Endangered
Antarctic fur seal
Arctocephalus gazella
Despite what its name suggests, the Antarctic fur seal is mostly distributed in Subantarctic islands and its scientific name is thought to have come from the German vessel SMS Gazelle, that was the first to collect specimens of this species from the Kerguelen Islands.
Appearance
The fur seal is a midsized pinniped with a relatively long neck and pointed muzzle compared with others in the family. Adult males are dark brown in colour. Females and juveniles tend to be paler, almost grey with lighter undersides.
Adults have very long vibrissae, particularly males, up to 35 to 50 cm. The fore flippers are about one-third, and hind flippers slightly more than one-fourth of the total length.
Range and habitat
The largest congregation occurs on the island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, that holds approximately 95% of the global population. Bouvet Island has the second largest population with 46,834 animals. Kerguelen Islands, McDonald Islands), some are stable (e.g.
Despite what its name suggests, the Antarctic fur seal is mostly distributed in Subantarctic islands and its scientific name is thought to have come from the German vessel SMS Gazelle, that was the first to collect specimens of this species from the Kerguelen Islands. South Georgia islands, that hold approximately 95% of the global population, had a total population in 1999/2000 between 4.5 and 6.2 million.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Even so, the vast majority of information has been collected during summer breeding months. The breeding system of the Antarctic fur seal is polygynous, and dominant breeding males mate with as many as 20 females during a successful season.
Males establish breeding grounds in October to early November. Gestation lasts from 8 to 9 months and a high breeding synchrony has been observed across the species' range, concentrating 90% of pup births in a 10-day window.
In crisis
The South Georgia population reached carrying capacity fairly recently and may thus be spilling over into relatively nearby, lower density sites. The population trend according to the IUCN Red list is 'decreasing' and it has been suggested that this decline is due to the effects of global climate change on prey availability. In April 2026, IUCN moved the Antarctic fur seal from Least Concern to Endangered on the IUCN Red list, alongside emperor penguin, as its population has decreased by more than 50% from an estimated 2,187,000 mature seals in 1999 to 944,000 in 2025.
Historically the species were decimated by the sealing industry for its fur and its population was driven close to extinction by the 19th century. Levels of predation may be high enough to cause a population decline at these sites.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Antarctic fur seal is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Antarctic fur seal, Wikidata item Q571449. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
