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: Scientific classification or biological classification is how biologists group and categorize extinct and living species of organisms. ... Phyla Porifera (sponges) Ctenophora (comb jellies) Cnidaria (coral, jellyfish, anenomes) Placozoa (trichoplax) Subregnum Bilateria (bilateral symmetry) Acoelomorpha (basal) Orthonectida (flatworms, echinoderms, etc. ... Typical Classes Subphylum Urochordata - Tunicates Ascidiacea Thaliacea Larvacea Subphylum Cephalochordata - Lancelets Subphylum Myxini - Hagfishes Subphylum Vertebrata - Vertebrates Petromyzontida - Lampreys Placodermi (extinct) Chondrichthyes - Cartilaginous fishes Acanthodii (extinct) Actinopterygii - Ray-finned fishes Actinistia - Coelacanths Dipnoi - Lungfishes Amphibia - Amphibians Reptilia - Reptiles Aves - Birds Mammalia - Mammals Chordates (phylum Chordata) include the vertebrates, together with... Orders Subclass Multituberculata (extinct) Plagiaulacida Cimolodonta Subclass Palaeoryctoides (extinct) Subclass Triconodonta (extinct) Subclass Eutheria (includes extinct ancestors)/Placentalia (excludes extinct ancestors) Afrosoricida Artiodactyla Carnivora Cetacea Chiroptera Cimolesta (extinct) Creodonta (extinct) Condylarthra (extinct) Dermoptera Desmostylia (extinct) Embrithopoda (extinct) Hyracoidea Insectivora Lagomorpha Litopterna (extinct) Macroscelidea Mesonychia (extinct) Notoungulata (extinct) Perissodactyla Pholidota Plesiadapiformes... Families Ailuridae Amphicyonidae † Canidae Felidae Herpestidae Hyaenidae Mephitidae Miacidae † Mustelidae Nandiniidae Nimravidae † Odobenidae Otariidae Phocidae Procyonidae Ursidae Viverravidae † Viverridae The diverse order Carnivora includes over 260 placental mammals. ... Genera Monachus (Monk Seals) Mirounga (Elephant Seal) Lobodon (Crabeater Seals) Leptonychotes Hydrurga (Leopard Seals) Ommatophoca Erignathus (Bearded Seals) Phoca Halichoerus (Gray Seals) Cystophora (Hooded Seals) The true seals or earless seals are one of the three main groups of mammals within the seal suborder, Pinnipedia. ... Species Phoca caspica (Caspian Seal) Phoca fasciata (Ribbon Seal) Phoca groenlandica (Harp Seal) Phoca hispida (Ringed Seal) Phoca larga (Spotted Seal) Phoca sibirica (Nerpa or Baikal Seal) Phoca vitulina (Common Seal) Phoca is a genus of the earless seals, within the Family Phocidae. ... In biology, binomial nomenclature is the formal method of naming species. ... Johann Friedrich Gmelin (August 8, 1748 - November 1, 1804) was a German naturalist and botanist. ... 1788 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Genera Monachus (Monk Seals) Mirounga (Elephant Seal) Lobodon (Crabeater Seals) Leptonychotes Hydrurga (Leopard Seals) Ommatophoca Erignathus (Bearded Seals) Phoca Halichoerus (Grey Seals) Cystophora (Hooded Seals) The true seals or earless seals are one of the three main groups of mammals within the seal suborder, Pinnipedia. ... In biology and ecology endemic means exclusively native to a place or biota, in contrast to cosmopolitan or one of various ways of being not native (e. ... Lake Baikal The Yenisei River basin, Lake Baikal, and the cities of Dikson, Dudinka, Turukhansk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk 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. ... For the village on the Isle of Wight, see Freshwater, Isle of Wight. ... Siberia Jim (Russian: , common English transliterations: Sibir’, Sibir; from the Tatar for “sleeping land”) is a vast region of Russia and northern Kazakhstan constituting almost all of northern Asia. ...

• 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. Binomial name Phoca hispida (Schreber, 1775) The Ringed Seal is an earless seal inhabiting the Arctic coasts. ... For the village on the Isle of Wight, see Freshwater, Isle of Wight. ... A glass of cows milk Milk most often means the nutrient fluid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals. ...

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 the frozen Lake Baikal is a dangerous activity, and many such hunters drown every year.

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) The international prototype, made of platinum-iridium, which is kept at the BIPM under conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889. ... The metre (Commonwealth English) or meter (American English) (symbol: m) is the SI base unit of length. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... PUP is a TLA that can stand for: PARC Universal Packet, one of the two earliest internetworking communications protocols Potentially unwanted programs, a term used for software you probably dont want installed, but isnt as annoying as adware, one example of PUP is spyware. ...

Nerpa (or Lake Baikal Seal-Phoca sibirica)

Description

The Nerpa is one of the smallest true seals. The adult Nerpa, or Lake Baikal Seal Grows to be around 1.3 meters in length and can weigh from 63-70 kg. (Seal Conservation society, www.pinnipeds.org) . The animals show very little sexual dimorphism, the males may be slightly larger than the females, but not to any extreme degree.(Harrold, 2002) The seals have a dark, silvery-grey fur on their backs and fur with a slightly more yellow tinge coating their stomachs. (Pastukhov, www,bww.irk.ru/Nerpa/nerpabook.html.) The seal pups, when first born are around 4.5 kg and have a coating of white fur. This fur is quickly shed and exchanged for a darker coat, much like that of the adult. Rare Nerpas can be found with spotted coats. (Seal Conservation Society) Male and female Common Pheasant, illustrating the large degree of sexual dimorphism between the sexes Sexual dimorphism is the systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species. ... The stomach (Gaster) In anatomy, the stomach (in ancient Greek στόμαχος) is an organ in the alimentary canal used to digest food. ...

Distribution

The Nerpa is the world's only exclusively freshwater seal. It lives only in the waters of Lake Baikal, an inland sea on the edge of Siberia, that accounts for 20% of the world’s freshwater. It is 700 km long, 70 km wide, and more than 1.5 km deep at points. (Schofield, 2001; Harrold, 2002) It is also several hundred miles inland, so it is somewhat a mystery as to how the Nerpas came to live there in the first place. It can be speculated that they swam up rivers and streams or that possibly Lake Baikal was linked to the ocean at one point as the result of a large body of water formed in a previous ice age. No one knows how they actually arrived at Lake Baikal, but it is suspected that they have been inhabiting that location for 20 million years. ( Baikal Watch, www.earthisland.org/…) Siberia Jim (Russian: , common English transliterations: Sibir’, Sibir; from the Tatar for “sleeping land”) is a vast region of Russia and northern Kazakhstan constituting almost all of northern Asia. ...

The areas of the lake in which the Nerpas reside changes depending on the season as well as some other environmental factors. The Nerpas are solitary animals for the majority of the year, sometimes living kilometers away from other Nerpas. In general, there is a higher concentration of Nerpas in the northern parts of the lake, because the longer winter keeps the ice frozen for longer, which is preferable for pupping. (Pastukhov) However, in recent years there have been migrations to the southern half of the lake. These are speculated to be evasive action against hunting. (Seal Conservation Society) In the winter, when the lake is frozen over, they maintain a few breathing holes over a given area, and tend to stick to that area, not interfering with the food supplies of a nearby neighbor. When the lake begins to melt, the Nerpas tend to stick around the shorelines. An environment is a complex of external factors that acts on a system and determines its course and form of existence. ... Migration occurs when living things move from one biome to another. ...

Abundance and Trends

The Nerpa is currently listed as a “Lower risk” species on conservation lists (AFP, 2003; Seal Conservation Society) This means that while they are not currently threatened or endangered, it is possible and even likely that they will be in the near future. At last official count, the Russian government counted 104,000 Nerpas. That was in 1994. In 2000 Greenpeace did their own count and came up with somewhere from 55,000 to 65,000 seals. (Schofield, 2001) It is thought that excessive hunting, as well as poaching and pollution is quickly reducing the Nerpa population. (AFP, 2003) The main problem is excessive hunting. An endangered species is a species whose population is so small that it is in danger of becoming extinct. ... Greenpeace is an international environmental organisation founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1971. ...

In the last century, the kill quota for hunting Nerpas was raised several times, most notably after the fur industry boomed in the late seventies and when offical counts began indicating that there were more Nerpas that previously known, allowing the kill quotas to be raised. (Pastukhov) The quota in 1999 was 6000 and was lowered in 2000 to 3,500 which is still nearly 5% of the Nerpa population if the Greenpeace count is correct. (Seal Conservation Society) In addition, new techniques, such as netting breathing holes, and seal dens to catch the Nerpa pups have been introduced. In one area 3000 out of 4000 breathing holes had been netted, many probably illegally. A dogs fur usually consists of longer, stiffer, guard hairs—which can be straight, wiry, or wavy, and of various lengths— that hide a soft, short-haired undercoat. ...

Unfortunately, for all of Lake Baikal, there are only 8 wildlife patrol officers, which amounts to roughly 2,500 square kilometers each. It isn’t likely poachers will get caught. Even without poaching, hunting, even on a small quota, is a problem, because many of the seals that are shot or injured still escape, and die later. These do not fall under the kill quota, and are tacked on after. Sadly, it is unlikely that poaching and hunting will slow considerably, at least not without government intervention. One prime seal pelt will bring 1,000 rubles at market, more than a month’s salary. (Schofield, 2003) 1998 Russian Federation one rouble coin. ...

The other problem at Lake Baikal is the introduction of pollutants into the ecosytem. Pesticides such as DDT and Hexachlorocyclohexane, as well as industrial waste, mainly from the Baikalisk pulp and paper plant, have thought to have been the cause of several Nerpa epidemics. The speculation is that the chemicals work their way up the food chain, and weaken the Nerpas’ immune systems, making them susceptable to diseases such as canine distemper and the plague, which was the cause of a serious Nerpa epidemic that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Nerpas in 1997 and 1999. (Baikal Watch; Seal Conservation Society) In ecology, an ecosystem is a community of organisms (plant, animal and other living organisms - also referred as biocenose) together with their environment (or biotope), functioning as a unit. ... the plane is spreading pesticide. ... Food chains and food webs or food networks describe the feeding relationships between species in a biotic community. ...

Reproduction

Female Nerpas reach sexual maturity at 3-6 years of age, whereas male Nerpas reach it around 4-7 years. (Seal Conservation Society) The males and females are not sexually dimorphic. Nerpas mate in the water towards the end of the pupping season. With a combination of delayed implantation and a 9-month gestation period, the Nerpa’s overall pregnancy is around 11 months. Pregnant females are the only Nerpas to haul out during the winter. The male Nerpas tend to stay under the ice, in the water for all of winter. Nerpas usually give birth to one pup, but they are the only seal with the ability to give birth to twins. The twins will often stick together for some time after being weaned. The females, after giving birth to their pups on the ice in late winter will become immediately impregnated again, and will often be lactating while pregnant.

The Nerpas mate in the water, after the pups are born. Nerpas are slightly polygamous, and slightly territorial, although not particularly defensive of this territory. Nerpa males will mate with around 3 females if given the chance. They then mark the female’s den with a strong musky odor, which can be smelled by another male if he happens to pop his head up the hole to check things out. The female raises the pups on her own though, she will dig them a fairly large den under the ice, up to 5 meters in length, and more than 2 meters wide. Pups as small as two days old will then further expands this den by digging a maze of tunnels around the den. Since the pup will avoid breaking the surface with these tunnels, it is thought that this activity is mainly for exercise, to keep warm until they have built up an insulating layer of blubber. Polygamy, literally many marriages in ancient Greek, is a marital practice in which a person has more than one spouse simultaneously (as opposed to monogamy where each person has a maximum of one spouse at any one time). ...

The mother Nerpa will feed her young for around 2.5 months, nearly twice as long as any other seal. During this time, the pups can multiply their birthweight (around 4 kg) five times. After the pups are weaned, the mother will introduce them to solid food, bringing shrimp, fish, and other edibles into the den. In spring, when the ice melts and the dens collapse, the baby pup is left to fend for its own. They will grow until they are 20 to 25 years old. Look up spring in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Every year in the late winter and spring, both sexes will haul themselves out and begin to molt their coat of fur from the previous year, which will be replaced with a new one. They do not eat during the time in which they are molting, and often, males especially, in their lethargic state during molting, die of overheating, from lying on the ice too long in the sun. (Pastukhov) During the spring and summer, groups as large as 500 can form on the ice floes and shores of Lake Baikal. (Harrold, 2002) Nerpas can live to over 50 years old, exceptionally old for a seal, although they are presumed to be fertile only until they are around 40. (Pastukhov)

Foraging

The Nerpa’s main food source is Golomyanka, a type of bull head that lives only in Lake Baikal. Nerpas eat more than half of the annual produced biomass of Golomyanka, some 64,000 tons. (Pastukhov) They feed mainly at night, when the fish come within 100 meters of the surface. They feed with short, 10-20 minute dives, although this is hardly the extent of their abilities. (Harrold, 2002) Nerpas have two liters more blood than any other seal of their size and can stay underwater for up to 70 minutes if they are frightened or need to escape danger. (AFP, 2003) Nerpas also eat some types of invertebrates, (Pastukhov) and the occasional Omul, a staple of the diet of the people of lake Baikal.

The Nerpa is blamed for dropping the Omul’s numbers, (Baikal Web World, www.bww.irk.ru/Nerpa/Nerpa.html) this however, is untrue. The Omul’s main competitor is the Golomyanka and by eating tons of these fish a year, Nerpas cut down on the Omul’s competition for resources. (Pastukhov) Nerpas do have one unusual foraging habit. In the early autumn, before the entire lake freezes, the Nerpas will migrate to bays and coves and hunt out Sculpin, a fish that lives and silty areas and as a result usually contains a lot of grit and silt in it’s stomach. This grit scours out the innards of the Nerpa and gets rid of parasites. (Pastukhov)

Bibliography

AFP. 2003. “Russia's Unique Seals Struggle for Survival” (on-line), AnimalPlanet News. Accessed March 6, 2004 at http://animal.discovery.com/news/afp/2003825/Nerpas.html

Earth Island Institute. “The Lake Baikal Seal: Already Endangered” (on-line), Baikal Watch. Accessed March 6, 2004 at http://www.earthisland .org/project/reportpage2.cfm?reportcontentID=11&subSiteID=1&pageID=71

Harrold, A. 2002. “Phoca Sibirica” (on-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed March 09, 2004 at http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Phoca_Sibirica.html

Pastukhov, Vladimir, D. “The Face of Baikal- Nerpa” (on-line), Baikal Web World. Accessed March 6, 2004 at http://www.bww.irk.ru/Nerpa/nerpabook.html

Baikal Web World. “Baikal Seal-Nerpa” (on-line), Baikal Web World. Accessed March 6, 2004 at http://www.bww.irk.ru/Nerpa/nerpa.html

Schofield, James. “Lake Baikal’s Vanishing Nerpa Seal.” The Moscow Times 27 Jul. 2001

Seal Conservation Society. “Baikal Seal (Phoca Sibirica)” (on-line), Seal Conservation Society. Accessed March 6, 2004 at http://wwww.pinnipeds.org/species/baikal.htm