First Extralimital Record of an Eastern Pacific Harbor Seal Pup at Guadalupe Island, Mexico
- Natural history
Abstract
The Eastern Pacific harbor seal (Phoca vitulina richardii; hereafter "harbor seal") is a coastal phocid subspecies found along the west coast of North America, from the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, USA, to central Baja California, Mexico (Rice, 1998; Jefferson et al., 2015). The vast majority of the harbor seal population is found north of Mexico and is estimated at approximately 370,000 individuals (Bjorge et al., 2010). The population of harbor seals in Mexico is estimated to be approximately 5,000, and information regarding the abundance and distribution of these animals was lacking until recently (Lubinsky-Jinich et al., 2017). There are established rookeries for this subspecies at nine Mexican islands: Coronado, Todos Santos, San Martin, San Jerónimo, San Benito, Cedros, Natividad, San Roque, and Asunción (Figure 1). Around this latitude, the breeding season of the harbor seal is from mid-February to mid-April (Fernández-Martín, 2012). Harbor seals typically forage in coastal continental shelf waters, bays, and estuaries (Burns, 2009). In Mexican waters, harbor seals primarily feed on benthic fishes and cephalopods (Elorriaga-Verplancken et al., 2013, 2016; Durazo et al., 2015), and they primarily forage around islands that are 1.6 km (Asunción) to 70 km (San Benito Archipelago) offshore of the mainland Baja California coast (Lubinsky-Jinich et al., 2017).
On 15 April 2017, a small harbor seal (Figure 2) was sighted at the southern portion ("Punta Sur," 29° 01' N, 118° 16' W) of Guadalupe Island Biosphere Reserve. Guadalupe Island is an oceanic island approximately 255 km offshore of the west coast of Baja California, where the nearest known harbor seal colony is located, and 170 km offshore of the continental shelf break. Three other pinniped species breed on this island: the Guadalupe fur seal (Arctocephalus philippii townsendi), the northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris), and the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus).
Orr, A.J., Norris, T.A., Galvez, C., Deming, A.C., Elorriaga-Verplancken, F.R. 2018. First extralimital record of an Eastern Pacific harbor seal (Phoca vitulina richardii) pup at Guadalupe Island, Mexico. Aquatic Mammals. 44(3): 279-284.
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