Harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 4

Distribution

Global range

Harbour seals have the broadest distribution of any pinniped species, occurring over a latitudinal range from about 30°N to 81°N in the eastern Atlantic and 28°N to 62°N in the eastern Pacific (Figure 2). In the western North Atlantic, they are distributed from the eastern Canadian Arctic and western Greenland (approximately 73°N), south to New York and New Jersey (approximately 40°N), with occasional animals being reported as far south as the Carolinas (Allen 1880; Mansfield 1967; Boulva and McLaren 1979; Wiig 1989; Waring et al. 2004).Ambient air temperature may limit the global distribution of harbour seals (Hansen et al. 1995).

Harbour seals are known to be vulnerable to overexploitation and various forms of disturbance by humans and have been eliminated from some parts of their global range such as in Greenland (Teilmann and Dietz 1994) and Hokkaido, Japan (Wada et al. 1991).

Figure 2. Global range of the harbour seal, Phoca vitulina.

Figure 2. Global range of the harbour seal, Phoca vitulina.

Canadian range

Understanding of the distribution of harbour seals in many areas of eastern Canada and the Arctic is based on opportunistic or anecdotal sightings rather than directed surveys.

Phoca vitulina concolor – Hudson Bay and Arctic

There are historical records of harbour seals as far north as Ellesmere Island (Anderson 1934; Dunbar 1949; Mansfield 1967). Based on information gathered from the Inuit, Mansfield (1967) reported harbour seals to occur as far west as Admiralty Inlet along the north shore of Baffin Island, and on the west side of Hudson Bay as far north as Repulse Bay. Based on sightings, and their own collecting expeditions, both Mansfield and McLaren (1958) and Mansfield (1967) considered the distribution of harbour seals in the high Arctic to be localized to: Cumberland Sound, Frobisher Bay and the Foxe peninsula of southwest Baffin Island; Southhampton Island and Chesterfield Inlet; and Ungava Bay. These authors also indicated that, as of the 1950s, the harbour seal had already been eliminated from some of this area. Similarly, Smith and Horonowitsch (1987) quoted an unpublished report indicating that harbour seals were more widely distributed in the Ungava Bay area before the advent of rifle hunting. The Nunavut Wildlife Harvest report indicates that 9 of 27 Nunavut communities reported harvesting a total of 59 harbour seals between 1996 and 2001 (Priest and Usher 2004). These included the communities of Arviat, Baker Lake, Chesterfield Inlet, Coral Harbour, Rankin Inlet, Kugaaruk, Cape Dorset, Iqaluit, and Kimmirut.

There are no records of anything other than sporadic harbour seal occurrences on the east coast of Hudson Bay and James Bay, with the exception of an extirpated group of animals that used to frequent Kasegalik Lake on the Belcher Islands (Doutt 1942; Dunbar 1949; Manning 1946; Harper 1961; Mansfield 1967; James Bay and Northern Québec Native Harvesting Research Committee 1988; Petagumskum 2005; Prefontaine 2005). In contrast, a variety of sources, both historical and contemporary, point to the continued presence of harbour seals in rivers and river mouths along the west shore of Hudson Bay (Harper 1956; Mansfield 1967; Beck et al. 1970; Stewart and Lockhart 2005). The group of animals that frequent the Churchill River estuary have been the best studied (Harper 1956; Remnant 1997; Bernhardt 2005).

Phoca vitulina concolor – St. Lawrence and Atlantic

In the past, harbour seals occasionally ascended the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes. One animal was recorded killed at the mouth of the Gatineau River near Ottawa in 1865 (Anderson 1946) and Allen (1880) reported two animals killed in Lake Champlain in the 19th Century. DeKay (1842), based on an 1824 article in the Kingston Chronicle newspaper, reported an animal killed opposite Kingston at Cape Vincent, New York. This same newspaper report quoted Indian traders as saying that harbour seals occasionally frequented Lake Ontario. Harper (1961) summarized multiple historical reports of harbour seals along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River and Labrador, including records of animals ascending rivers in these areas. Finally, Voegelin (1969) noted that “In aboriginal times the habitat of the harbor seal included the Ottawa River as far up as present-day Ottawa, Lake Champlain, Onondaga Lake, and Lake Ontario; the habitat could not extend westward beyond Lake Ontario, for the harbor seal could not negotiate Niagara Falls”.

The most complete source of information on harbour seal distribution on Canada’s Atlantic coast, excluding Labrador, is Boulva and McLaren (1979). These authors compiled their data through questionnaires sent to fisheries officers, information from bounty kills and personal interviews with fishermen in most parts of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Québec during 1972 and 1973, and direct monitoring of the harbour seal population on Sable Island. Their study indicated the presence of seals in a variety of locations along the St. Lawrence River and Estuary; around the Québec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; along the southern shore of Nova Scotia, including Sable Island; in the Passamaquoddy and Digby areas of the Bay of Fundy; and in pockets along the Northern Peninsula, west, south, and northeast coasts of Newfoundland.

Only a very few studies have been conducted since the work of Boulva and McLaren (1979) to update harbour seal distributional information.

In the Bay of Fundy, harbour seals are present along the coast and offshore islands of the Bay of Fundy region from Machias Seal Island to Quaco Head, New Brunswick, and from Parkers Cove to Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia (Stobo and Fowler 1994; Jacobs and Terhune 2000; Browne and Terhune 2003). Though diminished in number, harbour seals are still present on Sable Island (Bowen et al. 2003).

Boat-based and aerial surveys, shore-based counts and interviews with coastal residents allowed Sjare et al. (2005) to confirm that the broad patterns of local distribution in Newfoundland remain consistent with those observed by Boulva and McLaren (1979), though little is known regarding the presence of seals in some large coastal areas such as Bonavista Bay. Sjare et al. (2005) also concluded that the same areas remain important as harbour seal habitat in Labrador as were noted in the 1970s (Brice-Bennett 1977).

The distribution of harbour seals in the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence, with the exception of the eastern and northeastern portions of the Gulf, was recently assessed using aerial surveys (Robillard et al. 2005). In the Estuary, the distribution of harbour seals was non-uniform, with animals observed from the western limit of the survey area at Battures aux Loups Marins, to Matane and Godbout to the East, and to the upstream limit of the survey area in the Saguenay River at St-Fulgence. Few animals were observed along the North shore between Baie Comeau and Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, or along the shore of the Gaspé peninsula between Matane and Forillon. In addition, only one individual was seen along the coast of New Brunswick, including Baie des Chaleurs. In the Gulf, with a few exceptions, seals were concentrated at Anticosti and Prince Edward islands, and to a lesser extent near Gaspé, in the Mingan Archipelago, and at Îles-de-la-Madeleine.

Data derived from a 1997 questionnaire sent to fishermen in Prince Edward Island indicated that harbour seals are concentrated in the southeastern part of the province (Cairns et al.2000).

Phoca vitulina mellonae

The Cree people of Whapmagoostui, who have lived and hunted in the area in question for at least a millennium (Crowe 1991), consider the current range of P. v. mellonae to be Lacs des Loups Marins, Petit Lac des Loups Marins, and Lac Bourdel, with some reports of animals having once been in Lac à l'Eau Claire (Posluns 1993; Petagumskum 2005) (Figure 3). This information is corroborated by the Cree toponyms in this area, which make reference to achikw (seal) and achikunipi (seal lake) (Consortium Gilles Shooner & Associés 1991).Inuit hunters, interviewed by Hydro-Québec contractors, reported seeing or killing freshwater seals in Lac Guillaume-Delisle, Rivière Nastapoca, Rivière Boniface, Rivière Niagurnaq, Rivière Kuunga, Rivière Longland, Lac Tasialuk, and Lacs des Loups Marins (Archéotec 1990).

Though Atkinson’s (1818) sighting of seals in Upper Seal Lake (Petit Lac des Loups Marins), during one of the earliest Hudson’s Bay Company expeditions into the Ungava interior, is the first written description of these animals, the French cartographer Nicolas Bellin (1744) seems to have coined the term “Lacs des Loups Marins”, establishing a written record of seals in this area dating back over 250 years. Subsequently, other sightings were made in the vicinity of Lac d’Iberville and Petit Lac des Loups Marins (Clouston 1820) and Lacs des Loups Marins (Hendry 1828; Finlayson 1830; Low 1898; Lewis 1904).

Figure 3. Core range of the Lacs des Loups Marins harbour seal, Phoca vitulina mellonae.

Figure 3. Core range of the Lacs des Loups Marins harbour seal, Phoca vitulina mellonae.

Doutt’s (1942) subspecific description of P. v. mellonae was based on a premise first advanced by Low (1898) that the population had been isolated for 3000-8000 years, trapped by the Ungava peninsula's isostatic rebound since the retreat of the Laurentian ice sheet. Since Doutt’s description, a number of seal sightings from all times of the year have been made in Lacs des Loups Marins (Doutt 1954, Power and Gregoire 1978, Berrouard 1984, Smith and Horonowitsch 1987, Smith 1999). There are historical references to the presence of seals in Lac Minto, at the head of Rivière aux Feuilles (Flaherty 1918; Manning 1946), and Lac Beneta, situated in the basin of Rivière aux Mélèzes (Manning 1946). A summary of seal sightings by Hydro-Québec contractors and employees between 1970 and 1990 indicate the presence of animals in a variety of lakes and rivers in the Lacs des Loups Marins area (Consortium Gilles Shooner & Associés et al. 1991).

Unlike harbour seals that move in and out of freshwater areas in other parts of the animal’s global range, P. v. mellonae appear to be long-term, year-round residents of the Lacs des Loups Marins area.

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