Fur Seal

Everyone recognizes a seal as a sleek sea animal with webbed, paddle-like limbs called flippers.

Fur seals are seals that have thick coats of silky fur, such as the northern fur seal.  Northern fur seals are big.

A large bull (male) may be six feet long and weigh 500 pounds or more.

Like most kinds of seals, fur seals live in the ocean.   Seal makes its home mostly on the small islands in the Bering Sea.

In autumn the seals leave these islands and swim south, almost to the northern border of Mexico, and then return the following spring.

During the entire 5,000-mile round trip, the seals never come ashore unless injured or sick.

At one time so many fur seals were killed for their valuable fur that there was danger none would be left.  Today, the number of seals has increased because of careful management of seal hunting. – Dick Rogers