Wanda Holton, age 11, of Rapid City, S.D., for her question:
DO SEALS HAVE MANY ENEMIES?
Seals live in oceans or in inland seas. They have a few enemies with the greatest one being man. For hundreds of years, man has hunted and killed seals for blubber, bones, fur and meat. So many were filled during the 1800s that only a few of them survived.
Several nations, including the United States, quarreled about how fur seals should be hunted. Then in 1911 they agreed to limit the hunting, and the seals were saved.
An additional treaty to protect seals was signed in 1957 between Canada, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The number of seals has increased because of careful international management of hunting. In 1911 there were only about 150,000 northern fur seals on the Pribilof Islands. Today there are more than a million and a half.
Under the new treaty, seals are hunted commercially only on land. Canada and Japan do not hunt seals because none of the rookeries are in their territory. Rookeries are the breeding grounds of seals.
The yearly harvest of skins today averages about 60,000. The Soviet Union and the United States each give 15 percent of their catch to Canada and 15 percent to Japan. In this way, the seal catch is shared by all the nations in whose territory the animals live.
Seals have few enemies beside man. Large sharks and killer whales attack them in the water, and polar bears sometimes hunt them on ice. But the seal does have some defenses.
In the water, the seal usually tries to escape an attacker by swimming in strong waves and between the large rocks close to shore where most of his enemies cannot follow.
Some species take deep dives when an enemy approaches. A Weddell seal of the Antarctic, for example, can dive as deep as 2,360 feet. It can also stay underwater for as long as 43 minutes before it must surface and breathe.
Smallest seal is the ringed seal of the Arctic. It weighs about 200 pounds and is about four and a half feet long.
Largest seal is the southern elephant seal, which lives in the sub Antarctic waters off South America. The male can top the scales at 8,000 pounds and it can grow to be 21 feet long.
Every spring, seals go to their breeding grounds, called rookeries, to have young and to find mates. Most rookeries are on islands. Sometimes there are more than 150,000 seals in a single rookerie.
All seals have a layer of blubber one to six inches thick. This fat helps to keep the animals warm and also gives them energy when they can get no food.
Seals make up a group of mammals called pinnipedia. This name comes from Latin words meading fin footed. A seal's flappers look somewhat like fins.