Seals are pinnipeds, a group of animals with three separate families—phocidae, otaridae, and odobenidae—that are the only mammals that feed in the water and breed on land. New research shows Weddell seals avoid making extreme dives for prey during midday, allowing the seals to keep diving over and over without having to pause for long. This allows them to spend almost all of their time underwater, foraging under high-light conditions, which is best for visual hunters.

Understanding the Context

(Michelle Shero, ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) The night approaches quickly. A harbor seal plunges into the water, diving deep as the sunlight recedes. Through the dark, turbid waters, she searches for fish. Suddenly, the whiskers on her right cheek begin vibrating.

Key Insights

And she’s off. Heather Beem is closely examining seal whiskers for insights to design new… A female grey seal nursing her pup on the beaches of Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Gray seals give birth once a year and females will quickly lose ~30% of their body mass while the pup triples in size during a short nursing period of only 15-20 days. Studying how seals adapt to extreme environments could lead to benefits ... Most seal pups don’t make it through their first year, and the researchers want to figure out whether higher iron intake makes a difference in the pups’ survival.

Final Thoughts

“Everyone has been focused on the abundance of prey and how many calories seals are able to take in, but maybe just as important is getting the iron that they need,” Shero said. The value of iron for a seal - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution To help address these concerns, a group of scientists, fishers, and resource managers created the Northwest Atlantic Seal Consortium in 2012. Its goal is to get and share knowledge on the ecological role of seals in the northeastern United States: how they live, where they go, what they eat, their health and illnesses, and their interactions with the world—including humans—around them.