Seals
We
are lucky
that
now our part of the North Sea has become cleaner
and
after
surviving
a terrible disease in the early 90s, we now have a
colony
of
around 60 seals living not far from our home port.
I
have been
trying
unsuccessfully for some months to get useable
photos
of them,
but
recently happened to be in the right place at the
right
time! We
don't
like to approach them too closely, because we
don't
want to
scare
them away, or make them tame.
We
recently visited the seals again, and they seem to be
thriving.
The locals call them "Red Seals" but they are in fact grey seals, and
their distinctive colour comes from their diet locally.
Here are some pictures, again we were anxoius not to get too close.
- Edit
On our most recent visit, Martin was able to get some nice shots, the
last of this group is a Common seal and most probably a visitor, the
others are Grey seals (although rather red in our case!)
- One
can tell the difference between the two species by their nostrils, the
Greys are V shaped, and the Commons are parallel. By the way seals'
nostrils are closed at rest they have to conciously open them to
breathe. Strangely the populations of seals on the UK coast are 100,000
Greys and 10,000 Commons.
