Harp Seals. By:Carly Spence 5th Grade Mr.Goldfarb s Class

Transcription

1 Harp Seals By:Carly Spence 5th Grade Mr.Goldfarb s Class

2 Introduction You are lying on the ice, your pup is nursing. It is your first pup. This is possibly the best day of your life. Until a human comes up to you. You screech and scream trying to make him get away from your pup, but it is no use, he won t leave. Then you notice what the human is carrying: a short kind of bat a club. Before you can do anything, the human raises the club bringing it down on your newborn pup. WHACK!!!!!!! There lays the lifeless body of your pup. What if that happened to you? Someone walks up to you and your child and whacks your child over their head with a club, killing them. Why do people do that? What did harp seals ever do to humans? Even though harp seal s products are valuable, what s more valuable than a life? Harp seals (or anything) do not deserve to be killed and made into something that humans want.

3 1 Living In The Arctic It s freezing out. Why? Because you are in the Arctic. You have come to research harp seals. You are going to research how harp seals survive in such cold temperatures. This is a harp seal sitting on the ice floes Harp seals are at home in the cold, icy sea. They live off the coast of Norway, Russia, Greenland, and Canada. The seals swim in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Those waters are largely covered with snow and ice. The floating ice is called ice floes. The waters harp seals swim in are so cold that many animals cannot live in them. Both oceans where harp seals live have large ice floes and packed ice (frozen seawater). The reason why harp seals can survive the icy sea waters, is all because of their blubber. Blubber is a layer of fat beneath the skin. That is the reason harp seals can survive such frigid temperatures. This is where harp seals live.

4 Blubber not only keeps harp seals warm, but it also helps harp seals float in the water. It gives harp seals their smooth shape, and blubber stores energy from the food harp seals eat. Harp seals are very good survivors, but their blubber does most of the work. Harp seals are one of very few animals that can survive the cold temperatures. Chapter 2: Description Have you ever wondered why a harp seal is called a harp seal? Well, if you don t already know here is why, Once upon a time some man (I m not sure who. He might as well be your great great great great grandfather), looked at a harp seal on its back where there is (in my opinion) a just plain oval. But that man thought it looked like a harp (a harp is a musical instrument). So after that day, the name harp seal kinda stuck. This is a harp seals back. Do you see the harp? An adult harp seal has a silvery gray body. Their bodies are long and round. Their bodies are also sleek and shiny. Their bodies look really slippery.

5 Male harp seals can weigh up to three hundred pounds. Females are a little smaller than the males, but most of a harp seal s body is made up of blubber. So that s why harp seals are heavier than you would expect. Harp seals have big black eyes that help them see very, very well in the ocean. Harp seals don t have ears but instead they have ear openings. Ear openings are slits in their heads. Ear openings help harp seals swim and glide faster and smoother in the ocean. Seals with regular ears are called sea lions. Some other names for harp seals are, Saddleback seals (because of the harp marking on their backs sort of looks like a saddle), and Greenland seals (because some harp seals live in the Greenland sea). Pup harp seals do not look totally the same as adult harp seals. They have beautiful white fur, and they are a lot smaller than adults. But if the pups didn t have their white fur, they would look pretty much the same as their parents. But do you think something should get killed for their fur? Well I don t. Baby harp seal pups get clubbed for their fur. Apparently their fur is valuable, but what s more valuable than a life? You can go to Chapter 8: Dangers for more information. This is a cute harp seal pup

6 Chapter 3: Getting Around As you might know, harp seals are built for swimming instead of moving around on the ice floes they live on. Harp seals are very fast and graceful swimmers. They have flippers instead of feet. The flippers in the front of their bodies, are used for steering. Those flippers have long claws. They use the claws to pull themselves onto the ice floes. This is a harp seal swimming Their back flippers move sideways. Those flippers are used to go as fast as possible. The back flippers cannot be turned forward so harp seals have to wriggle and turn themselves to get on the ice. Some people say harp seals move like giant caterpillars on the ice. When harp seals want to swim as fast as they can, they put their front flippers to their sides and use just their back flippers to push themselves forward. Harp seals are marine animals. Being a marine animal means, they go underwater but they can t breathe underwater. Harp seals take breaths every 5 10 minutes. They can hold their breath up to 15 minutes. To take breaths, harp seals usually poke their heads out of some holes in the ice floes or packed ice.

7 Ice floes are large level areas of floating sea ice. Packed ice is a large single mass of floating ice formed from pieces that have been crushed or frozen together. There are many other marine animals: whales and dolphins to name a few. Harp seals spend most of their lives underwater. Since they move a lot easier when they swim in the sea. Harp seals have big black eyes that help them see well in the deep depths of the ocean. This is a harp seal mother and pup together Harp seals are differently built to get around in water. But they still have to go onto the ice for many reasons.

8 Chapter 4: Food, Eating, and, Hunting Harp seals need to eat a lot. They need to store energy from the food they eat and put it in their blubber. Harp seals are carnivores. Carnivores are things that eat only meat and nothing else. Harp seals eat: cod, halibut, herring, redfish, shrimp, prawns, and crab. Pups on the other hand This is a shrimp one of their food only drink their mother s milk. As you know, harp seals do not get around very well on the ice. But in the water harp seals swim quite fast. So naturally harp seals hunt for food underwater. They go through holes in the packed ice and swim around the sea until they find some food. They go back through the same hole in the packed ice. To eat their food, harp seals do not chew it. Instead, they swallow whatever they re eating whole. They bite off chunks of it though, instead of swallowing it whole. Harp seals eat a lot of different sea creatures, but they have predators too. Go to Chapter 7: Dangers to find out more.

9 Chapter 5: Migrating When winter comes around, harp seals need to go to a warmer environment. They can survive the cold temperature in the spring and summer but once mid fall comes, the temperatures get so cold even harp seals can t survive in it. Most harp seals swim to the east coast of Canada, but some harp seals swim all the way to the northwest coast of of Russia, and the east coast of Greenland. Some harp seals swim almost 3,000 miles! This is where harp seals migrate It gets really cold in the Arctic ocean, so that more and more packed ice fills the water. There is so much ice in the water harp seals can barely move around in the sea. There isn't enough room for all the harp seals. They bump into each other. When harp seals migrate they travel alone. But soon they will meet up with other harp seals. Harp seals will stay in their winter habitat until spring. Soon the packed ice melts and harp seals are ready to migrate back to their summer habitat. But, first harp seals will mate and when they come back the next year they will have their pup. If harp seals didn t migrate into warmer water, they would all die out. So migrating is very important to a harp seal s survival.

10 Chapter 6: Pups and Growing Up In my opinion, harp seal pups are cuter than adult harp seals. They have white, fluffy fur and big black eyes. If they didn t have their white fur they would look pretty much the same as adult harp seals. Mother seals are called cows. Father seals are called bulls. The cow raises the pup but the bull never gets to meet it. All harp seals have their pups at the end of February or the beginning of March. Each cow usually has one pup each. This is a harp seal just born When the cows are all ready to give birth they gather up onto the ice together. Most of the cows usually give birth in uneven areas to block bad weather and predators. When their pups are born their mothers smell them and listen to its cry, so the cow will recognize its pup. Pups gain 3 pounds a day from their mother s milk. After about 2 days, the yellow coat begins to fade and soon a perfectly white coat will appear. After about a week the cow has to leave its pup. Their white coat will help them blend with the snow. They can hide from their predators. This is an older pup

11 Don t worry, when the cow leaves its pup, the pup already has a layer of blubber just like its mother from the milk. The pup will wait on the ice by itself waiting for its shedding stage in life to begin. What happens next is the harp seal s shedding. Its valuable white coat slowly begins falling off, leaving its harp marking and shiny silver skin. Soon when all its fur is off, the pup (well not really a pup anymore) will start to migrate with its herd. It will begin its new adult harp seal life! Chapter 7: Dangers There are many dangers for harp seals: 1. is predators and 2. is humans. Some of harp seal s predators are: polar bears, killer whales, and sharks. Polar bears can smell a harp seal from from up to 3 miles away! Life for a harp seal is not a piece of cake. You might think having predators is enough, but humans hunt harp seals too! This is a human clubbing a harp seal Humans hunt down harp seal pups for their fur, and also they hunt down adult harp seals for their skin, oil and blubber. Some countries have taken a stand and banned harp seal products to be imported, like: the United States and Mexico have banned seal products from being imported. Also, a lot of the countries in Europe have banned seal products. But yet still hundreds of harp seals get killed every year! We need to stop this awful thing. There are some organizations that help contribute to helping harp seals.

12 You can help harp seals if you want too. Start a protest, or make a website, or an ad to tell and notify people animals are being killed and made into clothes. If we don t take a stand, then harp seals could become extinct!! But i m not just talking about harp seals though. Lots of animals get killed every year. Some animals get killed to be made into things like clothes, or food. So, take a stand and help harp seals and other animals live. This is a polar bear one of harp seal s predators

13 Conclusion You are on a job to kill some harp seal pups to make into expensive coats. Your boss wants you to kill at least 5 harp seals a day. You are happy you got the job, and you need to impress your boss. Ooh!! You think. There s a pup nursing on its mother cow. You have to kill it to get your boss happy. You raise your giant club over its head there at your feet lays a dead harp seal pup. For some reason, you feel mad at yourself for killing the pup. You wish you could go back in time and never have killed the pup. You walk away feeling so, so bad. You call your boss back and tell him that you will never, ever do this job again. That man was right to do that. In the future that man will protest the killing of harp seals and make things right. I hope you will do that something like that in your life too.

14 Works Cited Websites : seal.html harp seals global warmingsea ice science environment/ seal/ Books: Harp Seals By:Kathleen Martin James Minneapolis, Minnesota Lerner Publishing Group 2009 Harp Seals By: Sam Drumlin New York, New York Rosen Publishing Group c2013 Harp Seal Pups By: Downs Mathews New York, New York Simon and Schuster Children s Publishing Division 1997