Sable Island's Seals

Sable Island is a National Park Reserve off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. This twelve mile long crescent, isolated in the Atlantic, is known for its incredible wildlife — from wild horses to birds and uniquely adapted insects. The world's largest grey seal breeding colony, some 400,000 strong, flourish on this remote island home. In June of 2011, scientists tagged a handful of Sable Island's seals with satellite tracking devices and followed their movement for six months in intimate detail. Explore the map to see how five of these seals interact with the island and surrounding sea.

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How many seals can you find in the map? Click the seal button in the map for instructions on how to play the seal spotter game!

Sable Island is located off the east coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Click to see each seal's journey!

These animated paths follow the GPS locations collected for each of five seals from June through December of 2011. Toggle on and off the "Seal Tracking" layer in the layers button on the map to compare their paths with the other seals in the study!

Created by Laura K. Smith and Nicki Smith

Data sources | Baker L, Flemming JEM, Jonsen ID, Lidgard DC, Iverson SJ, Bowen WD (2015) A novel approach to quantifying the spatiotemporal behavior of instrumented grey seals used to sample the environment. Movement Ecology 3(1):20,
Lidgard DC, Bowen WD, Iverson SJ (2015) Data from: A novel approach to quantifying the spatiotemporal behavior of instrumented grey seals used to sample the environment. Movebank Data Repository
Photos from Unsplash by | Diana Parkhouse and Brian Yurasits
Learn more about Sable Island National Park