Identification

• Few ringed seals grow as long as even five feet, states the Alaska Fisheries Science Center website, with most in the range of four feet long. The seal weighs between 110 and 150 pounds. The largest of specimens attain weights of around 250 pounds, and the males are just slightly bigger than the females. Ringed seals feature different colors, but most are a grayish shade with a lighter yellow-white belly. In the winter and early spring, the ringed seal has a protective layer of blubber that insulates it, but the seal loses this fat as the breeding season approaches.
  
  

Habitat

• The habitat of the ringed seal is the sea ice that develops in the fall and winter and retreats with the onset of spring and summer. The seal lives on or beneath this ice most of the time. Using its sharp claws located on its fore flippers, the ringed seal opens up breathing holes in the ice. The seal can penetrate ice as thick as seven feet, forming holes that it can surface through for air. Ringed seals dig out small lairs under the snow where the females give birth.
  
  

Diet

• The types of foods the ringed seal eats depend on availability. The diet of ringed seals consists of aquatic animals such as squid and fish, with cod being one of their favorites. Crustaceans and shrimp, along with zooplankton, are also part of this seal's menu. A ringed seal is capable of diving to depths around 300 feet and staying beneath the water for as long as 18 minutes while it hunts, although most of these excursions last around three or four minutes.
  
  

Predators

• The predators of the ringed seal include the polar bear, a creature capable of killing it with one blow from its powerful paws. The ringed seal is the polar bear's dietary staple where the two species coincide. Other enemies of the ringed seal include killer whales, walruses, sharks, arctic foxes and wolverines; the latter two kill and eat the helpless young ringed seals. Humans of the far northern regions hunt ringed seals for food, their skins and their blubber.
  
  According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website, ringed seals are not on the threatened or endangered lists, as their population is high; ringed seals are not even a species that authorities would regard as "depleted."
  
  

Considerations

• Ringed seal pups possess a covering of hair at birth called lanugo, which protects them from the cold for about three weeks until insulating layers of fat develop. Estimates place the number of ringed seals in the Arctic at around two million individuals. Each May and June, ringed seals molt their hair and grow a new coat, doing so while basking in sunshine on the ice, on constant lookout for danger.