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.
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. And she’s off. Heather Beem is closely examining seal whiskers for insights to design new…
Creature Feature: Elephant Seal About Elephant seals You may have seen (and heard) elephant seals on a beach: roaring, clumsy and (let’s face it) terrifying as they jostle for mates.
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.
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. “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.
Heart Monitors for seal pups are helping scientists track animal health Images and captions, credits are here Woods Hole, Mass. (February 14, 2025) -- Every winter, about 300,000-400,000 grey seals congregate on Sable Island - a remote location off the coast of Nova Scotia. They breed and give birth to pups, who stay with their mothers while they nurse for only 15-20 days and then must learn ...
WHOI biologist Rebecca Gast examines whether the recovered and thriving population of gray seals in Cape Cod waters has affected water quality off the beaches they frequent.
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.
The ringed seal (Phoca hispida) is the smallest arctic seal, and most common. They feed on shrimp, krill, and other small crustaceans. The harp seal (Phoca groenlandica) is a deeper diving seal which feeds on small fish. Juvenile harp seals are prized for their coat, which has led to bitter enmity between sealers and environmentalists.
