HARP SEAL, SADDLE-BACK, OR GREENLAND SEAL (Phoca grœnlandica)
The black head, gray body, and large dorsal ring of the male harp seal are strongly distinctive markings in a group generally characterized by plain dull colors. The harp seal is a large species, the old males weighing from 600 to 800 pounds.
It is nearly circumpolar in distribution, but its area of greatest abundance extends from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Greenland, and thence eastward in that part of the Arctic Ocean lying north of Europe and western Siberia. Its reported presence in the Arctic basin north of Bering Straits or along the coasts to the southward is yet to be confirmed. It is an offshore species, migrating southward with the ice pack in fall to the coast of Newfoundland and returning northward with the pack after the breeding season in spring. For a day or two during the fall migration, when these seals are passing certain points on the coast of Labrador, the sea is said to be thickly dotted with their heads as far as the eye can reach, all moving steadily southward.
The harp seal is extremely gregarious and gathers on the pack ice well offshore during March and April to breed. The main breeding grounds are off Newfoundland and off Jan Mayen Land in the Arctic. During the breeding season, in the days of their abundance, they gathered in enormous closely packed herds, sometimes containing several hundred thousand animals and covering the ice for miles.
SEA OTTER
NORTHERN SEA-ELEPHANT, OR ELEPHANT SEAL
From all accounts it is evident that originally there were millions of these animals in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Their gregarious habits made them an easy prey, and the value of their skins and blubber formed the basis for a great industry. Hundreds of vessels were sent out from north European and American ports and nearly 1,000,000 harp seals were killed during each breeding season. This tremendous slaughter and its attendant waste has resulted in the disappearance of these seals from many of their former haunts and has alarmingly reduced their numbers everywhere. Some are still killed off the coast of Newfoundland, but the sealing industry, now insignificant as compared with its former estate, is practically dead.
HARBOR SEAL, OR LEOPARD SEAL HARP SEAL, SADDLE-BACK, OR GREENLAND SEAL
The hunting of harp and other seals on the pack ice is an occupation calling for such splendid qualities of virile hardihood in the face of constant danger to life that its brutality has been little considered. In this perilous work great numbers of hunters have been cast away and frozen miserably on the drifting ice and many a sealing ship has been lost with all hands.
Off Newfoundland the young harp seal is born early in March, wearing a woolly white coat. At first it is tenderly cared for by its mother, but before the end of April it has learned to swim and is left to care for itself. The young do not enter the water until they are nearly two weeks old and require several days of practice before they learn to swim well. The adults are notable for their swiftness in the water. In the tremendous herds of these seals the continual cries uttered by old and young is said to produce a steady roar which may be heard for several miles. Their food is mainly fish. Man is their worst enemy, but they are also preyed upon by sharks and killer whales.
RIBBON SEAL (Phoca fasciata) (see polar bear group, [page 438])
The broad-banded markings of the male ribbon seal render it the handsomest and most strongly characterized of the group of hair seals to which it belongs. Its size is about that of the harbor seal. Its range extends from the Aleutian Islands, on the coast of Alaska, and from the Kuriles, on the Asiatic shore of the Pacific, north to Bering Straits.
This seal is so scarce and its home is in such remote and little-frequented waters that its habits are almost unknown. Apparently it is even less gregarious than the harbor seal and usually occurs singly, although a few may be seen together, where individuals chance to meet. There are records of its capture at various places along the Asiatic coast, especially about Kamchatka and the shores of Okhotsk Sea. In Alaska it is a scarce visitant to the Aleutian Islands and appears to be most common on the coast south of the Yukon Delta and from Cape Nome to Bering Straits.
The few individuals taken by the Alaskan Eskimos are captured while they are hunting other seals on the pack ice in winter, and while at sea in kyaks in spring and fall. Owing to its attractive markings, the skin of the male ribbon seal is greatly prized by the Eskimos, as it was formerly by the fur traders, for use as clothes-bags. The skin is removed entire and then tanned, the only opening left being a long slit in the abdomen, which is provided with eyelet holes and a lacing string, thus making a convenient water-proof bag to use in boat or dog-sledge trips.
The scarcity of the ribbon seal and its solitary habits will serve to safeguard it from the destructive pursuit which endangers the existence of some of its relatives.