I saw my first ribbon seal today! These beautiful creature are the most highly vulnerable critter that live up in the Arctic. Why? They never touch land. They spend their entire lives on ice flows, even give birth there. What will happen to them if there is less and less ice? Think about it.
Ribbon seals
Scientific name: Phoca fasciata
Where do ribbon seals live?
Ribbon seals range northward from Bristol Bay in the Bering Sea into the Chukchi, Okhotsk and western Beaufort Seas.
Miniature
This walrus tusk caving is a perfect minature of the beautiful animals know as ribbon seals.
How many ribbon seals are there? In the mid-70s, the estimate of the worlds population of ribbon seals was thought to be 240,000, but there is no accurate estimate at this time.
How can I identify a ribbon seal? Ribbon seals are very distinctive. Males are dark brown to black with four ribbons of white. Females are lighter with less distinctive stripes. The stripes are located around the front shoulders, the neck and the rear section. Young seals are gray and will acquire the distinctive ribbons by the age of four. Ribbon seals have large eyes and small teeth.
Ribbon Seal
Ribbon seals are generally easy to catch because they do not fear humans.
What do ribbon seals eat? Ribbon seals feed mainly on groundfish and shrimp, along with some crustaceans.
How do ribbon seals have their young? Ribbon seal pups are born on the ice in the spring. They are white at birth and become silver gray in 3 to 6 weeks. They are weaned in about at month and then spend time learning to move on ice and to dive.
How long do ribbon seals live? How do they die? The life span of ribbon seals is believed to be up to 25 years.
The main predators of the ribbon seal are the killer whale, sharks and humans. There seems to be little interaction between commercial fishing and the ribbon seal
More Ribbon Seal
Ribbon seals spend all their time at sea, evening giving birth on ice flows.
Do you know what is really cool about ribbon seals? Ribbon seals have an internal air sack, over their ribs on the right side of their body. They are the only seals with this air sack! We do not know what it is used for!!
Ribbon seals move on the ice differently than other Arctic seals, they move one fore flipper at a time at a time, while other seals pull with both their front flippers to move forward! For short distances, they can move on the ice as fast as a man can run!!
Habitat
Ribbon seals hang out where humans are not. They love to spend time out in the Bering Sea. The ice flow is their home.
Why do we know so little about ribbon seals? Ribbon seals are hard to study because of the amount of time they spend floating on pack ice and in open water, away from land. Luckily, this also makes it harder for predators to prey on them. At birth the pups are pure white. We know that ribbon seals stay close to the pack ice, but after most of the pack ice has melted, the ribbon seals are believed to be in the open sea.