Recent and historic occurrences of leopard seals ( Hydrurga leptonyx ) at Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Eastern Polynesia
- PDF / 857,276 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 22 Downloads / 191 Views
SHORT NOTE
Recent and historic occurrences of leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) at Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Eastern Polynesia Brent S. Stewart1 · Jack S. Grove2 · Annette Kühlem3 · Marcelo Flores4 Received: 6 December 2019 / Revised: 25 August 2020 / Accepted: 27 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Though leopard seals live and reproduce almost exclusively in fast ice and pack ice habitats surrounding the Antarctic Continent, they have been reported to range northward to South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean, South Africa, Patagonia, New Zealand and several islands in the South Atlantic, South Pacific, and southern Indian oceans. We summarize recent (2011 through 2018) sightings of leopard seals at Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Eastern Polynesia, and we discuss archeological and anthropological records (i.e., rock art, legends, archeological specimens, Rongorongo script) that arguably indicate that leopard seals have periodically appeared at the island for several centuries. We think that the most likely origin of these visits of leopard seals to Easter Island is from the Antarctic Peninsula to southwestern South America in austral winter as seasonal sea ice expands northward, or perhaps more recently from a small resident population in Tierra del Fuego, via the broad, cold Humboldt Current that flows northward along the Chilean coast from the Southern Ocean. Keywords Leopard seal · Hydrurga leptonyx · Easter Island · Petroglyphs · Rongorongo script · Polynesian myths · Archaeozoology Leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) live and breed almost exclusively in fast ice and pack ice habitats around the Antarctic Continent (e.g., Reeves et al. 1992; Stewart and Grove 2014), though small numbers have been reported from sites farther north in the South Atlantic, South Pacific, and southern Indian oceans (cf., Stewart and Grove 2014; Bester et al. * Brent S. Stewart [email protected]; [email protected] Jack S. Grove [email protected] Annette Kühlem [email protected]‑kiel.de Marcelo Flores [email protected] 1
Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, 2595 Ingraham Street, San Diego, CA 92109, USA
2
J.S.Grove Photography, 166 Peace Ave., Tavernier, FL 33070, USA
3
Institute for Ecosystem Research, Christian Albrechts-Universität Kiel, Olshausenstrasse 40, 24098 Kiel, Germany
4
Faculdad de Ciencias de La Vida, Universidad Andres Bello, Republica 440, Santiago, Chile
2017, Staniland et al. 2018) and in recent years at the Juan Fernandez Archipelago and along much of the coastline of Chile including, perhaps, a resident population in Tierra del Fuego (Aguayo-Lobo et al. 2011; Acevedo and Martinez 2013; M. Flores, pers. obs.), and at Pitcairn Island around 2100 km west of Easter Island (Stewart and Grove 2014). In October 2018 an emaciated juvenile male (determined by the presence of a ventral penile opening) leopard seal was found ashore at Hanga Roa Bay on the south east coast of Easter Island (www.inaturaist.org; 4 October 2018; N. A
Data Loading...
