Kristen and a gray seal at Monomoy

Kristen with a seal pooper scooper

Kristen Ampela, PHd student at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, has conducted her final year of field research at Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

For her graduate research she is investigating the diet and foraging behavior of gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) in southern New England.  She has spent the last few years looking at prey content in seal scats collected at Monomoy and other adjacent sites. She is also using seal stomach contents, and compounds found in seal blubber, to determine the prey composition of this seal species in waters surrounding the refuge.  The increase in gray seal numbers over the past several decades has led to increased interest in their biology, specifically their feeding ecology, and whether gray seals compete with commercial and/or recreational fisheries.

“Working with the staff at MNWR has allowed me to obtain large numbers of seal scats, from all four seasons for the past four years. Large numbers of samples allow me to be more precise in my estimate of seal diets, and cross-seasonal longitudinal sampling allows me to observe temporal changes in diet composition. I am also able compare samples collected at Monomoy to those from other sites to see if there is spatial variability in prey consumption”, says Kristen.

“The MNWR staff has been invaluable to my project, and has directly contributed to improving our knowledge of seal biology in New England and a better understanding to the impacts of the fisheries”, says Kristen.

Preliminary results: Her preliminary sampling shows that 64% of the gray seal’s diet in New England consists of sand lance, cusk eel and red hake. Other common prey items are skate, flounder and squid. Herring, mackerel, cod, and striped bass together comprise less than 7% of the diet. These measurements are based on the number of prey individuals recovered in 270 scats.