There are eight species of southern fur seals, all smaller than their northern relative. They include the Guadalupe fur seal of Baja California, the brown fur seal of southern Africa and Australia, and the South 

Female fur seals, or cows, give birth during this breeding season, then mate again just a few days later. The following year they will return to give birth to a single pup after a nearly yearlong pregnancy, and mate once again.

Although they breathe air, seals are most at home in the water and may stay at sea for weeks at a time eating fish, squid, birds, and tiny shrimp-like krill. Fur seals may swim by themselves or gather in small groups.

Male northern fur seals are much bigger than females being 30 – 40 percent longer and more than 4.5 times heavier than adult females.

A 2008 survey of the main breeding ground on the Pribilof Islands found the lowest level of northern fur seal pup production since 1916. Climate change may be disrupting patterns of prey abundance in the ocean. As temperatures in the ocean rise, the fish on which northern fur seals depend have begun moving further out to sea, where the water is cooler. If fish numbers are reduced or more plentiful further offshore, seals will need to spend more time foraging, thereby expending more time and energy on feeding and less on reproduction and raising young. This reduces the survival rate of pups, leading to a reduction in the overall fur seal population.

Because of such vigorous hunting of fur seals in the 1800's, in 1911 the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention was founded making it illegal to hunt seals at sea and restricting fur seal hunts to immature male seals on land. Despite the 1911 convention elapsing in 1984, all commercial hunting was stopped of fur seals. However, subsistence hunting by natives is still allowed in some areas.

As global warming worsens, the (un)natural mortality rate of the harp seals worsens, too. Harp seal mothers need large, sturdy ice floes to give birth to their pups since pups do not know how to swim for the first few weeks of their lives.

The 21st century has seen year after year of poor ice, sometimes leading to the drowning of almost all seal pups born in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, one of the main nurseries for harp seals.

In 2016, this ice report was provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (INSIDE), a U.S. agency supported by NASA, NSF, NONA, and other government agencies.

Seals are found along most coasts and cold waters, but a majority of them live in the Arctic and Antarctic waters.  Harbor, ringed, ribbon, spotted and bearded seals, as well as northern fur seals and Steller sea lions live in the Arctic region.

The ringed, ribbon, spotted and bearded seals, collectively known as “ice seals,” are Arctic inhabitants. The entire ringed seal lifecycle relies on ice and rapid ice loss in the Arctic causes seal pups to be prematurely separated from their mothers during the milking period. Rapid ice loss and the inability to build dens for protection leads to high pup mortality.