Species fact sheet by Global Register of Migratory Species - www.groms.de
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Phoca vitulina (Linnaeus, 1758)
Synonym:
Family: Phocidae
Order: Carnivora [Pinnipedia]
English: Common seal
French: Phoque commun
Spanish: Foca común
German: Seehund (There's a German version of this page!)
Norwegian: Steinkobbe (There's a Norwegian version of this page!)
Migration: partial migratory
Regions: [...]
CMS: App II (only Baltic and Wadden Sea Pop.; P. v. vitulina)
CITES: NL
RL1996: LR/lc
RL2000: DD (ssp mellonae)

map about the distribution of Phoca vitulina 

“The harbour seal is widely distributed in northern temperate and subarctic coastal areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. The species prefers protected areas, where it occurs in groups all year round. Juveniles migrate up to 500 km. Some subspecies have limited ranges, where they occur in low numbers, such as the Ungava seal (P. v. mellonae) from the Ungava Peninsula of Canada. Population numbers are probably in the low hundreds, but the subspecies is not well known and consequently classified as "Data Deficient" in the Red List 2000 (Hilton-Taylor 2000). A number of other local populations disappeared as early as 1800 (e.g. from Lake Ontario), are close to extinction (Henriksen & Moen 1997: Tana River Estuary, Finland), or are under severe threat (Seal Conservation Society 2001). In contrast, the other European harbour seal populations (P. v. vitulina) thrive comparatively well since 1990 with population numbers of 12,900 for the Wadden Sea in 1997, after the severe Phocine Distemper Virus epidemic in 1988, which killed over 18,000 animals (Bach 1999). The subspecies is listed in CMS App. II, and specially protected by the 1990 Agreement on the Conservation of Seals in the Wadden Sea (Fig. A2.15). The Eastern Pacific harbour seals are declining due to unknown reasons, and seem to be affected by El Niño events within their southern range. In addition, the eastern Pacific as well as the western Pacific spp. are suffering from considerable mortality caused by entanglement in gillnet fisheries (Seal Conservation Society 2001).”
Riede, K. (2001): Global Register of Migratory Species. Weltregister wandernder Tierarten. Münster (Landwirtschaftsverlag), p. 191

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by Ansgar Tappenhölter