What Do Harp Seals Eat?
Harp seals eat a variety of spices. It also varies with age, season, location and year.
Harp seals will eat a lot of different sea food. Crab, krill, crustaceans, capelin, plaice, eels, shrimp, salmon, herring, octopus, flounder, cod, plankton, smelt, anchovies, jellyfish and squid, but there might be other different spices. Since 1941, we've been recording what is in the stomachs of Northwest Atlantic harp seals. The seals are collected for the data varying in age groups to see what kind of food babies eat, and what kind of food adults eat. They also collected them in the south and in the north when they migrated to see the different of food they eat while in the winter and in the summer.In the north: During the summer, they eat crustaceans, small fishes for example, Arctic and Polar cod, and capelin.
In the south: During the winter, they eat a variety of fishes (capelin, arctic cod, sand lance, greenland halibut, and flounder) and invertebrates.
Harp seals have several predators including killer whales, polar bears, sharks, and walruses, but the worst of all of course is humans. Humans used to hunt them year after year for their fur, oil, and food ( less seals more fish). Recently they've been blaming the harp seals for all the cod fish shortage of the eastern sea board which is simply not true. It has been caused from over fishing in the past 50 years. They also used the fins of the harp seals for food. If a pod of harp seal meets a pod of killer whales there would be a massive slaughter, kind of like a big fight between Mike Tyson and Oscar de la hoya.
