Definition of "phocine"

He telegraphed to the whaling ports of New England, and sent messages to San Francisco and Alaska, to know if a group of sea lions and other specimens of the phocine tribe could be secured.

28 December 1871, New York Daily Standard

[…] she had already yanked out of me the coveted section [of the newspaper] and retreated to her mat near her phocine mamma.

1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, part 1, page 44

She walked over towards me with an odd elegance, big strides, like a champion girl swimmer, say; muscled but lean, with a phocine grace.

1987, William Boyd, The New Confessions

Phocines anchor their hands by flexing their fingers, digging them into the substrate, and then pulling their body forward by elbow and shoulder flexion.

2007, Brian Keith Hall, Fins into Limbs, page 313