in the journal PLoS ONE, used satellite tracking devices to follow the migratory, breeding, and predatory behaviors of the Pacific dwelling mammals. The information gathered by the researchers showed almost 300 seals traveling throughout the northeast Pacific...
Latest True seals Reference Libraries
The harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus), also known as the saddleback seal, is a true seal in the Phocidae family. It is native to northern areas of the Atlantic Ocean and to some areas of the Arctic Ocean. Its scientific name means "ice-lover from Greenland,” and it was previously classified within Phoca genus, although studies have shown that it is unique enough to be in a distinct genus. It holds two recognized subspecies, P. groenlandicus groenlandicus and P. groenlandicus oceanicus....
The Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica), also known as the nerpa or the Lake Baikal seal, is a true seal in the Phocidae family that is native to Lake Baikal located in Siberia. This species is one of three seals that reside solely in fresh water areas. It is not known exactly how these seals came to inhabit such an isolated area, but some experts assert that a sea-passage was formed that linked the Arctic Ocean and Lake Baikal. The Baikal seal is one of the smallest of all true seal species,...
The ringed seal (Pusa hispida), also known as the jar seal, is a true seal in the Phocidae family. Locally, it is known as nattiq or netsik in the Inuit language. It can be found in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, with a range that includes the Bering and Oshtok Seas, the Arctic Ocean, and the coastlines of Japan in the north Pacific. It also occurs in the North Atlantic on the coastlines of Scandinavia, Greenland, and Newfoundland. Within its range, the ringed seal prefers areas with ice...
The Caspian seal (Pusa caspica) is one of the smallest species in the true seal family that is native only to the Caspian Sea. It can be seen on shorelines, rocky islands, and ice blocks that occur throughout the sea. In warmer months, these seals will inhabit northern areas of this range, but in colder months, they inhabit cooler waters and the mouths of the Ural and Volga rivers. It is thought that these seals only occur in the Caspian Sea because they moved there during the Quaternary...
The common seal (Phoca vitulina), also known as the harbor seal or harbour seal, is a true seal in the Phocidae family. It can be found in the northern Pacific, Atlantic, Baltic, and North Seas along the coastlines in these areas. This species holds five recognized subspecies, although the Western Atlantic common seal subspecies is questionably classified. The common seal can reach an average length of up to 6.1 feet and a weight between 120 and 370 pounds. The fur can vary in color from...
