Harp seal

How it lives

Harp seals gather on pack ice from February to April to give birth, in very dense colonies. A female has one pup a year and nurses it for only about 10 to 12 days, losing up to about 3 kg a day while she fasts. The pup is born with a white coat that lasts the first 2 to 3 weeks until its first moult. Harp seals live about 20 to 35 years in the wild. Polar bears, killer whales and Greenland sharks eat them.

Where it goes

Harp seals are long-distance travellers. They breed on pack ice in late winter and spring, then move to northern feeding areas, and some seals of the northwest Atlantic population travel up to about 4,000 km (2,500 mi) to the northeast outside the breeding season. There are three separate populations, in the northwest Atlantic, the Greenland Sea and the Barents and White Seas. I did not read tracking data for the Greenland coast.

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

NAMMCO gives 2019 estimates of about 7.4 million in the northwest Atlantic, close to 427,000 in the Greenland Sea and about 1.5 million in the Barents and White Seas. The northwest Atlantic population has recovered from lows of about 1 million in the early 1970s but is below the estimated 12 million before hunting. In the Greenland Sea, pup production fell from 110,530 in 2007 to 89,590 in 2012 and 54,181 in 2018. NOAA protects the species under the US Marine Mammal Protection Act. The IUCN lists the species as Near Threatened (assessed 2025); older sources list it as Least Concern.