From the category archives:

Marine Mammals

Daily Mammal Now: Cape Fur Seal (Arctocephalus pusillus)

by J.R. Atkins on July 9, 2009

in Mammal News, Marine Mammals

Cape fur seal (click image to enlarge)

Cape fur seal (click image to enlarge)


0271

Daily Mammal Now is an occasional Daily Mammal feature in which we meet a topically newsy mammal that I hadn’t previously drawn. Now, let’s meet the Cape fur seal, or more precisely, the Afro-Australian fur seal, of which the Cape fur seal is a subspecies. Afro-Australian seals live, unsurprisingly, off the coasts of Africa and Australia, specifically southwestern Africa and southern Australia. They’re called fur seals because their fur has been used to make coats and such. Baby fur seals have especially prized fur. The genitalia of male seals is sometimes used as an aphrodisiac in traditional medicine.

The largest Cape fur seal colony is on the coast of Namibia. Every year, the Namibian government allows seal hunts. This year the seal season runs from July 1 until November 15. The government is allowing hunters to club 85,000 baby seals and 5,000 adult males. The hunt takes place in relative secrecy so as not to attract attention or scare people.

Namibia is one of only five countries that still allow seal hunts. There is some disagreement among experts about the humaneness of clubbing seals; some maintain that done correctly, it’s more humane than shooting. But because of the perceived cruelty, seal products have long been banned in the United States and other countries, and beginning in 2010, they’ll be illegal in the European Union, too (with the exception of those created by subsistence hunting on the part of native populations).

This year’s Namibian seal hunt has been in the news the past couple of weeks because a South African organization, Seal Alert-SA, has been trying to buy out the only company that deals in Namibian seal pelts. (Coats made by the company supposedly fetch up to US$110,000.) With animal welfare activists claiming that the seal hunt hasn’t started because of the pending deal and the Namibian government saying that it has, it’s unclear what exactly is going on.

The National: “$14m deal to end Namibia’s Seal Cull”

The AP: “Namibian seal hunt to go on, 90,000 to be clubbed”

African Conservation Foundation: “Seal Cull NOT Started, Hang-in There Baby Seals, Help Coming”

Seal Alert-SA’s blog

Tagged as: humans, now, seal, threats, traditional medicine

{ 7 comments }

Mammals of Alaska Week: Bearded Seal (Erignathus barbatus)

by J.R. Atkins on July 4, 2009

in Marine Mammals, Theme Weeks

Bearded seal (click image to enlarge)

Bearded seal (click image to enlarge)

0266

We continue our visit with the mammals of Alaska today, with this guy, the bearded seal. Like the bearded pig, he’s really more mustachioed than bearded, but that’s okay. Bearded seals live throughout the arctic. They eat mostly benthic creatures, which means creatures that live at the bottom of the water. That’s probably what their long, brushy whiskers are for: helping them find food at the bottom of the sea. They’re solitary and generally spend their time alone, floating around on small ice floes. Bearded seals are important to arctic native people for their hides and meat. Ivan T. Sanderson, in Living Mammals of the World, describes what it’s like to hunt these seals:

“Bearded seals are hunted by the Eskimos for their tough hide and tender flesh and they display a most singular trait when shot, leaping into the air and turning a complete back somersault from the ice into the water, so that one never knows if they are dead or alive.”

Isn’t that just like Ivan to say? By the way, I don’t ever want to take a month off from drawing mammals again! These last four have been so difficult, but each one gets a little easier. Next time you notice me falling down on the job, shoot me an e-mail, will you?

Tagged as: humans, ivan, seal

{ 0 comments }

Mammals of Alaska Week: Beluga Whale (Delphinapterus leucas)

by J.R. Atkins on July 3, 2009

in Marine Mammals

Beluga whale (click image to enlarge)

Beluga whale (click image to enlarge)


0264

The beluga whale lives throughout the arctic waters of the world. It’s gray when it’s born and gets lighter until it’s five or six, at which point it’s completely white. Belugas have been called sea canaries because of their elaborate echolocations and vocalizations. Overall, they’re doing pretty well, population-wise, but some subpopulations are threatened, generally by hunting, climate change, habitat loss, or sea traffic.

The melon-like bulge on the top of the beluga whale’s head is called a melon! According to the American Cetacean Society, “The rounded melon on its head contains oil, and the whale can change the shape of the melon. Scientists believe that the melon plays a part in the beluga’s echolocation system.”

You can listen to the beluga whale’s many different sounds at this page on the National Geographic website, and you can listen to Raffi’s wonderful song “Baby Beluga” on his MySpace page (highly recommended!). “Baby beluga in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and you swim so free. Heaven above you and the sea below, and a little white whale on the go…”

Tagged as: threats, whale

{ 4 comments }

Guadalupe Fur Seal (Arctocephalus townsendi)

by J.R. Atkins on May 7, 2009

in Marine Mammals

Guadalupe fur seal (click image to enlarge)

Guadalupe fur seal (click image to enlarge)


0257

Between yesterday’s squirrel and this seal today, I’m thinking about just going ahead and declaring this Interesting Ears Week.

The Guadalupe fur seal, as a species, has a dramatic story, full of hope and heartbreak. Once numerous from the Revillagigedo Islands of Mexico to the Farallones off of San Francisco, the seals were hunted so relentlessly in the 19th century that they were thought to be extinct from 1895 to 1926. Then, some fishermen “discovered” a group of them on Guadalupe Island, off Baja California. What did these fishermen do with these invaluable seals, thought lost forever? Why, killed them, of course.

Everyone thought they were gone for good again, but in 1949, one bull was spotted, and in 1954, people found a group on Guadalupe Island. In the half-century since then, and thanks to legal protection in both Mexico and the United States, the seals have made it back up to the Farallones once more, and their population is increasing.

Tagged as: endangered, humans, seal, threats

{ 0 comments }

Commerson’s Dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii)

by J.R. Atkins on March 25, 2009

in Marine Mammals

click image to enlarge

0245

This dolphin is also called the piebald dolphin. You know who else is piebald? The horse in National Velvet. That’s where I first learned the word. It’s a lovely word. It comes from the magpie, which is black and white, and an old definition of bald that meant “streaked with white.” The Pied Piper of Hamelin is so called because of his particolored outfit. Another nice word is skewbald, which means brown and white patches.

Oddly (I think it’s odd, anyway), there are two subspecies of Commerson’s dolphin found in two rather far-apart places, and that’s it. One group is around the Falkland Islands and the southern coasts of Chile and Argentina. The other is in the Kerguelen Islands, which are in the Indian Ocean some 3,000 miles southeast of Africa’s southern tip.

Tagged as: dolphin

{ 3 comments }

Mammals of Hawaii Week: Cuvier’s Beaked Whale (Ziphius cavirostris)

by J.R. Atkins on January 20, 2009

in Marine Mammals, Theme Weeks

click image to enlarge

0214

Happy Inauguration Day! Today is the last day of our visit to President Obama’s (!!) home state. This funny guy is a Cuvier’s beaked whale, also called a goose-beaked whale. Even though Cuvier’s beaked whales are believed to be quite abundant, and even though they have an impressively large range, very little is known about them. They’re difficult to study because they seldom come to the surface. We do know, though, that they can dive deeper than any other air-breathing animal and that they hear through their throats (the sound travels to their ears through “a unique fatty channel”).

We also know that beaked whales seem especially susceptible to being harmed by naval sonar experiments and exercises. In 2000, several Cuvier’s beaked whales beached in the Bahamas, bleeding around their brains and ears, during naval exercises. Naval sonar has also been linked to mass strandings in the Mediterranean, the Madeira Islands, the Canary Islands, Japan, and the Gulf of California. The bad news for Hawaii’s beaked whales, reported last week, is that the U.S. Navy has been given a permit for a year of sonar and bomb training off the coast of Hawaii. The Navy is supposed to try not to harm marine mammals, but since no one knows exactly how sonar hurts the whales, how can we prevent it?

Tagged as: humans, threats, whale

{ 0 comments }

Mammals of Hawaii Week: Pantropical Spotted Dolphin (Stenella attenuata)

by J.R. Atkins on January 18, 2009

in Marine Mammals, Theme Weeks

click image to enlarge

0211

Today we continue our look at the mammals of U.S. President-Elect Obama’s home state, Hawaii.

While Hawaii is rather short on native land mammals, it enjoys an abundance of native marine mammals. One of these is the pantropical spotted dolphin, which is found in all of the oceans in the world between 40ºN and 40ºS. As its name broadcasts, it’s characterized by its light-on-dark and dark-on-light spots, which increase with age.

You probably remember the public discussions and movements about dolphins and tuna fishing from the 1980s and early 1990s. The pantropical spotted dolphin is the species that was most affected by the tuna industry. You see, these dolphins have a close relationship—a loyalty almost—with yellowfin tuna. Before the 1950s, tuna had to be caught one at a time. Then advances in net technology made it possible to catch them in a big net called a purse seine. The best way to do this was to find their dolphin friends, who have to surface to breathe (unlike tuna, which are fish).

The idea was to catch the dolphins and tuna together, then release the dolphins, but catching the tuna was the priority, not saving the dolphins. The number of dolphins “accidentally” killed by tuna fishing since the 1950s is more than three times the number of whales killed—on purpose—by the commercial whaling industry in all of the 20th century.

Dolphins, the quintessential charismatic megafauna, were able to rally the support of the public, and a series of regulations, organizations, boycotts, and laws have brought the number of dolphins killed way, way down. Despite the Bush administration’s efforts to undermine the integrity of the Dolphin-Safe Tuna label, it’s now easy, in the U.S. and many other countries, to buy tuna caught without killing dolphins. (If your tuna doesn’t say dolphin-safe, it probably isn’t, so shop on the safe side.)

Unfortunately, the pantropical spotted dolphin has yet to recover from the years of dolphin-dangerous tuna fishing, and the IUCN calls it conservation-dependent. Here’s hoping Barack Obama will help protect his fellow native Hawaiians.

From NOAA: a good, brief primer on the tuna/dolphin issue.

Tagged as: dolphin, humans, threats

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries