GRAY SEAL FACTS
Description
The male Gray Seal is dark grey with lighter silver grey spots. The male has a long-arched roman nose. The female is silver-grey with small scattered dark spots. The underside is lighter in both male and female.
Gray seals feed on a wide variety of fish, crustaceans, and cephalopods. Sand eels or sand lances are the preferred prey in many areas. Like other seal species, gray seals also consume seabirds occasionally.
Gray Seal (Halichoerus grypus)
No photo of the Gray Seal available.
The Gray Seal is from the order Carnivora. The Carnivora (or carnivores) are meat eating mammals.
Gray Seal
Order: Pinnipedia
Family: Phocidae
Genus and Species: Halichoerus grypus ...
Gray Seals
This is an excellent opportunity to see Gray Seals which are uncommon further south.
Gray Seal
Order: Carnivora
Family: Phocidae
Halichoerus grypus - male in back with female, pup, and subadult (lower right); inset shows color variations
Click to enlarge. (89 kb) ...
Gray Seal
Halichoerus grypus
Resident in Barnstable, Dukes & Nantucket county waters. Also recorded elsewhere in Mass. as a northern vagrant.
The northern seals include two species of temperate coastal waters: the common seal, or harbor seal, of the N Atlantic and N Pacific, and the larger gray seal of the N Atlantic. The former is the only seal frequently seen off U.S. coasts.
gray seals (Halichoerus grypus)
northern harriers (Circus cyaeneus)
short-eared owls (Asio flammeus)
common ravens (Corvus corax)
black-crowned night-herons (Nycticorax nycticorax)
great blue herons (Ardea herodias)
raccoons (Procyon lotor) ...
It is a large seal of the family Phocidae or "true seals". It is the only species classified in the genus Halichoerus. Its name is spelled Gray Seal in the US; it is also known as Atlantic Grey Seal and the Horsehead Seal.
 See also: Sea Lion, California sea lion, Lion, Octopus, Whale
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