Cape Fur Seal

Cape Fur Seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus)

A good spot to see these furry marine mammals up close is at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront Marina in Cape Town. I spent some time with them on the first afternoon of my own five day explorational educational of the greater Cape Town area. They were just loafing around on the jetties and grooming themselves while basking in the last rays of afternoon sunshine.

The Cape Fur Seal is a sub-species of the Afro-Australian Fur Seal, and is endemic to southern Africa, occurring along our coastline from the southern point of Angola on our west coast to East London on our east coast. They say roughly 2 million of them inhabit this range.

They breed on offshore islands as well as in large mainland colonies on the arid west coast. Mature bulls arrive at the breeding colonies in mid-October where they establish territories defending them from rivals. The cows arrive about a week later to give birth to their single pup conceived the previous year. 



The bulls then acquire a harem of several cows and mating begins about a week after they have given birth.

Being generalist feeders they prey on a wide variety of marine animals, mainly targeting the locally abundant species of shoaling pelagic fish such as pilchard,anchovies, hake, Cape mackeral and snoek, and have also been known to catch squid, crustaceans and even seagulls and penguins! They can dive to about 200m where their well developed eyes seem to almost pop out of their sockets, helping them to see in even the murkiest conditions.  Usually not venturing more than 160km out to sea they forage within 220km of their colony.

As I admired the beautiful shiny coats of these loafers at the V&A Waterfront, I was also intrigued by the structure of their back flippers with claws protruding for grooming.

Fur seals have two thick layers of fur consisting of a soft inner layer and a more bristly outer layer. They differ from true seals in that they have little external ears and have larger front flippers used to propel themselves through the water. True seals have no external ears and make use of their back flippers. 

Victoria & Alfred Waterfront - Cape Town

March 2013

References:

http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/mammals/carnivora/arctocephalus_pusillus.htm

http://www.animalocean.co.za/2016/09/10-fascinating-facts-about-cape-fur-seals/

http://oceanadventures.co.za/facts-cape-fur-seal-arctocephalus-pusillus-pusillus/

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