The metabolic rates of freely diving Weddell seals were measured using modern methods of on-line computer analysis coupled to oxygen consumption instrumentation. Oxygen consumption values were collected during sleep, resting periods while awake and during diving periods with the seals breathing at the surface of the water in an experimental sea-ice hole in Antarctica. Oxygen consumption during ...

Animals that endure prolonged periods of food deprivation preserve vital organ function by sparing protein from catabolism. Much of this protein sparing is achieved by reducing metabolic rate and suppressing gluconeogenesis while fasting. Northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) endure prolonged fasts of up to 3 mo at multiple life stages. During these fasts, elephant seals maintain hi...

Aerial surveys were conducted in 1999 and 2000 to estimate the densities of ringed (Phoca hispida) and bearded (Erignathus barbatus) seals in the eastern Chukchi Sea. Survey lines were focused mainly on the coastal zone within 37 km of the shoreline, with additional lines flown 148–185 km offshore to assess how densities of seals changed as a function of distance from shore. Satellite-linked ti...

In the past, the Baltic became seriously contaminated by organochlorines (1). The most dramatic increase occurred in the levels of the 2 major organochlorines, namely dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) occurred after 1955 (2). A rapid decrease in concentrations of DDT compounds started during the beginning of the 1970s, whereas concentrations of PCB compou...

The mammalian response to hypothermia is increased metabolic heat production, usually by way of muscular activity, such as shivering. Seals, however, have been reported to respond to diving with hypothermia, which in other mammals under other circumstances would have elicited vigorous shivering. In the diving situation, shivering could be counterproductive, because it obviously would increase o...

Slow wave sleep (SWS) in the northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus) is characterized by a highly expressed interhemispheric electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry, called 'unihemispheric' or 'asymmetrical' SWS. The aim of this study was to examine the regional differences in slow wave activity (SWA; power in the range of 1.2-4.0 Hz) within one hemisphere and differences in the degree of interhem...

INTRODUCTION Four species of seals live in association with sea ice in Alaska; these are the ringed seal (Phoca hispida), spotted seal (P. largha), bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus), and ribbon seal (Histriophoca fasciata or Phoca fasciata). Ribbon seals, the focus of this paper, range from the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk eastward into the Bering Sea and northward into the Chukchi Sea....

Influenza A virus isolates of the H4N5 subtype (which has previously been detected only in birds) were recovered from harbor seals dying of viral pneumonia on the New England coast from June 1982 through March 1983. When these isolates were compared with other mammalian and avian viruses in serological assays and RNA-RNA competitive hybridization, it was found that the seal viruses were most cl...