Grey Seal, Goring West Sussex

I received a report of a seal off the beach at Marine Drive Goring-by-Sea from Mark and Claire. They took their children across to the beach and to their surprise watched a seal about 10 metres off the beach.

The seal was about 30 - 40 metre's off the beach and was photographed with the seal's head above the water. From the photographs, the seal appears to be a grey seal, with its flat head and Roman nose.Mark and Claire's description also suggests a grey seal.

Mark and Claire stayed for about 20 minutes and the seal periodically disappeared and reappeared at this distance. There was a large number of sea sports such as wind and kite surfing towards the east about 1 km way and the seal seemed to be very aware of the activity. If fact Mark and Claire said the seal is looking in that direction in the photo.

Seal in the River Arun

A member of the public (Jason) reported a seal in the Arun River (West Sussex) 1/4mile south of the marina at Ford. It was in the evening around 6.30pm. Jason reported that the seal was swimming on the surface travelling with the outgoing tide. when it saw us, it dived and surfaced around 100yds further down river about a minute later with a fish.

The last time I received a seal sighting in the Arun was back in 2008 when a common seal was seen (and photographed) above Arundel. There is a link below to my earlier blog entry of this sighting

http://sussexmarinejottings.blogspot.com/2008/08/catch-up.html

Return to the Wild

The young common seal rescued on Hove beach back in August is now recovered and was released back into then sea by the RSPCA Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre Mallydams today.

Below you can see a series of photographs all taken by Nikki Lambert of the moment the seal pup was released. The seal has been tagged so if the seal is unfortunate enough to be stranded in the future we will know about it. Who knows, we may also get a glimpse of this pup from time to time, as with Twinkle, the seal as it will be recognisable from the flipper tag and possibly from the photographs taken for ID purposes.

These images are (c) Nikki Lambert

The release of this seal was filmed by Autumn Watch and should be aired on Friday 4th November.