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- Harbor seals swim with all four flippers: they move their hind flippers from side to side to propel themselves forward, and use their foreflippers to help them steer. Harbor seals can swim forward and upside-down. They rarely swim backward. Harbor seals can swim up to 19 kph (12 mph), but they generally cruise at slower speeds.
seaworld.org/animals/all-about/harbor-seal/adaptations/All About the Harbor Seal - Adaptations | United Parks & Resorts
See how seals swim and interact with each other through the glass wall of their tank in the Antwerp zoo (Belgium). Common seal or harbor seal (Phoca vitulina)
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- charlesleflamand
- Entanglement
- Illegal Feeding and Harassment
- Habitat Degradation
- Chemical Contaminants
- Vessel Collisions
Harbor seals can become entangled in fishing gear and other types of marine debris, either swimming off with the gear attached or becoming anchored. They can become entangled in many different fishing gear types, including gillnets, trawls, purse seines, or weirs. Once entangled, seals may drown if they cannot reach the surface to breathe, or they ...
Illegal feeding of harbor seals can lead to many problems including habituation, aggression, negative impacts to fisheries, entanglement, injury, and death. Harassment, including repeated exposure to vessel traffic and other disturbance, can degrade important nursery, molting, and haul out areas for harbor seals. Increased vessel traffic can also c...
Harbor seals are susceptible to habitat loss and degradation. Physical barriers, which may include shoreline and offshore structures for development (e.g., for oil and gas, dredging, pile driving), can limit access to important migration, breeding, feeding, molting, or pupping areas. Oil and gas development, commercial and recreational development ...
Contaminants enter ocean waters from many sources, including oil and gas development, wastewater discharges, agricultural and urban runoff, and other industrial processes. Once in the environment, these substances move up the food chain and accumulate in top predators such as harbor seals. These chemicals do not degrade. Harbor seals accumulate con...
Inadvertent vessel collisions can injure or kill harbor seals. Harbor seals are vulnerable to vessel collisions throughout their range, but the risk is much higher in some coastal areas with heavy vessel traffic.
- Mammalia
- Chordata
- Carnivora
- They have been around for a long time. Fossil records indicate that the ancestors of modern seals first entered the ocean on the west coast, about 28–30 million years ago.
- There are three different major types of pinnipeds. “Phocid seals” are also called “true seals” and include several species such as harbor seals and gray seals.
- They have whiskers they use like cats do. Seals and sea lions have many well-developed whiskers, much like cats. Like cats, they have a very acute sense of touch.
- They can go for long periods of time without eating. A seal’s body stores enough fat in the blubber layer to allow the animal to go for extended periods of time without eating.
Harbor seals swim with all four flippers: they move their hind flippers from side to side to propel themselves forward, and use their foreflippers to help them steer. Harbor seals can swim forward and upside-down.
Harbor seals have adapted well to life in the sea. Swimming fairly close to home, they fish locally for food – eating a huge variety of seafood, including fish, squid, crustaceans and mollusks. Dives last 3 to 7 minutes and are usually in shallow waters. But they can dive deeper.
Harbor seal swimming Harbor seal colony in Helgoland, Germany. Harbor seals are solitary, but are gregarious when hauled out and during the breeding season, though they do not form groups as large as some other seals. When not actively feeding, they haul to rest. They tend to be coastal, not venturing more than 20 km offshore.
People also ask
How do harbor seals swim?
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How does a harbor seal breathe before a deep dive?
Do harbor seals sleep underwater?
When underwater, harbor seals stop breathing so that their heart rate decreases leading to the conservation of energy. Also, they exhale before a deep dive which helps the oxygen accumulate into the muscles and blood, essentially reducing the oxygen content in the lungs.
