Steller sea lion

Steller sea lions shear

The Steller sea lion ( Eumetopias jubatus ) is the largest member of the eared seals. Its colonies are found on the coasts of the northern Pacific. It is named after the German physician and naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller.

Features

Steller sea lions have a yellow-brown color. As with all sea lions there are also among them a pronounced difference in size between males and females. The cops reach lengths of about 3 m and a weight of 1100 kg. The cows are 240 cm long and up to 300 kg. Cops are also characterized by a strong mane in her muscular neck.

Dissemination

There are 51 colonies of Steller's sea lions along the Asian and North American Pacific coast. The largest are located on the Aleutian Islands and the Kuril Islands. Other important colonies are found on the coasts of Sakhalin and Kamchatka and Alaska and British Columbia. Further south, the sea lions are rare and the colonies significantly smaller; the southernmost is located on the California Channel Islands.

Way of life

Most colonies are on islands in particularly rich fishing grounds. The Steller sea lion dive up to 180 m deep and feed almost exclusively on fish, but will occasionally ringed seals and sea otters attack and kill. Often the sea lions diving in large groups to work together to encircle the fish.

Like other sea lions come the cops in front of the cows in the colonies. You are looking places along the coast, which they defend in fierce fighting against their own gender. These struggles often result in serious injury. This weaker and younger males are gradually pushed to the edge of the colony, where they barely have a chance to establish a harem. Once the cows come ashore decides the place of their shore leave, which they will belong to the harem. Throw Shortly after they go ashore the females her cub. A few days later, the bull mates with the cows.

Stock development

Until the 1960s, the stock was stable at around 250,000 animals. Over the next 20 years, the population dropped by 80%. In 1990, the species was found in the United States as threatened under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, upgraded in 1997 to endangered. Then all hunting was prohibited and converted fishing techniques so that sea lions no longer inadvertently fall into networks. Since then, the western population, the eastern population, with a geographic focus, recovered in the Aleutians, but only to stabilize. Because of the age distribution is feared that the stock in the West from 2010 breaks again. The reasons are explored with great effort, but there are the sector dominated by fishing Alaska strong political pressure to seek alternative explanations for the predominantly adopted food competition with the fishing industry.

Others

Because of their high aggressiveness is this way, almost never held otherwise than as the California sea lion in the zoo. The Steller sea lion was hunted never in a big way, except by Inuit who used and use its skin for leather production.