tlantic Canada's waters and coastlines offer highly diverse habitats for marine mammals, including large and small species of whales, porpoises and seals. Most importantly, the harp seal migrates southward on ice packs from the Arctic, arriving in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in vast numbers during the fall. Noticeably absent from today's waters is the Atlantic walrus, which had been hunted to extinction by the early nineteenth century. The most populous walrus areas of Atlantic Canada once lay in three places: the Magdalene Islands, Sable Island, and the southern coast of Newfoundland. Aboriginal peoples developed specialized technologies and strategies for hunting sea mammals, like the walrus, in order to exploit this invaluable source of food and raw materials.