Arctocephalus forsteri (common names include the Australasian fur seal, South Australian fur seal, New Zealand fur seal, Antipodean fur seal, or long-nosed fur seal) is a species of fur seal found mainly around southern Australia and New Zealand. , the common name long-nosed fur seal has been proposed for the population of seals inhabiting Australia. Males can be long. Females are between 30 and 50 kg (66–110 lbs) on average, and can be as long as . Newborn pups are 3.3–3.9 kg (7.3–8.6 lbs) on average, and between 40 and 55 cm (1.3–1.8 ft) long. At 290 days old males are about , and females are about . They have a pointed nose with long pale whiskers.
Distribution
The species occurs in Australia and New Zealand. It is found in the coastal waters and on the offshore islands of southern Australia, from the south-west corner of Western Australia to just east of Kangaroo Island in South Australia, and also in southern Tasmania and the subantarctic Macquarie Island. Small populations are forming in Bass Strait and coastal waters of Victoria and New South Wales as far as the mid-north coast. Before the arrival of humans in New Zealand, the species bred around all the New Zealand mainland and its subantarctic islands. There are now established and expanding colonies around the entire South Island, on Stewart Island and all of the New Zealand subantarctic islands. There are also newly established breeding colonies on the North Island.
Diving behaviour by the pups begins in the months leading up to weaning, when the pups are nursing less. The pups begin to dive from the age of 6–10 months, yet weaning is known to occur between the ages of 8 and 11 months, so the young pups do not have much time to learn to forage. The pups need to progressively develop nocturnal diving skills while they still have their mothers' milk to fall back on if dives are unsuccessful. Age, physiological development, and experience are important factors for success in hunting and contribute to the development of the pups' diving ability and behaviour. This transitional period, when young pups are becoming nutritionally independent while their foraging efficiency is rather low, is a time of high risk, and mortality can be very high. Based on scat samples, it has been found that the pups start by eating cephalopods and eventually making their way to fish, but this may just be a result of prey availability during different times of the year.
Communication
File:Arctocephalus forsteri - sound.ogg
Males vocalise through a bark or whimper, either a guttural threat, a low-intensity threat, a full threat, or a submissive call. Females growl and also have a high-pitched pup attraction wail call. In males, the full neck display is a non-combative posture that functions as a threat to surrounding males by which they are able to assess each other's dominance status.
Female seals have been documented to have a gradual increase in trips for feeding throughout lactation. It has been found that mothers who have sons made longer foraging trips then the mothers who had daughters during the lactation period. When observing growth patterns in the male and female pups within two cohorts, it is recognised that the growth patterns are similar, however the males grow faster and are weaned off nursing heavier in some years. Suckling can occur for about 300 days. Pups start to eat solid food just before weaning, Human factors include the handling of pups, tagging, and human presence in general. Further analysis of otoliths from their scat show that for fish prey species, lanternfishes composed the majority of their fish diet, followed by Australian anchovies, ahuru, and hoki. There are different factors that affect their diet, such as season, sex, breeding, surrounding colony, oceanography, and climatic patterns. Several regurgitations by sea lions have been found to contain remains of fur seal pups, some with plastic tags previously attached to female fur seal pups. A little less than half of the individuals were successfully released with good chances of survival even after significant entanglement wounds. On 21 August 2014, two decomposing animals were found beheaded near Louth Bay in South Australia. The circumstances of their deaths were considered suspicious and an investigation followed their discovery. In 2015, several conservative members of Parliament encouraged public debate around the potential implementation of seal culling in South Australia in response to increasing interactions with South Australian commercial fisheries. , the killing of long-nosed fur seals remains an illegal act.
Human activity near seal rookeries has been correlated with distress and panic, resulting in indirect deaths of pups.
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|South Australia
|Marine mammal
|National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972 (SA)
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|Tasmania
|Rare
|Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 (TAS)
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|Western Australia
|Other protected fauna
|Wildlife Conservation Act 1950 (WA)
New Zealand
In New Zealand, the species is protected by the Marine Mammals Protection Act 1978, which works to conserve marine animal species; it specifies that all wild pinnipeds cannot be touched or fed.