Recoveries in Greenland, 1949–94, of Tagged or Branded Harp and Hooded Seals

• Main Author: Finn O. Kapel
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1996
• Subjects: Key words; Greenland; harp seals; hooded seals; migration; tag recoveries; Jan Mayen; Newfoundland; White Sea; Cystophora cristata; Greenland Sea; Harp Seal; Phoca groenlandica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.623.9350; http://archive.nafo.int/open/studies/s26/kapel2.pdf

More than 92 000 harp seal (Phoca groenlandica) pups have been tagged or branded at the whelping patches by Canadian, Norwegian or Russian researchers since 1949. Most of these were tagged in the Newfoundland region, either in the Gulf of St. Lawrence or at the "Front " off Newfoundland/Labrador (total about 56 000 – with the most intense tagging effort in the years 1978 to 1993: 34 700). About 17 400 harp seals have been tagged around Jan Mayen, the Greenland Sea, where the major effort was put into experiments in 1983–91 (total 15 800). In the White Sea 20 900 harp seals have been tagged, most of them in the years 1989 to 1994 (18 100). A significant number of tagged harp seals have been recovered in the tagging area in the same or a following year, or in other areas. In Greenland, 1 037 harp seals tagged at Newfoundland have been reported, 44 from Jan Mayen, and 3 from the White Sea. The distribution of these recoveries is reviewed in this paper. About 9 500 hooded seals (Cystophora cristata) have been tagged or branded by