Figure 1.
Study site in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, United States of America.
The map includes harbor seal haulout sites (black circles), closures associated with harbor seal haulout sites (red areas), non-motorized area closures (green areas), dates of closures for each area, and the boundary of marine protected area of Glacier Bay National Park (grey outline). Harbor seals were tagged at the glacial ice haulout site in Johns Hopkins Inlet.
Table 1.
Percentage (%) of grid cells (25 km2) that occurred in the 10 (highest intensity), 50, 80, and 100% (lowest intensity) utilization distributions in the marine protected area of Glacier Bay.
Figure 2.
Utilization distribution of female harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) during September and October.
Boundary of the marine protected area (MPA) of Glacier Bay is shown as black line. JHI indicates tagging location in Johns Hopkins Inlet.
Figure 3.
Utilization distribution of female harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) during November and December.
Boundary of the marine protected area (MPA) of Glacier Bay is shown as black line. JHI indicates tagging location in Johns Hopkins Inlet.
Figure 4.
Utilization distribution of female harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) during January and February.
Boundary of the marine protected area (MPA) of Glacier Bay is shown as black line. JHI indicates tagging location in Johns Hopkins Inlet.
Figure 5.
Utilization distribution of female harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) during March and April.
Boundary of the marine protected area (MPA) of Glacier Bay is shown as black line. JHI indicates tagging location in Johns Hopkins Inlet.
Figure 6.
Percentage of tagged harbor seals in Glacier Bay National Park.
The percentage of tagged harbor seals in the marine protected area (MPA) of Glacier Bay decreased in mid- to late September in 2007 (A) and in 2008 (B). The percentage of tagged harbor seals in Glacier Bay began to increase starting in late April and early-May in 2008 (A) and in mid-May in 2009 (B).
Figure 7.
Utilization distribution of female harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) during May and June (breeding season).
Boundary of the marine protected area (MPA) of Glacier Bay is shown as black line. JHI indicates tagging location in Johns Hopkins Inlet.
Figure 8.
Percentage of days spent inside and outside of the marine protected area (MPA) of Glacier Bay National Park by harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) during the post-breeding season.
There was a substantial degree of individual variability in the percentage of days that harbor seals spent in the MPA of Glacier Bay. Some harbor seals were more resident to Glacier Bay spending the majority of the post-breeding season inside the MPA whereas other seals were more non-resident spending extended periods of time outside of Glacier Bay.
Figure 9.
State-space modeled track for adult female harbor seal #PV08GB21.
Seal #PV08GB21 spent >200 days in the eastern Gulf of Alaska region and exhibited a high degree of fidelity to a region approximately 95 km from shore on the continental shelf from September 2008 to February 2009. Beginning in late February, PV08GB21 transitioned to a nearshore area at the Alsek River where eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) aggregate for spawning. Seal #PV08GB21 was tagged in Johns Hopkins Inlet in September of 2008.
Table 2.
Estimates of site fidelity and return rates of harbor seals (n = 37) to Glacier Bay and Johns Hopkins Inlet (JHI) the following breeding season (defined as May 1st) after seals were captured.