Grey seals in Yorkshire
With soft, puppy-dog eyes and eager to please expressions, grey seals are so beguiling. But in fact, these large sea mammals are as tough as boots and accustomed to a brutal life.
Not only must they survive the stormy, cold waters of the North Sea, but the lives of males involve ferocious competition. Here in Yorkshire, we are lucky enough host several seal colonies. And as long as you don’t get too close, it’s possible to watch the dramas unfold from the clifftops. I often head to the Yorkshire coast during the breeding season to watch battles between rival males and I’ve even seen a pup being born.
I always make sure to keep well back and tend to watch the action through the long lens of my camera so that I didn’t disturb them. They can stampede if spooked. I once witnessed the heart-stopping moment when a seal pup got washed out to sea. Thankfully the lost pup managed to swim back to shore and be reunited with its mother before anything too serious happened.
Dangers of disturbance
According to Bex Lynam, Marine Advocacy Officer for the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, who works to protect a seal colony on the Yorkshire coast, lost pups are a tragic consequence of disturbances. And this happens more often that it should. British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) rescued more than 3,000 seals last year, 400 of them on from the Yorkshire coastline and 79 rescues took place in August.
These rescues are quite incredible and involve divers braving rough seas to scoop up injured or isolated seal pups from choppy waters. The organisation even has an intensive care hospital dedicated to seals.
I feel that the work of the BDMLR is so important I’ve been raising funds for them in my Yorkshire gallery. I’ve also pledged to donate 10% from the sale of a painting currently on my easel to them.
Grey seal painting
Still unfinished, I’m focusing on capturing the appealing nature of this grey seal and still have a lot of detail to add to get the eyes just right.
How to watch seals
Seals have good eyesight and hearing, which means they can even spot people high on cliffs above them.This means it’s important to approach cliff edges slowly, ensuring your silhouette doesn’t suddenly appear against the skyline. Thankfully, with 19,000 kilometres of coastline and plenty of quiet bays and secluded beaches, the UK is one of this species’ strongholds. In fact, here in the UK we are lucky enough to host 40% of the world’s population of grey seals and 95% of Europe’s population. They depend on our seas for food and on our shores to breed.
Graceful grey seals
Grey seals are the largest of the two UK seal species and they get their scientific name, ‘Halichoerus Grypus’, which means hook-nosed sea pig, from the shape of their noses. In fact, it is only the males that have this feature. They can be amusing to watch on land. Their ungainly bodies galumph over sand and rocks like huge, bouncing slugs, and, oddly, they seem hate being splashed by waves – the way they simultaneously lift their heads and tails out of the way is called ‘banana-ing’
But in water their movements are graceful and sleek. Seals are perfectly adapted to life at sea. They have large, webbed flippers tipped with sharp claws that help them swim effortlessly through water to catch their prey.
When to watch grey seals
The best time to watch grey seals is in the autumn, when these huge creatures haul up onto our beaches in large numbers and the female gives birth. A female grey seal normally gives birth to just one pup which she will feed up to six times a day. Seal milk has more than 10 times the fat content of cow’s milk which helps the pups grow by 2 kilos a day.
Moments after a seal pup is born it calls out and these unique calls are an important part of its survival strategy. Knowing the sound of its sole pup helps the mother locate it if they get separated. Shortly after pupping, the females are fertile again which is incredible when you think how exhausted they must be. And this causes mayhem in the colony.
Beachmasters
During the breeding season the hormone levels surging through a male seal goes through the roof and their mating can be aggressive. One of the greatest prizes in the animal kingdom is passing your genes to the next generation and these bull seals do all they can to make it happen. Competition between males can be ferocious. Males are much bigger than females and the biggest and strongest males are known as beachmasters.
Each beachmaster controls their own patch of beach and can get so focussed on defending their ‘harems’, they often don’t feed themselves. But their territory is often disputed by rival males and the resulting fights can be ruthless. Bloodshed is not uncommon. Nevertheless, young males are constantly on the lookout for unguarded females.
Sometimes these seals take their chances to mate in the surf but they risk being seen off by the larger, dominant males. And if they get too close fights can break out. Spectacles like these are incredible to watch and a reminder of how tough the life of a grey seal can be – without all the added problems of disturbance, declining food sources and entanglement. And given we host the largest concentration of grey seals in the world, I feel we have a duty to protect them for future generations.
If you’d like to help me raise money for the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, click here to donate to my Just Giving fundraiser
