Seal Fur Research Articles

Total mercury in fur, whiskers and whole blood of Caspian seals (Pusa capsica) from north-east of Caspian Sea (Kazakhstan)

Total Mercury (THg) content was determined in the fur of 64 Caspian seals, in the whiskers of 59 individuals and whole blood of 29 individuals. The THg content in Caspian seal fur varied from 258 to 8511 μg/kg, in whiskers from 954 to 12,957 μg/kg, and in whole blood from 88 to 350 μg/l. There were no statistically significant differences in mercury concentration in biomaterial between males and females (Kruskal-Wallis test, p < 0.05). The 1–2-year-old seals contained less mercury compared to older seals. The THg content in Caspian seal samples was comparable to seals from different regions of North Eurasia. Four individuals had mercury concentrations in their fur above the threshold values that can lead to nervous system disorders (>5400 μg/kg).

Attachment performance of the ectoparasitic seal louse Echinophthirius horridus

Marine mammals host a great variety of parasites, which usually co-evolved in evolutionary arms races. However, little is known about the biology of marine mammal insect parasites, and even less about physical aspects of their life in such a challenging environment. One of 13 insect species that manage to endure long diving periods in the open sea is the seal louse, Echinophthirius horridus, parasitising true seals. Its survival depends on its specialised adaptations for enduring extreme conditions such as hypoxia, temperature changes, hydrostatic pressure, and strong drag forces during host dives. To maintain a grip on the seal fur, the louse’s leg morphology is equipped with modified snap hook claws and soft pad-like structures that enhance friction. Through techniques including CLSM, SEM, and histological staining, we have examined the attachment system’s detailed structure. Remarkably, the seal louse achieves exceptional attachment forces on seal fur, with safety factors (force per body weight) reaching 4500 in average measurements and up to 18000 in peak values, indicating superior attachment performance compared to other insect attachment systems. These findings underscore the louse’s remarkable adaptations for life in a challenging marine environment, shedding light on the relationship between structure and function in extreme ecological niches.

Alimentary exposure and elimination routes of rare earth elements (REE) in marine mammals from the Baltic Sea and Antarctic coast

Marine mammals found at the top of the trophic pyramid are excellent bioindicators of pollutants in the marine environment, the concentrations of which increase along with the trophic level of the organism. As these animals are usually protected species, their contamination has to be assessed non-invasively by analysing excrement and epidermal structures such as fur or claws. The present study involved testing the excrement and fur of the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) from the Southern Baltic coast and the Southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonine) from Admiralty Bay, along with fish muscle (food) and the lithological background of both areas, for the presence of rare earth elements (REE). The soil on the Baltic coast is characterized by the predomination of light rare earth elements (LREE): yttrium, lanthanum and cerium (∑REE = 7.86 mg·kg−1 dw). In the soil and bedrock of Admiralty Bay all REEs were found except for terbium, thulium and lutetium (∑REE = 96.1 mg·kg−1 dw). The REE levels found in the muscles of Baltic herring (∑REE = 0.057 mg·kg−1 ww) were lower than those in the muscles of marbled rockcod (∑REE = 0.540 mg·kg−1 ww). The situation was analogous in the mammals, with the REE concentrations in grey seal fur (∑REE = 0.489 mg·kg−1 dw) and excrement (∑REE = 0.676 mg·kg−1 dw) being lower than those found in the fur (∑REE = 10.1 mg·kg−1 dw) and excrement (∑REE = 83.6 mg·kg−1 dw) of the elephant seal. The LREE/HREE partition coefficients in the grey seal excrement (3.37) and its fur (4.00), but also in the faeces of the elephant seal (2.63) and its fur (2.65), indicate that in each species the process of elimination from the body occurs in similar proportions.

Bellows-type tobacco pouches from the perspective of native crafts

Among the collections of ethnographic artefacts in Estonian museums, there can be found several tobacco pouches, made from textile as well as leather. While tobacco pouches can vary greatly depending on the cutting method, sewing technique, and decoration, it is the technique and design of the bellowstype pouches which make them the most fascinating kind. These pouches gain their name from the inset that has been folded together like a pair of bellows; this inset allows one to open the pouch more conveniently when stuffing the pipe. Such pouches typically consist of three pieces. The front and back sides (‘cheeks’) are usually fastened together, and the pieces with a curved shape (whether of the same leather or of a different kind) are sewn on to the two sides between the cheeks, and folded to make a bellows. It is running or overcast stitch using linen thread that have chiefly been used. Machine-sewn pouches also exist. Leather patches, which are round, or which may resemble a rhombus or a heart, etc. in shape, are referred to as ‘ears’ when attached to the front and back of the pouch. They may be of the same leather as the cheeks or can be extras sewn onto the sides. Among the decorations that have been used we can find debossed ornamentation, copper rings, appliqué, and cut-out. The combination of the main material with seal fur and with fabrics or leather of a contrasting colour has also been used. Pouches that are lavish and require a technically more elaborate method of preparation are often embellished with bead embroidery. A floral ornament similar to that which appears on the beaded belts fashionable in the same period was usually used. Tobacco pouches were made at home for personal use, or could be ordered from craftsmen, and could be purchased at fairs and from pedlars. In addition to the collections explored in this article, leather tobacco pouches can be found in several museums across Estonia, and these pouches too warrant closer examination in the future.Keywords: ethnographic leather bags, tobacco pouch, bellows-type tobacco pouch, purse, leather, bead embroidery

Human Hair, Baltic Grey Seal (Halichoerus grypus) Fur and Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) Feathers as Accumulators of Bisphenol A and Alkylphenols

The purpose of the study was to determine the concentration of bisphenol A (BPA), 4-tert-octylphenol (OP), and 4-nonylphenol (NP), in human hair, the fur of Baltic grey seals and the feathers of herring gulls. Hair was collected from 42 volunteers, while grey seal fur (n = 17) came from the seal centre in Hel (Marine Station of Institute of Oceanography, University of Gdansk) and gull covert feathers (n = 26) were collected from dead herring gulls along the Southern Baltic coast. Assays of phenol derivatives were conducted using the high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection technique. In human hair, the mean BPA concentration amounted to 411.2 ng g−1 dw, OP 131.2 ng g−1 dw, NP 4478.4 ng g−1 dw, in seal fur BPA 67.5 ng g−1 dw, OP 62.8 ng g−1 dw, NP 39.1 ng g−1 dw, and in feathers BPA 145.1 ng g−1 dw, OP 162.0 ng g−1 dw, NP 37.7 ng g−1 dw. The increase of the analysed EDCs in hair was significantly influenced by diet rich in products of marine origin, as well as hair colouring, heating up food in plastic containers, using home cleaning products without protective gloves and wearing newly purchased clothes without washing them first. The concentration of phenol derivatives in seal fur was influenced solely by the uniform diet rich in fish. In birds, the feeding area during molting significantly influenced the concentration of BPA, OP and NP found in covert feathers.

Wear Qisi-Become Seal

Wear Qisi, is a t-shirt design depicting Inuit life emerging from the cut open body of a seal. The design highlights the dynamic relationships between Inuit people, seals and the land in the community of Panniqtuuq (or Pang for short), Nunavut, Canada. Seals become Inuit and Inuit become seal through hunting, eating, storytelling and art making. The t-shirt shows the idea of a shared seal-human life world, and highlights the idea that someone, not something, continually dies for the continuation of life (and ways of living). In pointing to a relational ecology that grounds Inuit ways of knowing, it simultaneously pushing back against the decades long ban and curtailment of trade on seal fur in Europe and the United States.Kevin O'Connor and duskin drum, two practicing performing artists and PhD students in performance studies at UC Davis write alongside Paulette Metuq, an Inuit graphic designer from Pang who created the final “Wear Qisi” image. In this essay, “Wear Qisi, Become Seal” they provide an ethnographic account of how the creative process involving the creation of the t-shirt design became an exploration into a set of complex questions concerning Inuit ways of life, especially in regards to human/seal co-relation. They place the “Wear Qisi” design alongside global warming discourse, and Inuit climate justice activist Shiela Watt-Cloutier's international diplomacy, to highlight the ways the global world is always already threaded through Inuit-seal wording. By tracing the effects of colonialism, including global organic pollutants that move through seals into Inuit bodies, and based on Inuit responses to climate change, the writers argue, that we, who are not Inuit, are all potentially seal, in seal, of seal, through and for seal. The “Wear Qisi" design counters colonial designs by entangling the global world into Inuit-seal relations.

The fat and the furriest: morphological changes in harp seal fur with ontogeny.

Ontogenetic changes in physiological performance often exemplify the development of adaptations to environmental challenges. For mammals in polar regions, the extreme cold of the environment presents a constant challenge to thermal homeostasis. The harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus) is an Arctic species that shifts its thermoregulatory strategy with ontogeny. Adult harp seals primarily use blubber for insulation, but newborn harp seals instead rely on their fur coat while their blubber layer develops. Harp seal pups are weaned abruptly, less than 2 wk after birth, and must subsequently learn to swim and dive in frigid waters on their own. This study examined how the morphological characteristics of harp seal fur change with ontogeny. We compared hair length, hair circularity, and hair density for neonates (1 d old; n = 7), early-nursing pups (4 d old; n = 3), late-nursing pups (9 d old; n = 4), newly weaned (molting) pups (2 wk old; n = 5), late-weaned (molted) pups (3 wk old; n = 4), and adult harp seals (n = 4). Hairs were shorter (P < 0.001) and flatter (P < 0.001) in older animals. Additionally, hair density decreased with age (P < 0.001), in terms of both the average number of hair bundles per unit area and the average number of underhairs present in any given bundle. These morphological changes were associated with a reduced thermal resistance of the pelt in late-weaned (molted) pups and adults (P < 0.001). Results are consistent with known evolutionary patterns of fur morphology associated with the transition from fur to blubber in aquatic species, yet this is the first time such morphological differences have been demonstrated across age classes within a single species. Thus, the ontogenetic patterns described here for harp seals recapitulate the convergent phylogenetic patterns observed across secondarily aquatic species. Overall, the timing of these ontogenetic changes may limit the ability of harp seals to adapt to the deterioration of sea ice in the Arctic, as predicted with continued climate change.

Life at the Frontier

Life at the Frontier

Caribou to Cod: Moravian Missionary Influence on Inuit Subsistence Strategies

German Moravian missionaries arrived in Labrador, Canada at the end of the 18th century. They intended to introduce Christianity to Inuit peoples without disrupting important aspects of traditional Inuit culture, such as hunting practices. Over time the Moravians began introducing more than just religion: European raw materials, manufactured products, and foods. As a result, Inuit were incorporated into a market economy in which the export of local goods produced by Inuit labor such as seal oil, dried fish, ivory, and fur were exchanged for iron tools, guns, cloth, and ceramics. Simultaneously, becoming part of a larger global economy meant changing aspects of the local subsistence economy. Inuit subsistence strategies were incorporated into a Moravian economic strategy, and ecological relationships changed as a result of colonial influences. Integration into a market economy also altered the spiritual intersection between Inuit and animals.

“So, the European Union is 50…”

Canadians in particular are in danger of becoming Europhobic the result of hostile media coverage of Europe.... That is mistake, because the EU - portrayed by the media bloated, antidemocratic superstate - has been success story in creating an economically powerful union of 27 countries.1Whether Canadians will become as Europhobic the British is to some extent in the hands of the media, who play vital sociopolitical role. Since reality is partially discursively constructed, it is in essence the media's role to either frame the European Union - and its institutions, activities, and peoples - a bloated, anti-democratic superstate, or instead a success story, suggested by Klaus Hansen, former president of the European parliament. In this article, it is our goal to identify and analyze the linguistic means and strategies used to represent the EU in Canadian print media. We are particularly interested in the ways in which the E U' s 50th anniversary celebrated at time when Germany assumed the helm of the European Union (e.g., the presidency of the EU Council) - was covered by multiple media sources. While coverage of the EU tends to be rather sporadic and only intensifies in times of transatlantic crises (i.e., during the 1995 turbot war or the banning of Canadian seal fur products from European markets), this event provided unique opportunity for the media to report on the EU in broader terms, in ways somewhat detached from day-to-day business. Furthermore, it presented distinctive occasion to contemplate the advantages and disadvantages of the European project.We assume that both the presence and effectiveness of the EU on the world stage are fundamentally dependent on the ways it is recognized and constructed political entity. Media influence the ways expectations are generated vis-a-vis the European Union and its capabilities to deliver tangible results global actor. It has been noted that the existence of public that is shared amongst the citizens of the EU constitutes necessary condition for the democratization of the complex system of EU governance in general.2. The lack thereof is considered to be one of the root causes of the alleged democratic deficit. We argue that media play critical role in both respects - part of the problem and the solution - ultimately depending upon the ways they report E U- related issues. While the importance of an internal EU sphere has been emphasized in the literature, it is interesting to note that academic research has largely ignored the roles assumed by the media in creating the E U' s image abroad. Only very recently have some academics launched research projects to examine the E U' s perception in third countries in general and in Canada in particular.3This article is divided into four parts. The first describes our methodological design, the critical discourse analysis. This is followed by an overview of the history of the relationship between Canada and the EU. Next, we provide an example of discursive analysis of one of the topics that we have identified in our corpus. Selected media representations of the EU's 50th anniversary on 25 March 2007 are examined within the framework of our analysis. This is followed by brief assessment of the representation of the German EU council presidency in Canada's national print media. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the results of our analyses and discusses implications for future research.CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSISCritical discourse analysis has demonstrated rather successfully the many ways in which language use is linked to wider social and cultural processes.4 Scholars of discursive analysis start from assumptions that language and human society are inextricable and that much of the life and experience people share broadly occurs through language. They agree that discourse is practical and social activity reflecting and reproducing culture; it can therefore only be fully understood and analyzed in relation to the situations, institutions, and sociopolitical- s ocio cultural structures that frame particular discursive event. …

Turbulent drag reduction by the seal fur surface

The drag-reducing ability of the seal fur surface was tested in a rectangular channel flow using water and a glycerol-water mixture to measure the pressure drop along the channel in order to evaluate friction factors in a wide range of Reynolds number conditions, and the drag reduction effect was confirmed quantitatively. The maximum reduction ratio was evaluated to be 12% for the glycerol-water mixture. The effective range of the Reynolds number, where the drag reduction was remarkable, was wider for the seal fur surface compared to that of a riblet surface measured in this channel and in previous studies. It was also found that for the seal fur surface, unlike riblets, any drag increase due to the effect of surface roughness was not found up to the highest Reynolds number tested. Measurements of the seal fur surface using a 3D laser microscope revealed that there were riblet-like grooves, composed of arranged fibers, of which spacings were comparable to that of effective riblets and were distributed in various wavelengths. Using LDV measurements, it was found that the difference in the mean velocity scaled by the outer variable among the smooth, riblet, and seal fur surfaces did not appear at any spanwise locations. Streamwise turbulence intensity for the seal fur surface was found to be about 5% smaller than those for smooth and riblet surfaces.

Turbulent Drag Reduction on Seal Fur Surfaces

The pressure losses for three kinds of fur surfaces (those of ribbon, spotted and harp seals) were measured in a rectangular water channel flow using the water and a glycerol-water mixture. The data were compared with those of smooth and riblet surfaces. The drag reduction could be obtained for all kinds of seal fur surfaces the maximum reductions were estimated to be about 12% on ribbon seal, 8.5% on spotted seal and 3.5% on harp seal for glycerol-water. Compared to the riblet surface, the range of Reynolds number where the drag reduction ratio was almost the maximum was wider for ribbon and spotted seal fur surfaces with hydrophilic property, while it was not for harp seal fur surface with hydrophobic property. It was found that for the ribbon seal, unlike the riblet, a drag increase due to the effect of surface roughness did not appear even at the highest Roynolds number tested. The measurements of seal fur surfaces using a 3D laser microscope revealed that the roughness of three kinds of seal fur surfaces was comprised of various wavelengths.

アザラシ毛皮面および不織布面における乱流摩擦抵抗低減に関する研究(S22-5 境界層,管内流の制御-1,S22 流れ制御の技術)

The purpose of this research is to develop a new technique for the turbulent drag reduction as the passive control. The pressure loss of three kinds of seal fur (Ribbon, Spotted and Harp seals) and an electret nonwoven fabric surfaces was measured in the channel flow using the water and glycerol-water (40 wt%). The data was compared with those of smooth and riblet surface. The drag reduction could be obtained for all kinds of seal fur surfaces; it was estimated to be 11.5 % on ribbon seal, 9.5 % on spotted seal and 3.5 % on harp seal for glycerol-water, while the drag reduction was not achieved for the electret nonwoven fabric surface.

Aging of karakul and seal fur skins

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