A trio of seal-sniffing dogs was featured in the September issue of Current, a monthly newsletter of the National Science Foundation. Marine biologist Brendan P. Kelly and researchers at the University of Alaska Southeast use the three Labrador retrievers to locate ringed seals in the sea ice of the far north.

Researchers are seeking to learn more about the seal’s annual movement and its fidelity to its breeding sites in order to predict the impact of decreasing sea ice and early snowmelt on the mammal.

The dogs find the seals’ breathing holes and snow caves in the sea ice cover. Then the researchers set up live-capture nets on the breathing hole and attach satellite tags to the captured seals.

An Inuit hunter taught Kelly how to use dogs to find seals. The dogs run ahead of the researchers’ snow machines “sniffing” for the scent of a seal. When the dogs detect an odor, they run in a zig-zag pattern, which gets shorter and shorter as they close in on the scent. The dogs start digging until Kelly and his co-workers call away the dogs and set up a live-capture net on the breathing hole. The net prevents the seal from diving back into the water after it comes up for air. The biologists take skin and hair samples and attach satellite tags.

The tag, attached to a flipper, allows researchers to track the seals for more than a year and monitor the seals’ movements between mating seasons. The ringed seal can make deep dives, down to 300 feet, and stay submerged for up to 45 minutes.

Kelly says the dogs have a 80 to 85 percent success rate in the five to ten kilometer radius around campsites. They find 100 to 200 holes in a month. Kelly trained his first Labrador to find seals by using seal-skin slippers buried in the snow. Now young dogs are taken out with experienced dogs to learn how to track the seals. 

The research is meant to produce more information about the four ice-associated seals (spotted, ribbon, ringed, and bearded) and the impact of global warming on them. The research so far has shown that ringed seals are emerging from their lairs earlier, corresponding with earlier snowmelt. Early snowmelt exposes seal pups prematurely and increases their death rates from exposure to the cold and to predators.

The National Marine Fisheries Service announced in September that it will review the status of ringed, bearded and spotted seals as candidates for threatened or endangered species protection. The agency is responding to a petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity 

Ringed seals are found throughout oceans around the North Pole. They are the smallest of seal species, growing up to five feet in length and weighing up to 150 pounds. They dig their cone-shaped breathing holes through the ice with the claws of their front flippers. In the snow accumulated around the holes, the seals build caves or lairs in which the female gives birth to one pup.