Phogue du Groenland

Harp Seals have been harvested for thousands of years by native peoples of the North Atlantic, including coastal Northern Europeans historically when the species occurred in the Baltic (Stora and Ericson 2004). Basque whalers began taking Harp Seals in more northerly waters in the 1500s. By the mid-1600s, French settlers began the hunt in the Gulf of St Lawrence, developing land-based netting techniques on the St Lawrence River in the 1700s. By the 1800s, schooner-based sealing developed, and the number of seals harvested rose dramatically in the Northwest Atlantic; from 1803-1816 the average annual was 117,000 specimens. The peak of sealing in the Northwest Atlantic occurred between 1818 and 1862, when 500,000 seals per year were harvested in many years, reaching maximum peeks of 640,000-740,000 in single years. During that time, it is estimated that 18.3 million harp seals, mostly whitecoats, were killed for oil. There was also early commercial harvesting in the Northeast Atlantic, though at somewhat lower levels. At Jan Mayen, the catch began falling in the late 1850s, likely due to overharvesting and population depression. From 1860 to 1900, an estimated 12.8 million seals were harvested from the West Ice (Lavigne and Kovacs 1988).

The 20th century saw the advent of steel-hulled ships, and the hunt continued, though Harp Seals became more valued for their pelts than their oil. The size of all three Harp Seal populations has fluctuated through time, driven largely by the size of the commercial harvests (Sergeant 1976). In 1983, the European Economic Community imposed an import ban on seal products, because of public reactions to the white-coat harvest and the average annual commercial harvests fell precipitously. Indigenous groups lobbied the EU parliament successfully and in 2009 exemptions were made for subsistence harvest products. Greenlandic subsistence catches of Harp Seals vastly outnumber commercial harvests in recent decades. Greenland took 50,000-100,00 Harp Seals annually in the 1990s and 2000s (https://nammco.no/catch-database). Harvests in the last decade average some 40,000. Norwegian catches for the West Ice are generally under 10,000 animals per year and little hunting occurs in the White Sea.

Capelin collapses in the Barents Region in the 1980s resulted in Harp Seals shifting their distribution southward and foraging along the coast of Norway, resulting in several major mortality events in shore-based net fisheries. Bycatch mortality from nets was estimated to be 56,647 (perhaps up to 100,000) in 1987, and 21,474 in 1988 though it is thought that actually mortalities might have exceeded 100,000 in each of these years (Haug et al. 1991). These events demonstrated the potential risk that fisheries represent to Harp Seals. A major assessment of fisheries catches vs marine mammal consumption suggests that there is strong potential for direct competition between fisheries and pinnipeds (and other marine mammals) in the Greenland Sea, while competition in the Barents Sea is likely not currently an issue (Skern-Mauritzen et al. 2022).

A major threat to Harp Seals is climate warming (Laidre et al. 2008, 2015, Kovacs et al. 2011, 2012, 2021) which is already impacting all populations through reductions in their drift ice breeding habitats and likely via indirect impacts on their prey populations as well. Recently there have been years with very high pup mortalities because of low ice availability and great variability and generally low survivorship seem to be the new norm (Johnston et al. 2005, Bajzak et al. 2011, Stenson and Hammill 2014, Hammill et al. 2015, 2021, Stenson et al. 2020). In North America, years with high stranding numbers are correlated with environmental conditions, including warm temperatures and little sea ice (Haverkamp et al. 2023). Shifts have occurred in the location of whelping locations in the Greenland Sea and in the Northwest Atlantic during years when ice conditions have been extremely poor (Rosing-Asvid 2008, Stenson et al. 2016, 2020). When pupping occurs outside the traditional areas, the young may be exposed to ice that is less stable and to different prey fields during the period when they are first learning to find food. In the Greenland Sea and in areas off Newfoundland, increased predation from Polar Bears which travel great distances to seek out the pupping concentrations (Peacock et al. 2013) might become a significant survivorship issue. Other changes include shifts in abundance and distribution of many key prey species for Harp Seals which has negatively impacted body condition and reproductive rates in all populations (Øigård et al. 2013, Stenson et al. 2020). Large Atlantic cod stocks in the Northeast Atlantic are likely competing with Harp Seals for prey (Bogstad et al. 2015, Stenson et al. 2020) and the overall borealisation and base-line nutrient shifts in the Barents Sea is likely to continue to negatively impact Harp Seal’s traditional Arctic fish and invertebrate prey populations (Fossheim et al. 2015, de la Vega et al. 2022).

In the Northeast Atlantic, quotas for Harp Seals are set by the Joint Norwegian/Russian Commission, based on recommendations made by the International Council for Exploration of the Sea (see ICES 2019, 2023). White-coated pups are protected in Norway and Russia. However, there are no quotas in Greenland.

Further research into the population trend of this species is recommended.