Harbor seals inhabit coastal and estuarine waters off Baja California, north along the western coasts of the United States, British Columbia, and Southeast Alaska, west through the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands, and in the Bering Sea north to Cape Newenham and the Pribilof Islands. They haul out on rocks, reefs, beaches, and drifting glacial ice, and feed in marine, estuarine, and occasionally fresh waters. Harbor seals generally are non-migratory, with local movements associated with such factors as tides, weather, season, food availability, and reproduction. However, some long-distance movements of tagged harbor seals have been recorded, mostly among juvenile animals. The harbor seal breeding season follows a cline along the coast of North America, with pups born earlier in the south than in the north; the only exception is harbor seals in the inland waters of Washington which are born 2 months later than seals at the same latitude along the coast. There is little sexual dimorphism in harbor seals; adult males are 1.4 to 1.9 m long and weigh up to 140 kg; females are 1.2 to 1.7 m and weigh up to 80 kg.; pups are 7 to 8 kg at birth.
- SMALL, R. J., P. L. BOVENG, G. V. BYRD, and D. E. WITHROW.
2008. Harbor seal population decline in the Aleutian Archipelago. Mar. Mammal Sci. 24(4):845-863.
- Ver HOEF, J. M., and J. K. JANSEN.
2007. Space-time zero-inflated count models of harbor seals. Environmetrics 18:697-712.
- BENGTSON, J. L., A. V. PHILLIPS, E. A. MATHEWS, and M. A. SIMPKINS.
2007. Comparison of survey methods for estimating abundance of harbor seals
(Phoca vitulina) in glacial fjords. Fish. Bull., U.S. 105:348-355. Online.
- MONTGOMERY, R. A., J. M. Ver HOEF, and P. L. BOVENG.
2007. Spatial modeling of haul-out site use by harbor seals in Cook Inlet, Alaska. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 341:257-264.
- Search the AFSC database for additional Harbor Seal publications
- Estimating Disturbance of Harbor Seals by Cruise Ships
3.04MB Online.
- Freshwater Harbor Seals of Lake Iliamna, Alaska: Updated Counts and Research Coordination for 2010
20.18MB Online.
- Using a Continuous Time Correlated Random Walk and Bayesian Inference to Examine Spatial Use Patterns of Harbor Seals in Cook Inlet, Alaska, USA
1.71MB Online.
- Search the AFSC database for additional Harbor Seal posters

