Find more broadcasts Expand Video
Gray Seal Pupping Cam

Gray Seal Pupping Cam

88 followers

Flag this content

Please select your reason for flagging this video as inappropriate from the dropdown below. We promise to review each and every submission within 24-48 hours.

If you are a copyright owner, or are authorized to act on behalf of one or authorized to act under any exclusive right under copyright, please do not flag this content but instead report alleged copyright violations on our DMCA notice form.

Cancel or

Video Gallery

Most recent
Gray Seal Pupping Cam

Gray Seal Pupping Cam

Pets, Animals - Other Animals

88 followers 162,855 views
Donations to Project Puffin help to operate the Audubon field station at Seal Island NWR. The funds received pay for student interns who keep the island safe for seabirds and seals by removing plastics and fishing gear that entangles wildlife.

During the shortest days of the year, hundreds of gray seals clamber onto Seal Island for an extraordinary mass breeding event. At this second largest of just four U.S. colonies, the seals come ashore for just a few weeks to give birth and feed their pups. The 300 pound females have one pup per year, with the peak of births in mid January. At birth, the compelling pups are dressed in a suit of thick, white fur (lanugo) which they begin molting at about three weeks of age.

Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge is a 65 acre sanctuary managed in collaboration with the Audubon Seabird Restoration Program (Project Puffin), which operates a summer field station here. The program has successfully restored Maine’s largest colonies of Atlantic Puffins and Common and Arctic Terns. From May through August, the seabirds can be viewed on live cameras operated by explore.org.

For over 200 years Seal Island was also a summer campsite for fishermen harvesting herring, cod, lobster. Excessive seabird hunting for food and feathers led to the loss of the puffin colony here. From the 1940s to 1960s the Navy used the island as a bombing target. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquired the island in 1972. The island is closed to public landing because of the unexploded ordnance and unique wildlife. Today, seals face new threats including entanglement in fishing gear, chemical and plastic pollution and illegal hunting. They are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.

This cam is part of explore.org's Pearls of the Planet initiative, created to help people fall in love with the world again. explore.org is a philanthropic media organization and division of the Annenberg Foundation.

Comments