@Westcoastperson This animal doesn't have a single spot or rosette on its body. I have yet to come across a single photo of a ringed seal that doesn't have a bunch of them. It looks a lot more like a harp than a ringed.
@TinoPup Oh it definitely isn’t a Ringed that’s for sure. You saw the animal better than me, I’ve also never seen a harp seal before so you’re probably right but I don’t know it just doesn’t feel right. I mean the walrus and beluga are there because they are star animals. In the case of Natchek was stranded as a young pup in Alaska, so he was sent to SD in the same way seals stranded in the Atlantic go to east coast aquariums. So if this harp seal was stranded in the Atlantic why send it to SD? It could have come from another facility, in that case the question would be why is SD trying to get a harp seal? That would make more sense. But none of that matters your right it most likely is a harp seal.
@Westcoastperson Atlantic seals don't always go to east coast places though, just like Pacific don't always go to west coast. Easy examples of this would be the elephant seals at Pittsburgh, the Steller's at Mystic, and the fur seals at Mystic and New England Aquarium (until a year ago). There's also the research animals that go to UC Santa Cruz; that's likely completely unrelated, but it's not an impossibility. I just don't know what else it could be, other than some really weird hybrid?
Let's look at all the pinniped species.
-Obviously rule out sea lions, fur seals, elephant seals, monk seals, and walrus
-I think we can safely rule out Antarctic species (crab-eater, leopard, ross, weddell)
-The same with highly localized species (baikal, caspian)
That leaves us with:
-Bearded
-Grey
-Harbor
-Harp
-Hooded
-Ribbon
-Ringed
-Spotted
With just the face we can rule out bearded, grey, and hooded. All three of those are also much larger. Ribbon seals always have the same markings, with no variability; the pups start showing them at a few days old, so that can be ruled out as well. Now we have:
-Harbor
-Harp
-Ringed
-Spotted
Three of those have a lot of spots/rosettes, which this animal has none of. The harp seal is also known as the saddleback seal, though, and if you look at the image I posted right before this one, she does have a saddleback marking similar to ones I've seen on images of female harps. She does have black around her eyes and on her snout, just not her entire face, but to me it looked like it might be coming in? I have a short video of her coming up right in front of me, but no good photos of her face.
