7.6 Million Harp Seals in the Northwest Atlantic

A closer video if you have FB.

The FB video is much more dramatic. I can’t find it off FB which is odd since it was government video. I put this aside thinking it might turn up but no. It is too bad I didn’t post it when it was current but I can’t keep up with posts.

Anyway, I had been wondering what happened to the seals since they used to be in the  Gulf of St. Lawrence but it seems they are north of Newfoundland now. The lack of ice is the likely cause.

There used to be endless talk about them but it has died down.

FIGURE 1. Location of whelping concentrations (yellow) and range (dark shading) of harp seals in the north Atlantic.

 

 

FIGURE 3. Estimated abundance of Greenland Sea (orange), White Sea/Barents Sea (blue) and Northwest Atlantic (green) harp seals and 95% C.I. Data from International Council for the Exploration of the Sea [ICES], 2019b and Hammill et al., 2020.
Numbers are up it seems which may be bad for fisheries and good for polar bears and, maybe, sharks.

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