Monday 4 January 2010

First common seal sighting of 2010

I received a report of a Common Seal from Graham in the River Ouse yesterday (2nd January) at Lewes by the moorings.Graham provided the following superb pictures of the seal.

(c) Graham Farey


(c) Graham Farey

The seal was sunning itself on a pontoon and was seen by many people, two sightings reported to me so far.


(c) Graham Farey


(c) Graham Farey

The Ouse is quite a tidal river and it is likely that the seal travelled up river following fish. The tide had recently turned, and the seal may have swum up-river on the incoming tide. Because seals can happily haul out, they sometimes spend a few days up river before returning to the sea. As you will see from my other blog entries, it is not uncommon for healthy "happy" seals to swim upriver.

  (c) Graham Farey

Due to the quality of the pictures I am hoping that we will either be able to match it with a known seal (by spot pattern markings) or create this seal with its own ID profile. There are similarities with a seal observed last year which I intend to investigate further. Watch this space for an update.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi,

We are looking to purchase an inflatable bottlenose for our Edcuation and Conservation school programs here at SeaWorld San Diego. Please let me know if you have any vendor information I can use to track one down.

Thank you!

Travis Hughes
Education & Conservation Dept
SeaWorld San Diego
travis.hughes@seaworld.com

Girl On The Run said...

I saw a seal on Thursday 4th Feb 2010 morning, just up river from the Snowdrop Inn. I sat for half an hour or so just watching him/her swimming around and diving - it was delightful - I was so excited