Hookers Sea Lion Skull

$242.00

Hooker’s Sea Lions, also known as New Zealand Sea Lions, inhabit the sub-Antarctic islands of New Zealand. Adult male Hooker’s Sea Lions flock to breeding beaches between October and early November in order to claim their territories.

Description

Hookers Sea Lion Skull Replica measures 9.9 inches or 25cm. Hookers Sea Lion Skull is museum quality polyurethane cast. 2-part skull (separate cranium and jaw). Made in USA. Our precise skull can be used as a teaching tool, museum skull exhibit, home décor skull, or office décor skull.

The New Zealand Sea Lion, also known as Hookers Sea Lion, and Whakahao. Hookers sea lion or Phocarctos hookeri primarily breeds on New Zealand’s Auckland and Campbell Islands. Adult males are blackish-brown with a well-developed black mane of coarse hair reaching the shoulders.

Hookers sea lions or phocarctos hookeri are known to prey on a wide range of species including fish such as Antarctic horse fish and Patagonian tooth fish, and yellow octopus, seabirds and other marine mammals.

Hookers sea lion or Phocarctos hookeri are considered the most threatened sea lion in the world. The species status is largely driven by the main breeding population at the Auckland Islands, which declined by 50 percent between 2000 and 2015.

The 2013 sea lion pup production count on the Auckland Islands showed the number of pups born on the islands has risen to 1931, from the 2012 figure of 1684 (dead pups are also counted, since the annual pup count is used to assess the population of breeding females, but not future births when the counted pups mature).

The 2013 number was the highest in five years. The Campbell Island population appears to be increasing slowly and births here comprise 30 percent of the species’ total. The Otago and Stewart Island Hookers sea lion or phocarctos hookeri populations are currently small, though increasing. Population estimates for the whole species declined from 15,000 in the mid-1990s to 9,000 in 2008.

In 2010, the Department of Conservation, responsible for marine mammal conservation changed the New Zealand Threat Classification System ranking from Nationally Endangered to Nationally Critical for the Hookers sea lion or phocarctos hookeri.

In 2015, the International Union for Conservation of Nature changed the classification of this species to “Endangered”, based on low overall population size, the small number of breeding populations and the projected trend of the Auckland Islands breeding population.

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Additional information

Weight 15 lbs
Dimensions 9.9 in
Hookers Sea Lion Facts:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Clade: Pinnipedia
Family: Otariidae
Genus: Phocarctos
Species: P. hookeri
Binomial name: Phocarctos hookeri
Conservation status: Endangered – An endangered species is a species which has been categorized as very likely to become extinct in the near future. Endangered as categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.