The Caspian seal lives only in the Caspian Sea. Newborn pups have a white coat, and many are born on winter ice in the north.
Newborn pups are covered in long white fur. Adults are mottled gray after their coat changes, so appearance changes with age and coat stage.
Caspian seals use islands in the northern Caspian as places to haul out during molting and before winter. A study mapped shoreline and island change in the Kazakhstan sector from 1995 to 2023 and found island area had fallen by a factor of 15.76. As water levels and coastlines change, the places available for seals to rest can shift as well.
Aerial surveys found the autumn 2023 haul-outs an average of about 10.5 km west of earlier survey distributions, with records near the Tyuleniy Islands. These are seasonal haul-out observations, not a census of all seals in the Caspian. Repeated surveys that update with the shoreline can reveal where suitable resting sites remain as new islands emerge and others disappear.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In the Kazakhstan northeastern Caspian, mapped island area fell by a factor of 15.76 from 1995 to 2023, and the autumn 2023 survey recorded shifted haul-outs, including near the Tyuleniy Islands. Monitoring only fixed islands could miss new concentrations. The study used seasonal aerial observations and did not estimate the entire Caspian population. Repeated mapping and surveys can follow changing haul-out habitat; global trends and formal status are outside this study.