Endangered
Galápagos fur seal
Arctocephalus galapagoensis
The total estimated population as of 1970 was said to be about 30,000, although the population has been said to be on the decline since the 1980s due to environmental factors such as pollution, disease, invasive species, and their limited territory.
Appearance
Galápagos fur seals are the smallest otariids. Of the otariids, Galápagos fur seals display the least amount of sexual dimorphism. The Galápagos fur seals look very similar to the Galápagos sea lions.
It is the smallest of all eared seals.
Males grow to be 1.5 m (5 feet) on average and weigh about 64 kg (140 lb).
Range and habitat
The Galápagos fur seal is endemic to the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, South America. It is present on nearly all the islands of the Galapagos. It is endemic to the Galápagos Islands in the eastern Pacific.
The Galápagos Islands are heavily trafficked by tourists. Collisions with boats that frequent the waters near the islands could also be fatal to the Galapagos fur seals.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The adult seals feed themselves before their young and during particularly rough El Niño years, most of the young seal populations will die. Sharks and orcas are the main predator of most other seal species, but their migration paths do not usually pass the Galápagos.
In crisis
The total estimated population as of 1970 was said to be about 30,000, although the population has been said to be on the decline since the 1980s due to environmental factors such as pollution, disease, invasive species, and their limited territory. Due to the population having been historically vulnerable to hunting, the Galápagos fur seal has been protected by the Ecuadorian government since 1934. Over the course of the 19th century, Galápagos fur seals experienced an extreme decrease in their population size due to sealing.
Their population was able to recover in the 20th century. Around the late 1970s, there was an estimate of around 30,000 of them, and even though they were able to partially recover from their protection in the Galapagos, they still experienced multiple shifts in their population due to other environmental factors in the late 1980s that have resulted in a decline.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Galápagos 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 Galápagos fur seal, Wikidata item Q571618. 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.
