While not the most numerous, it is individually the most prized quarry of the sealer among the North Atlantic ice floes.
Adults are large and fierce looking, coloured with large black blotches on a grey background.
Life Cycle Hooded seals grow rapidly, females reaching sexual maturity and whelping between three and seven years, and mostly at four to five years. Males mature at rather older ages, near 10 years, as typical of polygynous species. Information on age is derived from sectioning the canine teeth, which show very regular layering in both the dentine and thick cementum, and has been confirmed from two tagged females which returned to whelp in the Gulf of st. Lawrence at four and five years of age. Hooded seals, like harp seals, whelp in early spring on the pack ice.