Documents

Project Summary and Statement of Work:

Progress Report: Jul, 2005

Progress Report: Mar, 2006

Progress Report: Jul, 2006

Progress Report: Jan, 2007

Progress Report: Jul, 2007

Final Report: Apr, 2008

Factsheets

Project Synopsis

Press

Labrador Retrievers Assist Ringed Seal Researchers

LMEs

Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands

Arctic Ocean

Ecosystem components

Marine Mammals

Fish Habitat

Keywords

ringed seal

breeding

telemetry

ice seal

habitat

satellite telemetry

seal

pinniped

Research Priorities

Marine Mammal

Ice seal studies

515 Ice Seal movements

Year funded:

2005

Start date:

May 01, 2005

End date:

Dec 31, 2007

Budget:

$203,644.00

Websites:

Alaska Ringed Seal Project

Ice seasonally covers 14,000,000 km2 of northern seas and supports an ecosystem that includes spotted, ribbon, ringed, and bearded seals. These ice-associated seals are the main prey of polar bears and have been vital to the subsistence economy of northern people for thousands of years. The sea ice ecosystem and subsistence economies in the arctic are threatened by decreases in sea ice cover associated with climate change. Assessing the impacts on the ice-associated seals requires knowledge of their movement patterns and population biology.

The 2006 ringed seal field crew at Peard Bay.

Understanding the population structure of ice-associated seals will help the NMFS and Alaska Natives to manage and protect these important components of “the ecologically diverse marine ecosystems of the North Pacific, and provide long-term, sustained benefits to local communities and the nation,” a research goal of the NPRB. A primary need is to understand the vulnerability of local subpopulations of seals to extinction. If immigration occurs from other populations, vulnerability is low, but if immigration is absent or very rare, the potential for local extinction is high. We are using satellite-linked transmitters to determine whether ringed seals return to the same breeding locations in successive breeding seasons, an indication that immigration rates are low. We also have begun to collect and analyze DNA samples as a further indication of the frequency of immigration.

Principal Investigator(s)

Brendan Kelly
University of Alaska Southeast
11120 Glacier Highway Juneau AK 99801 USA
Phone: (907)465-6510

Peter Boveng
National Marine Mammal Lab, NOAA Fisheries

Collaborator(s)

Charlie Johnson

Bradley Swanson
Central Michigan University
Central Michigan University Mt. Pleasant MI 48859 USA
Phone: (989)774-3377

John Moran
UAS School of Arts snd Sciences
11120 Glacier Highway Juneau AK 99801 USA
Phone: (907)465-6844 Fax: (907)465-6406

Michael Cameron
NOAA Polar Ecosystems Program
7600 Sand Point Way NE Seattle WA 98115 USA
Phone: (206)526-6369