HARP SEAL (Phoca groenlandica): Western North Atlantic Stock STOCK DEFINITION AND GEOGRAPHIC RANGE
The harp seal occurs throughout much of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans (Ronald and Healey 1981; Lavigne and Kovacs 1988); however, in recent years, numbers of sightings and strandings have been increasing off the east coast of the United States from Maine to New Jersey (Katona t al. 1993). The...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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1995
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.639.1916 http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/tm/tm114/pdfs/150.pdf |
| Summary: | The harp seal occurs throughout much of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans (Ronald and Healey 1981; Lavigne and Kovacs 1988); however, in recent years, numbers of sightings and strandings have been increasing off the east coast of the United States from Maine to New Jersey (Katona t al. 1993). These appearances usually occur in January-May, when the western North Atlantic stock of harp seals is at its southern most point of migration. The worlds' harp seal population is divided into three separate stocks, each identified with a specific breeding site (Bonner 1990; Lavigne and Kovacs 1988). The largest stock is located in the western North Atlantic off eastern Canada and is divided into two breeding herds which breed on the pack ice. The Front herd breeds off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Gulf herd breeds near the Magdalen Islands in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence (Lavigne and Kovacs 1988). The second stock breeds in the White Sea off the coast of the Soviet Union, and the third stock breeds on the West Ice off of eastern Greenland (Lavigne and Kovacs 1988). Harp seals are highly migratory. Breeding occurs at different times between mid-February and April for each stock. Adults then assemble north of their whelping patches to undergo the annual moult. The migration then continues north to summer feeding grounds. In late September, after a summer of feeding, nearly all adults and some of the immature animals swim southward ahead of the advancing ice en route to winter breeding and pupping grounds. The extreme southern limit of the harp seal's habitat extends into the U.S. Atlantic Exclusive Economic Zone |
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