The Nerpa or Baikal Seal (Phoca sibirica) is a species of earless seal endemic to Lake Baikal, a huge freshwater lake in Siberia near the border with Mongolia). Nerpa are unique among seals in several ways:
They and two subspecies of the Ringed Seal are the only seals to spend their whole lives in fresh water.
They are the longest-lived of seals (up to 56 years in females).
They feed their young on milk twice as long as other seals.
It remains a scientific mystery as to how the seals originally came to Lake Baikal, as it is hundreds of kilometres from any ocean, although it is speculated that they may have come at a time when a sea-passage linked the lake with the Arctic Ocean.
The total population is estimated to be over 60,000 animals, and hunting was practiced widely in the past (officially and unofficially), but has been put under tighter restrictions recently because of declining numbers. Hunting Nerpa on frozen Lake Baikal is a dangerous activity, and many hunters drowned every year pursuing them.
Statistics
Weight: 50 kg average (150 kg maximum) Length: 1.8 m average Food: mainly golomyanka and gobies Litter: usually one pup, sometimes 2 Diving Time: usually 20–25 minutes (45–60 minutes maximum)
Lake Baikal (Russian: О́зеро Байка́л (Ozero Baykal)), a lake in southern Siberia, Russia, between Irkutsk Oblast on the northwest and Buryatia on the southeast, near Irkutsk.
The world-famous BaikalSeal (Phoca sibirica), the only mammal living in the lake, is found throughout the whole area of the lake.
The overall impacts of watershed pollution on Baikal and similar watersheds is studied annually by the Tahoe Baikal Institute, an exchange program between the U.S. and Russian and Mongolian scientists and university graduate students started in 1989.
Hunting of Baikalseals is still carried out in the spring, the official annual kill for 2000 being 3,500 seals, mostly pups, a reduction from the 1999 quota of 6,000 seals.
The hunting of young seals ("kumutkans") is thought to be the main factor that led to a change in the population structure and a decrease in the reproductive success of the species in the 1980s.
The seals usually moult on the ice in the late spring but in mild years the ice melts earlier and the seals are forced to complete their moult on shore.
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