All of the drawings included on this page have been created by AWF Founding Board Member, Pieter Folkens. They are the same drawings that can be seen in the National Audubon Society's Guide to Marine Mammals of the World. In this education section, we will be featuring key marine mammals that are found in Southeast Alaska. This page is continually updated, please check back for new content.

Marine mammals are a diverse group; they include animals as diverse as polar bears, sea otters (which are related to weasels), whales, dolphins, manatees, dugongs, seals, sea lions, and walruses. As a matter of fact, this is a bit of an artificially clustered group because the groups just mentioned are not all evolutionarily directly related. People who study evoutionary relationships, called systemitists, would call marine mammals a polyphyletic group. The reason these animals are all lumped together under the same heading is primarly the commonality of their lifestyle.
      Mammals are a class in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, therefore they have a backbone and a few other key features of chordates that don't need discussing here. Although it may be obvious, it's probably good to remind people that mammals are defined by several specific traits. They share some features with other classes in Chordata, such as internal fertilization, two pairs of appendages, and a bony internal skeleton. What is special about them is that they have modified features of the skin called hair, they gestate their fetus internally, they feed their young with mammary glands, and they are warm blooded.

Mustelids (Family Mustelidae)
This is the weasel family; it includes otters, weasels, stoats, badgers, ferrets, fishers, martens, polecats, minks, wolverines, and much more! You can read about them at this interesting web site. Some land-dwelling members of this family, including the river otter (which occasionally enters salt water), are also found in Southeast Alaska.

Sea Otter - Enhydra lutris

This is a large marine dwelling otter found in the nearshore environment on the west coast of North America and the Southern Bering Sea, including the Kamchatka Peninsula. There are two recognized subspecies of this otter. The Alaskan subspecies ranges from the Washington/Oregon coast across the Bering Strait. The California subspecies is found from Baja to Washington/Oregon.
      As stated above, this is a surprisingly large otter with the body of adults being between four and five feet long. They have a thick coat of fur that was sought by native trappers and settlers. Their back feet are webbed and they have a thick tail that they use as a rudder while swimming. They rarely exit the water and spend most of their time either diving for food or floating on their backs at the surface of the water. They are famous for floating on their backs and cracking open sea urchins or other shellfish by holding them on their chests and smashing them open with a hard object. When the otters sleep, they rest at the surface on their backs. To stay in one place while sleeping, they will wrap themselves in a strand of kelp and thus anchor themselves in place.
      At this time, sea otters are considered to be a threatened species. Despite an increase in numbers due to hunting them for pelts being outlawed, their populations continue to be low because of other environmental factors such as habitat destruction and disease.

Click on a thumbnail picture to see the larger image.

Pinnipeds (Suborder Pinnipedia)
The scientific term pinniped means "feather foot" or "wing foot." This group is within the order Carnivora, and contains three families: Phocidae or true seals, Otariidae or eared seals (sea lions and fur seals), and Odobenidae or walruses. Usually, people find that they can immediately identify the differences between walruses and the other two groups, but are not clear on the obvious outward differences between seals and sea lions. At a glance, one may tell seals from sea lions by the method they use to move on land. Sea lions can tuck their rear flippers under their rear flanks and "walk" around on land using a facsimile of the four legged gait we are used to seeing in land animals. Seals must move around on land by using undulations of their body to propel themselves, for they cannot put their rear flippers under them. In the water, sea lions extend their front flippers and use them like wings to move and steer. Seals press their front flippers close to their body in the water and primarily use their back flippers as propulsion and steering. If you can get close to a seal or sea lion, you can also see that sea lions have small external ear flaps on the side of their head, while seals have a smooth head with readily visible evidence of ears.
      In Southeast Alaska, there is one species of seal and one species of sea lion found near shore.

Harbor Seal - Phoca vitulina

The harbor seal is a relatively small seal species, usually between five and six feet long and not weighing more than 375 lbs. They are found in the northern hemisphere below the arctic circle, and significantly north of the tropics. There are five recognized subspecies that are primarily separated by geographic distribution. Phoca vitulina richardii is a subspecies found in Southeast Alaska, and the coloration looks like the dark morph pictured in the above drawing.
      Harbor seals are not particularly social animals, and are not seen in large numbers together except during breeding season. They tend to be shy and quick, so while they may be observed hauled out on ice bergs, they flee quickly when approached. When in the water, they are curious enough to investigate humans at close range, but they are not inclined to stay long. For these reasons, they are difficult subjects to photograph.
      Harbor seals are fish eaters, and they are a favorite prey item of marine mammal eating killer whales.

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Steller Sea Lion or Northern Sea Lion - Eumetopias jubatus

The Steller sea lion is the largest otariid and one of the most endangered. It is named after the naturalist Wilhelm Steller who travelled with the Russian seaman, Vitus Bering. The sea lions were hunted heavily in the past, but now it is unclear what is keeping populations low now that hunting is illegal. As is typical for environmental issues, the causes are complex and may include an interplay between disease, habitat destruction, and overfishing, just to name a few candidates.

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Cetaceans (Order Cetacea)
The name for whales, dolphins, and porpoises comes from the Greek word ketos, meaning "sea monster." Within the order, there are two suborders: Mysticeti - or baleen whales and Odontoceti - toothed whales that include the sperm whale, dolphins, porpoises, beaked whales, river dolphins, and narwhals. Typically, toothed whales hunt down and catch their prey individually, while baleen whales feed on concentrations of small prey.
      Baleen whale feed by consuming large amounts of food with water and then straining out the water with the specialized feeding structure that is there namesake: baleen. A feature of the upper jaw is a set of long, stiff, parallel plates that are comprised of keratin, just like the material in the human fingernail. A picture of baleen in the mouth of a humpback whale can be seen to the left . In the picture you are looking at the roof of the whale's mouth as it lunges sideways at the surface of the water. Baleen is not actually a tooth structure. As a matter of fact, baleen whale fetuses have teeth briefly during development, but they are reabsorbed and the baleen grows in from the palate next to where the teeth appeared.

Humpback Whale - Megaptera novaeagliae

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Orca or Killer Whale - Orcinus orca

Orca are the largest member of the dolphin family, therefore it is a toothed whale. They have received a great deal of attention for their performances in amusement parks and films, sometime portrayed as villainous, sometimes as intelligent tricksters. As is often the case, the truth about orcas in the wild is even better and more interesting than most people realize. Killer whales are found throughout the world, but the orca off the northern part of the west coast of North America have been particularly well studied by a number of dedicated scientists. Much is known about this species, but more remains to be discovered.
      Orca live in groups known as pods, in which the common bond among most of the members is that they are matrelineally related, that is they are related through the generations of mothers and grandmothers. This type of group organization is also seen, interestingly enough, in African elephants. It is generally accepted that orca fall into at least three different "lifestyles." Killer whales that are called "residents" tend to have a well defined area that they frequent, and they feed primarily on fish such as salmon. "Transient" killer whales roam over a greater area than residents, and they seem to prefer other marine mammals for food. Both of these groups are often found living in near shore waters. The third type of killer whale is thought to be a transient killer whale that lives farther off the coast in deep water. These may also be marine mammal hunting killer whales, but this still needs to be substantiated because much less is known about this lifestyle of orca.
      Because of their ferocious sounding common name and the fictional accounts that draw people into movies, killer whales have been often viewed as an agressive and violent animal to be feared. Hopefully, this perception is changing. While they are indeed predators that hunt and kill their food, they pose no unusual threat to people. Studies have shown that they are intelligent, social, and communicative. Some features of their brains are very complex and suggest that they could have highly evolved neural structure.
      Native Alaskans have a great reverence for orcas and records indicate that they are an important part of their culture. The image to the right is one of the rare petroglyphs left by Native Alaskans (they typically used wood as a substrate for their images and art); it portrays a killer whale. This petroglyph is found on Wrangell Island and is thought to be several hundred years old. We know that Native Alaskans did hunt orca in wooden, canoe-like boats. This must have been an exciting and dangerous event, to be sure.

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