Seal Surveys

As always a large portion of our summers - in fact our year in general - is spent tracking, counting, recording and trying to predict the movements of our local seal population. This summer we have continued our counts from both water and land as well as exploring new potential habitats in order to ascertain where the expanding numbers are spending their time.

We have used this data to begin to try and predict where and when certain individuals might be found hunting or resting and have had some considerable success already, which we hope to expand upon in the coming months to build a detailed picture of these seal’s favoured places in order to better protect them from accidental boat strikes or entanglement with fishing gear, as well as less dangerous but equally obtrusive accidental interactions with humans during times of resting or birthing.

As always we have continued our birth / death records where possible and are tentatively confident that each of our local colonies are fairing as well as can be expected given their offshore lifestyles and the conditions that they face from the weather on a regular basis.