Baltic ringed seal

How it lives

Females become mature at about 3 to 6 years and then normally have one pup a year. They can live up to about 48 years. The subspecies is strongly tied to ice. Pups are born in snow lairs on stable ice and stay there with their mothers for up to about six weeks. Adults moult from mid-April to early May. In winters with poor ice, pups have been seen born on islets and skerries, but pup deaths are very high without the shelter of a lair (HELCOM).

Where it goes

The Baltic groups are described as isolated relics of the last ice age. HELCOM treats the Gulf of Bothnia as one management unit and the Archipelago Sea, Gulf of Finland and Gulf of Riga as another. The sources opened give no distances for individual movements, so none are stated here.

We only draw a journey on the map when scientists have tracked it or clearly documented it. For this animal we have not found one yet.

Populations

The Baltic subspecies fell to about 5,000 animals in 1970 to 1980 after heavy hunting and pollution, from an estimated 180,000 to 220,000 around 1900. Recovery is uneven. A 2024 population model estimates 26,700 seals (range 20,200 to 36,300) in the Bothnian Bay in 2023, which holds over 75% of all Baltic ringed seals, and numbers there are rising. In the south the picture is poor: HELCOM gave about 1,000 to 1,500 in the Gulf of Riga, about 50 to 100 in the Gulf of Finland and about 140 to 300 in the Archipelago Sea (older estimates, mostly around 2013). HELCOM (2024) rates the Gulf of Bothnia group Vulnerable and the southern group Endangered. National lists rate it Endangered in Estonia and Near Threatened in Finland and Sweden. The IUCN Red List has no separate entry for the Baltic subspecies, only the species as a whole.