Sea Mammals of the World

Stamps of sea mammals from Canada will be listed first, and then other countries will be found later on this page.

Canadian Stamps

• #480 - 5¢ value, commemorative issued 1968, illustrating it at the surface of the water, and showing that it has no dorsal.fin.
• #1868 - 46¢ value, from the set in 2000, three narwhals shown swimming. The large arch above them is part of another whale in the set (see the set of 4 after Beluga whale below).

High Value Definitives 1987-91

• Walrus #1171
• Killer Whale #1173
• Harbour Porpoise #1176
• Beluga #1179

A few other stamps are shown with the definitives.

Walrus - Odobenus rosmarus – They live in the cold arctic seas of Northern Hemisphere, dividing their time between the sea and ice floes or land. They sometimes pull themselves out of the water using their tusks. Males may be up to 4500 lb (2045 kg) (that’s more than my car), making them the largest of the large mammals, on land at least.

• #335 - an issue from the 1954 'Wildlife' set, a 4¢ black version
• #1171 - 44¢ definitive from 1989, in shades of blue-green and black
• #1689 - $1.00 high value, issued in 2005, a family group on the ice, with micro-printing of the scientific name under ‘Canada’

Killer Whale - Orcinus orca – Members of the dolphin family, they have a world-wide distribution. Males can reach 8 m (25 ft) and 6 tons; females reach 7 m (22 ft) and 5 tons. They feed on seals and even bowhead whales.

• #1173 - 57¢ definitive issued 1988, showing the black and white markings, and large dorsal fin. The horizontal tail flukes are also clearly shown.

Harbour Porpoise - Phocoena phocoena – Both sexes grow up to 1.9 m (just over 6 ft), with females larger. They tend to stay close to shore and sometimes swim up rivers hundreds of miles.

• #1176 - 63¢ definitive from 1988, on a green background. The tail flukes show that it is a porpoise, related to whales, and not a fish.

Beluga - Delphinapterus leucas – This white whale is related to the Narwhal, and lives in arctic and sub-arctic seas. A population of about 1000 inhabits the St. Lawrence River; because of contaminants in the water, the incidence of cancer is increasing and their carcasses are treated as toxic waste.

• #1179 - 78¢ definitive of Beluga whale from 1990. They have no dorsal fin either.

The following group of 4 is the set of 46¢ commemorative stamps issued in 2000, as mentioned at the beginning. Two of these four sea mammals are endangered.

• #1868 - Monodon monoceros, Narwhal whales; see information at the beginning of this page.
• #1869 - Balaenoptera musculus, Blue whale
• #1870 - Balaena mysticetus, Bowhead whale
• #1871 - Delphinapterus leucas, Beluga whale (as above)

For more information on the Blue and Bowhead whales, go to Endangered Wildlife.

Other Countries

There are 4 in a set from 1982, 2 horizontal & 2 vertical, followed by 2 more.

• #821 - Sperm whale – Physter macrocephalus – Think Moby Dick. It is a toothed whale that becomes huge. A male can grow up to 20.5 metres (67 ft) long. This sea mammal's name comes from the milky-white waxy substance, spermaceti, found in its head and originally mistaken for sperm. The head takes up one-third of the animal's length. It swims in oceans world-wide, and feeds on squid and fish, diving as deep as 3 kilometres (9,800 ft).
• #824 -Humpback whale - Megaptera novaeangliae is a baleen whale, which sieves krill and small fish from the water. Adults range in length from 12–16 metres (39–52 ft) and weigh approximately 36,000 kilograms (79,000 lb). The humpback has a stream-lined body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobby head. It often breaches (jumps half out of the water) and slaps the water. Males sing a complex song, possibly to attract a mate, which lasts for 10 to 20 minutes and is repeated for hours at a time.
  Found world-wide, they migrate up to 25,000 km each year. Humpbacks feed only in summer, in polar waters, and migrate to tropical or sub-tropical waters to breed and give birth in the winter. In the tropics, humpbacks do not eat, but live off their fat reserves. Once hunted to the brink of extinction, humpbacks are now sought by whale-watchers, particularly off parts of Australia, Canada, and the United States.

• #822 – Northern Right Whale - Eubalaena japonica – This is the North Pacific Right Whale (there is an Atlantic Right Whale). It is a very large baleen whale species that was common in the North Pacific until 1840, but now extremely rare due to 19th and 20th century whaling. There is concern that its numbers are now too low for recovery, and that extinction may be inevitable. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, this sea mammal is the most endangered whale on Earth. See other endangered whales in the Endangered Wildlife page.
• #823 - Blue Whale – see Canada #1869 - Balaenoptera musculus

• #2534 - humpback whale
• #2535 - blue whales (mother & calf)

• US#2508 - Killer whale ’90 – Orcinus orca, details as above.
• US #2509 – Sea Lion – Several species are grouped as sea lions. They are characterized by the presence of external ear flaps, long front flippers, and the ability to walk on all fours. Their range extends from the sub-arctic to tropical waters of the Pacific, and Indian Oceans in both the northern and southern hemispheres, but not the Atlantic Ocean.

• #2510 – Sea Otter - Enhydra lutris is a sea mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Adults weigh between 14 and 45 kg (30 to 100 lb), making them among the smallest sea mammals. Otters prey mostly upon marine invertebrates such as sea urchins, various molluscs and crustaceans, and some species of fish. It uses rocks to dislodge prey and to open shells, making it one of the few mammal species to use tools. Instead of fat for insulation, they have an exceptionally thick coat of fur, the densest in the animal kingdom. Because it was hunted for its fur, populations were greatly reduced. Now it has covered about 2/3 of previous range, but numbers are still low. The sea otter remains classified as an endangered species. See more on my Endangered Wildlife page.
• #2511 – Common Dolphin - Delphinus delphis which is the Short-beaked Common Dolphin, or the Long-beaked Common Dolphin, Delphinus capensis. But the dolphins commonly seen on TV are the Bottle-nosed dolphins. These sea mammals are all toothed, and hunt fish for food.

Following is a set of sea mammals from USSR, from 1971, with common names in Cyrillic, but no Latin names. All but the last have been mentioned before.

• #3882 – 4k – dolphins
• #3883 – 6k – otter
• #3884 – 10k – narwhal

• #3885 – 12k – walrus
• #3886 – 14k – ribbon seals - Histriophoca fasciata - The Ribbon Seal is an ‘earless’ seal, found in the Arctic and Sub-arctic regions of the North Pacific Ocean, principally in the Bering Sea (between Alaska & the eastern end of Russia) and Sea of Okhotsk. Adult seals are recognizable by their black skin, which carries four white markings: a strip around the neck, one around the tail and a circular marking on each body side, which encloses the front fins.

The following 2 stamps are part of a set of “Fauna of the USSR” in 1974.

• USSR #4199 – 6k – Sea Lion. See the notes above, in the set from the USA.
• USSR #4200 – 10k – Greenland whale, or Bowhead Whale - (Balaena mysticetus), also known as Greenland Right Whale. See information above under Canada #1870, Bowhead Whale.

Here are 2 stamps about sea mammals that can get out of the water onto land.

• USSR #4632 – walrus mother & baby (1977) – see the info above about the species. They are circum-polar in distribution.
• US #1464 - 8¢ Fur Seal. - One species of this sea mammal, the northern fur seal Callorhinus ursinus inhabits the North Pacific, while seven species in the Arctocephalus genus are found primarily in the Southern hemisphere. They have external ear flaps, relatively long and muscular front flippers, and the ability to walk on all fours. Because they have dense underfur, they were hunted commercially for some time. During the summer they congregate for mating and to give birth, but most of the year they are out in deep water hunting their prey (fish, squid and krill). The fur seals themselves are preyed upon by sharks, orcas and occasionally by other sea mammals such as larger sea lions.

• Thailand #1816 – Turciops truncatus – The Bottlenose dolphin, with the logo of 1998 International Year of the Ocean UNESCO. The Latin name is given in the European alphabet, with the rest of the stamp labeled in Thai.
• France #2894 - “Le grand dauphin” – from 2002, at 40€ value, is the Bottlenose dolphin again.

The next group, from Greenland, has seals and a walrus.

• #235 – Cystophora cristata - The Hooded Seal has no external ear flaps (called ‘earless’) and is found only in the central and western North Atlantic east & west of Greenland and south to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The ‘hood’ in the name is for a bulbous part of the forehead and nose of the male, which can be inflated.
• #236 – Odobenus rosmarus – walrus which has been described above.
• #233 - Phoca hispida – Ring Seal - The name comes from the markings in its coat, which has grey spots with black, the spots often being surrounded with lighter ring markings. They have a small head and small plump bodies. Ringed seals occur throughout the Arctic Ocean, and in attached bodies of water such as the Baltic Sea, the Bering Sea and the Hudson Bay. They prefer to rest on ice floes and will move farther north for denser ice.

• #306 – Physeter catodon, from 1996 – sperm whale – a different species from that previously mentioned in the group called sperm whales. See the Australian stamp above for information. #322 – Monodon monoceros – Narwhal, from 1997. information as above
• #331 – Globicephala malaena - (’98) - Long-finned Pilot Whale is really a dolphin. It is jet black or dark grey with a grey or white diagonal stripe behind each eye, and a large, round forehead (melon). It is sometimes known as the pothead whale because the shape of its head reminded early whalers of black cooking pots. This sea mammal eats squid and sometimes fish.
• Iceland #944 – Orcinus orca – Killer Whale from 1999. The value of 35.00 has been overprinted with red lines, with “Bref 50g” replacing it in red.

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