Scientists lead fight to save Caspian seal

One of the world’s smallest seals, the Caspian, this week joined an international list of species at high risk of extinction.

Aerial surveys by scientists from the University of Leeds, together with their international partners, have revealed the disastrous scale of the problem – a 90% drop in Caspian seal numbers over the last 100 years. Today, only about 100,000 of them remain.

Armed with this evidence, they are urging the five countries surrounding the Caspian Sea (Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) to instate a ban on hunting and establish protected areas to halt further declines.

This week, the survey team’s findings prompted the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to move the Caspian seal into the ‘endangered’ category on its official Red List of Threatened Species.

“Each female has just one pup a year, so with numbers at such a low level, every fertile female that dies is a nail in the coffin of the species,” says Leeds biologist Dr Simon Goodman (Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology). He is principal coordinator of the Caspian International Seal Survey (CISS) and director of a research project funded by Defra’s Darwin Initiative scheme, which is working with the regional governments to develop a conservation action plan for the seal.

“Without a suite of conservation measures, there is a very high risk the species will become extinct, and possibly within our lifetime,” says Dr Goodman. “We’re hoping that the seal’s change in Red List status will help raise awareness about their plight, and the many important conservation issues facing the whole Caspian ecosystem.”

There were at least one million Caspian seals at the start of the 20th century, but commercial hunting for their skins and blubber, pollution, disease and loss of habitat have all had a devastating impact. Both pups and adult seals were killed in their thousands every year on the ice-breeding grounds.

The latest survey results show that since 2005, the number of pups being born has more than halved down to just 6,000-7,000 – much less than the annual hunting quota – while the number of adults seen on the winter breeding grounds is down by a third.

The CISS aerial surveys are funded by the Caspian Environmental Programme, Agip- KCO, and Defra’s Darwin Initiative. The team’s findings were recently published in the scientific journal Ambio, Vol 37, Issue 5 (July 2008).

For more details about the project, visit www.caspianseal.org

Photo 1: Dr Simon Goodman (centre right) explains to colleagues in Kazakhstan how to take measurements and samples for health screening from a captured seal, before releasing the animal unharmed.