Things You Must Know About Harp Seals By: Jeannie Wu
Table of Contents Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------- Page 1 Physical Features ------------------------------------------------------ Page 2~3 Habitat ------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 4~5 Diet & Predators------------------------------------------------------- Page 6~7 Endangered! ------------------------------------------------------------- Page 8~9 Citation Page------------------------------------------------------------- Page 10 Glossary ------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 11 About the Author -------------------------------------------------------- Page 12
Introduction Harp seals need our protection and care. They play an important role in the food chain. Without the harp seals, arctic animals can hardly survive. Now harp seals are endangered. Their biggest enemies are humans. About 100 harp seals are killed each year. Humans kill harp seal pups just for their snowy white fur, and that makes the harp seals barely able to reproduce. What we can do to help the harp seals is to lead greener lives.
Physical Features This is a Harp Seal diagram.
Harp seals are unique in ways that humans recognize. They have dark and saddle-like markings on their back and yellow or gray bodies. That’s why they are sometimes also called Saddleback. They have pure black eyes and heads. Harp seals also have black markings where their flippers meet their bodies. Did you know that adult harp seals are about 1.7 meters to 2 meters tall and they weight about 140 kg to 190 kg? They are distinctive in many ways.
Harp seals have different physical characteristics depending on their stages of life. Harp seal pups are born with snowy white fur, so they are also called "Whitecoats". Some pups' fur may be dyed yellow by amniotic fluid but will become white again after a few days. Then they start losing fur and create a "jagged coat". Their fur changes to silvergray with black spots. Seals in that stage are called juvenile seals. Juvenile seals retain for one year. 12 to 14 months later, the spots grow larger and the harp seal become a "bed lamer". The seal remains a "bed lamer" until sexual maturity. When a bed lamer reaches sexual maturity, around 5.5 years old, its black spots connect into "harp" shape. That is how harp seals got their name. Harp seals evolve based on their age. This is a picture of a juvenile seal.
Habitat
The range of harp seals are highlighted in pink.
Harp seals need to live in a cold environment in order to survive. They have three main migratory routes. The Northwest population breeds in Gulf of St. Lawrence, Labrador, and Newfoundland, travels to Hudson Bay. The group that breeds in Jan Mayan, spends their summer between Svalbard and Greenland. They were originally from Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Svalbard, Jan Mayan, and United States. The stray harp seals are found in Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, and United Kingdom (also known as England). Harp seals are used to Arctic environment.
Harp seals are considered semiaquatic marine mammals. They are native to the Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. Their range is east from around Baffin Island and Hudson Bay to Cape Chelyuskin, in Northern Russia. Harp seals seem to enjoy most of their time in oceans rather than on land. While nursing, the females spend up to 85 percent of the day in the water hunting for food. The time harp seals spend in water make them semiaquatic marine mammals.
This is an image of a harp seal on land.
Diet & Predators
Diet This is a photo of a harp seal that caught fish in it’s mouth.
Harp seals eat a wide variety of fish. They are carnivore. Harp seals are feed on herring, polar cod, capelin, squid, halibut, krill, small crabs, other invertebrates, and fish. Adults mainly eat capelin, herring, and cod. Harp seals are not choosy on food.
This is an image of a polar bear waiting for it’s diet outside of a breathing hole.
Predators Harp seals have a number of enemies. Their enemies consist of orcas, polar bears, sharks, Eskimos, and Sealers. Among all of them, Sealers are harp seals' biggest enemies because they hunt harp seal pups for their fur and sell it for a lot of money. Although many laws enforce citizens to protect harp seals, Sealers break them. Harp seals are hunted by many enemies.
Endangered!
Can you find two mother harp seals and two baby seals?
This is a line graph of harp seals killed each year from 1990~2011. The yellow line graph shows the total amount of harp seals killed each year. The blue line graph shows the total allowable catch of harp seals.
Harp seals are rarely found anymore and it is our job to save them. They were once usually found in cold places until lots of harp seals got killed. One of the reasons for their extinction is human killing them just for their fur. The other is due to Global Warming. Well, both reason are related to humans. Global Warming is mostly caused by humans using fuel and burning all sorts of garbage. Harp seals are depended on sea ice but the ice are reduced by Global Warming. The adult harp seals need thick ice to give birth to pups. We should preserve the habitat of harp seals.
Harp seals are endangered and almost extinct. Hundreds of thousands of them are killed each year for their snowy white fur because the fur is highly valued. Harp seals are the most commercially important seals. They are already hunted for two centuries! Modern hunters have beer relationship with harp seals. However, in the past few years, humans had conflicts with seals and activists. Harp seals are in critical conditions.
These are some products that are made by harp seals’ fur.
Citation Page Or in other words references! http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Pagophilus_groenlandicus/ http://www.arkive.org/harp-seal/pagophilus-groenlandicus/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harp_seal http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112412/harp_seal.htm http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2012/lind_vale/habitat.htm http://bbc.co.uk http://www.harpseals.org/about_seals/index.php http://www.ypte.org.uk/animal/seal-harp-/168
Glossary Amniotic fluid (p 2)--the fluid surrounding an unborn pup during pregnancy. Sexual maturity (p 2)--is the age or stage when an organism can reproduce. Migratory routes (p 3)--the geographic route along which animals customarily migrate. Semiaquatic (page 4)--growing equally well in or adjacent to water; also frequenting but not living wholly in water. Herring (p 5)--a fish that lives in the northern Atlantic Ocean and is often eaten as food. Invertebrates (p 5)--lacking a backbone. Eskimos (p 6)--Eskimo is a term for the native peoples who have traditionally inhabited the northern circumpolar region from eastern Siberia, across Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Global Warming (p 7)--Global warming refers to an unequivocal and continuing rise in the average temperature of Earth's climate system. Since 1971, 90% of the warming has occurred in the oceans. Activists (p 8)--People who work together and try to convince others into agreeing with them and change their behavior.
About the Author Jeannie at the age of 5
Jeannie Wu is a fifth grader in Shanghai American School. She holds a Taiwanese passport but has only lived in Taiwan for 2 years. Jeannie finished Kindergarten at WAB in Beijing, China. She currently lives in Shanghai, China. Her hobbies consist of drawing, playing chess, playing volleyball, playing tennis, and jump
Jeannie at the age of 10
Jeannie at the age of 10
Jeannie at the age of 4 Jeannie’s brother Jeannie at the age of 10
ENTER TH
E WORLD
OF HARP S
EALS...
I can’t sleep with my eyes completely closed, because I am always aware of my enemies; especially sealers!