Scattered across the shoreline of Finland’s largest lake lives one of the most endangered populations in the world. Officially known as the fourth largest in Europe, Lake Saimaa is the only home on earth to Saimaa Ringed Seals. Officially a subspecies of ringed seals, the ringed seals of Lake Saimaa are slightly larger than their nearest relatives: the Russian Ladoga Ringed Seal and the Baltic Ringed Seal. Weighing between 110-198 pounds, the Saimaa Ringed Seals population sits at right around 480 seals.
In the 1980s, when the Saimaa Ringed Seal population was understood to be at its lowest, just 120 seals roamed the waters and shoreline of Lake Saimaa. Thanks to conservation efforts by the World Wildlife Fund beginning in 1979, that population has dramatically increased to around 480 seals today. As the population continues to rise, the Finland Nature Conservation Association has noticed that new regions of the lake are being inhabited by Saimaa Ringed Seals. While mature seals age, they tend to stay in familiar regions of the lake while newborn pups venture away from their mothers after only a few months of nurturing. These pups begin inhabiting new areas of the lake, expanding their territory without creating congestion in one specific area.
The history of the Saimaa Ringed Seal is one of complexity as their identity has been born out of a geographical phenomenon. At the end of the Ice Age, land began to rise. As the land rose, a small number of ringed seals found themselves separated from the Baltic Sea and its contributing network of lakes and rivers. When these seals became landlocked around Saimaa Lake, they were forced to become accustomed to their new freshwater environment. With no hope of reintegrating with their species, the Saimaa Ringed Seals slowly evolved into the subspecies we recognize today. METSÄHALLITUS notes that ringed seals are the northernmost seals in the world and the primary differences in identity characteristics include behavior, structure, and genome factors.
Today, as Finland celebrates the rise in Saimaa Ringed Seals, the phenomenon that separated ringed seals in the first place continues to exist. Inhabitants of the Fennoscandian Peninsula have noticed “land uplift” as early as 1491 according to the National Land Survey of Finland. The Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden has seen the most extreme growth in measurement as The Quark region rises about 1 cm every year. Alternatively, the southeastern region of Finland including Lake Saimaa rises at the slowest rate within the Fennoscandian Peninsula at around 3 mm every year. Together, the Saimaa Ringed Seals population and the land they inhabit continue to rise year after year.
