Caspian seal

The carnivore

Adults are about 126–129 cm (50–51 in) in length. The maximum reported size is 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) in length and 86 kg (190 lb) in weight. Males are generally larger and bulkier.

Range and habitat

The seal is found exclusively in the Caspian Sea, that is nestled between 5 countries. Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. Caspian seals can be found not only along the shorelines, but also on the many rocky islands and floating blocks of ice that dot the Caspian Sea. As the ice melts in the warmer season, they can be found on the mouths of the Volga and Ural Rivers, as well as the southern latitudes of the Caspian where cooler waters can be found due to greater depth.

It lives along the shorelines, but also on the many rocky islands and floating blocks of ice that dot the Caspian Sea. The local authorities have been advised about the need to preserve the seal habitats in the bay, but it is not yet clear what steps are planned to achieve this.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

A typical diet for Caspian seals found in the northern Caspian sea consists of crustaceans and various fish species, such as Clupeonella engrauliformis, C. Grimmi, C. Caspia, Gobiidae, Rutilus caspicus, Atherina boyeri, and Sander lucioperca. Caspian seal adults eat about 2–3 kg (4–7 lb) of fish a day and almost a metric ton of fish per year.

In autumn and winter, Caspian seals prey mostly on sculpins, gobies, and crustaceans while inhabiting shallow waters in the northern part of the sea. During the summer, in the southern part of the Caspian Sea, they eat herring, roach, carp, sprat, and smelt. Among breeding seals, a lack of fighting for a mate seems prevalent.

In crisis

Evidence suggests that the colonization events of Caspian seals were probably facilitated by river connections from the Arctic that have since disappeared, land-locking the populations sometime before the major Pleistocene glaciations. Since the beginning of the 1900s, the population has dropped by over 90%. In 2022, a substantial die-off of the endangered species was reported, threatening the isolated population at an estimated number from fewer than 70,000 by the Caspian Seals Research and Rehabilitation Center to 168,000 by the Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force.

Caspian seals are monogamous and mate only once annually. Even so, their pregnancy rate has dropped to a historic low of just 30%.A century ago, their population was estimated at 1.5 million seals; in 2005, 104,000 remained, dropping by over 90% and with an ongoing decline of 3–4% per year, primarily due to human influence (i.e. Fisheries bycatch and habitat encroachment), outbreaks of phocine distemper virus (PDV), climate change, and pollution. By 2022, the Caspian Seal Research and Rehabilitation Center (CSRRC) estimated the population at fewer than 70,000, and it is listed as endangered by the UICN.

Caspian 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 Caspian seal, Wikidata item Q742727. 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.