Baikal seals have returned to haul-out sites described more than a century ago

Expeditions in 2024 found seals not only on the Ushkany Islands but also at Svyatoy Nos, Olkhon, the islands of the Small Sea and along the Circum-Baikal Railway.

Alexander Kupchinsky, director of the Baikal Museum of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that in 2024 scientists observed a revival of Baikal seal haul-out sites. In the 1980s and 1990s haul-outs were recorded only on the Ushkany Islands in Buryatia. Expeditions in August and September 2024 showed that seals are again coming out at places described in studies as early as 1916 — at Svyatoy Nos, Olkhon, the islands of the Small Sea and in the area of the Circum-Baikal Railway.

In Listvyanka seals rest on the rocks next to the large cargo pier. “Before, this was unimaginable,” Kupchinsky said. The Baikal seal is one of three species of freshwater seal and is found nowhere else.

Source (in Russian): IrCity, 6 February 2025.