Seals Big Blue UK

It's our final show

and we're back at Lulworth Cove

on the spectacular Dorset coastline.

Today, we'll be both in and out of the water, getting to know

one of our most charismatic marine mammals, the seal.

They're found dotted all along our coastline, and unlike whales

and dolphins, they're happy to spend time on dry land,

which means there's plenty of opportunities to

get out there and spot one.

SEAL BARKS 'Later, I'll be helping an injured youngster back into the wild.'

Oh! Off he goes, heading straight back into the sea.

He knows what to do for sure.

'I'll be diving in for an unforgettable close encounter.'

One was just nibbling my fins

while the other was trying to steal my camera. It was like a cunning double act.

'All week, we've been catching up with our roving wildlife cameraman, Richard Taylor-Jones,

'and today, he's following a group of common seals

'near his home in the Thames Estuary.'

Summer is their breeding season

but I've never seen a common seal pup.

Hopefully, I will today.

'And we'll be joined by some familiar faces, all keen to share

'their best past encounters with our favourite marine mammal.'

But, first, here's Richard to help us

get to know our British seals a little better.

I've filmed a huge amount of British wildlife

over the last 20 years

but again and again, I return to film seals.

There is something I can't resist about them.

At first glance, seals seem like a fat and cumbersome beast.

But, if you watch them long enough,

it doesn't take long to fall head over heels.

We have two species of seal.

The most abundant is the grey seal.

A staggering 40% of the world population

lives right here in the UK.

The other type of seal we have is the common seal.

But, in most areas of Britain, it's anything but common.

And just to confuse things further,

some people call it the harbour seal.

So, how do you know it's a common seal, not a grey?

Well, it's smaller and more delicate.

It has a distinctive heart-shaped nose

and it can be easily distinguished by its bizarre banana pose.

Now, that doesn't look very comfortable.

Both our seals are masters of the sea.

Seeming almost playful when in their element.

Holding their breath for up to 30 minutes,

they can dive down to the depths for fish.

SEAGULLS CHIRP

Life for a young seal pup can be particularly tough.

After the relative safety of a beach-based birth,

young seal pups are fed a rich milk which allows them

to quadruple their body weight in just three weeks.

It's then that their mothers abandon them...

..leaving them to make their first steps towards the sea on their own.

The Greater Thames Estuary stretches from the heart of London

to my hometown of Deal on the Kent coast.

This area is certainly not the first place you might think

to go looking for wildlife.

Yet, in this very industrial-looking landscape,

there is a surprising amount of flora and fauna,

and in some of the quieter nooks and crannies,

it can be quite easy to find.

One of those quiet places is Pegwell Bay

and a few years ago, I discovered that common seals hauled out there.

I spent some wonderful hours

filming them from the river bank in the summer months,

which is when they gather together to pup and breed.

Watching them frolic about and interacting with each other

was so much fun.

But, despite the hours I've spent there,

I've never clapped eyes on a common seal pup,

and this summer, I'd very much like to.

To help me in my quest,

I'm meeting with Jo Barker from the Zoological Society of London.

Jo has been running an ongoing programme monitoring

the common seals in the Greater Thames Estuary

and I've joined her on a boat trip in Essex to learn more about them

and hopefully find a pup.

Why are they doing so well, here?

Common seals need to have places to haul out and rest

after feeding or swimming,

so the Thames is great because it's got a variety of intertidal sandbanks,

so there's lots of places for the seals to haul out.

The Thames Estuary provides a nice sheltered area for the common seals.

The fact that they're here and that they are breeding here

suggests that they are happy in their environment.

So they are definitely breeding here because what I'd love to see is a common seal pup.

What do you think our chances are today? I think they're pretty high.

Fingers crossed they will be out on the sandbanks today.

The first thing we come across though isn't a pup,

but a rather odd-looking rusty red seal.

Now, the reason that these seals are red

and gingery-looking is that there is actually quite a lot of iron ore

in the sediment here up on the mud banks, which was left

over from a time when the Thames was even more industrial than it is now.

And that iron ore pigment just stains the animals.

It is quite an unusual sight though.

Whilst I've got my eye on the red seals,

Jo has spotted what I've come to see.

There is a little one right at the front. You have found a pup, have you?

There's this little guy right on the edge here.

They're pretty big, aren't they? How old are these pups?

I would say they are a couple of weeks old now.

The common seals breed at the end of June.

They are born just under a metre long

and they have been growing over the last few weeks.

It's just absolutely lovely to be seeing common seal pups.

The little guy is sliding about. They are sliding about. I'll try and get some shots of him.

They are very capable in the water, aren't they? Even at this young age.

Yes. They are born ready to swim, essentially.

What do you think the future is for this Thames population,

bearing in mind what you are beginning to learn about them?

I think we have real potential for this population to grow.

As fish stocks are getting a bit better in the Thames

there will be more resources for more seals as well.

Good news on the whole for common seals. A bright future.

A bright future. I hope so. I hope so.

Seeing common seals is always a magical experience

and one I never tire of.

that if we work harder to understand and protect our British wildlife,

I can see it in your eyes.

go to our website -

rescuing an injured grey seal pup from the stormy Cornish coastline.

I'm here today to find out more about this pup's story

and what's happened since this photograph was taken.

Every year, over 300 in-distress seals are rescued

across the UK coastline by teams often made up of volunteers.

'One of the rescue team who helped the injured seal in the bag

'is Dan Jarvis from the Cornish Seal Sanctuary.'

What's your role in this rescue?

This particular day, we had a call

about one of the pups down on the beach near Land's End

so myself and a couple of other guys

from British Divers Marine Life Rescue went down

to have a look and see what the situation was.

And the seal in this particular bag is now in this pool

just behind me here. He's right behind us.

He's called Bruce Wayne -

we have a theme for our pups' names every year,

which is superheroes for this season,

so we've got Bruce Wayne and we also have Lois Lane in here,

but Bruce here, he originally was rescued with a broken jaw.

That was actually back in October.

He spent a few months with us here at the sanctuary.

Our vet did an amazing job wiring up his jaw

and putting him back together again

and he was actually released out into the wild back in January,

but unfortunately back at the beginning of May,

he ran into trouble again.

He had a bit of a knock to the head

and unfortunately he'd got an infection,

we think a case of septicaemia,

so he came back in for round two of rehabilitation.

He's right as rain again now,

but today's the day he can go back out to sea again.

'I'll be helping Dan release the seals back to the sea

'later on in the day, but in the meantime,

'we need to prepare the pups' final breakfast at the sanctuary.'

Well, because we're going to release them later today,

we're going to give them a really minimal amount of fish

so about five or six fish at the most, really,

so hopefully that means later on when we release them,

they're not just going to sit there on the beach

digesting their fish quite happily,

they'll actually want to go out into the water

to find something to eat for themselves.

That's about right, there we go.

So we've got a few fish here for them now,

but we need to hide from them

because we don't want them to associate humans as a food source.

So all you need to do is just grab your fish

and as long as it doesn't go in any of the other pools, it's fine!

You can throw it straight over and it's for them

to sort themselves out now. And you can hear them go for it. You can!

Yeah, they're really good at competing

so this is the important part for them.

'The time has come for the seals to return home

'and the team need to move quickly

'to keep the pups as calm and unstressed as possible.'

So this one's Lois, Bruce is in already.

He's looking fine out there on the trailer.

They're big animals, although they're only pups,

about nine months old.

Go on, Lois, in you go.

This is going to be a really quick move,

they're bringing up the back of the trailer

and that's Bruce and Lois

both safely in the back of the truck there.

'The release site is just a ten-minute drive away,

'keeping the seals' time in the trailer to a minimum.

'Once at the beach, it's all hands on deck.'

I've been given the responsibility of a herd board.

OK? Here we go!

There you go, Bruce. Off he goes!

Heading straight back into the sea.

He knows what to do, for sure. He really does!

Into the sea, look at him go!

Hopefully he's just shown Lois what to do. Here she comes now.

She's having a little think about it, she's having a sniff.

There you go! And straight again back towards the wash.

So, is that it for these two now, Dan, or can we keep track of them?

Yeah, all of the seals that we release

have a tag on one of their rear flippers

so it means that when they're out in the wild now,

if anyone ever spots them, they can report them back to us

or, even better, if they get photos.

The most important thing for us to know

is what we're doing has been successful,

and we have one of the most successful track records in Europe.

I really hope you get some information back on these two

because it's been so special to join you on the beach.

Wonderful Cornish weather as they go off into the sea. Thank you so much!

Now, all of the people we've met so far clearly love seals,

but not everybody in the UK holds them in such affection.

In fact, for some people, seeing a seal isn't necessarily a pleasure.

It's more likely to be a problem.

In 2013, Miranda Krestovnikoff from Coast

went to the north coast of Scotland to investigate.

The wild lochs and rivers of Scotland -

home of the world-famous Atlantic salmon.

But it's not just humans who love the taste of fresh salmon.

An adult seal eats around 5kg of fish a day

and that's what's brought them into a head-on conflict with humans.

Between them, anglers, fishermen and commercial fish farms

shoot hundreds of seals off the Scottish coast each year

to protect their fish stocks.

Someone who resorts to shooting is Scottish netsman James Mackay.

He catches wild salmon by placing nets at river mouths,

but it's a disaster for him if a seal gets into those nets.

It's like a fox getting into a chicken coop.

They would destroy all the fish.

When the seal gets in, he stresses the fish

so much that the fish become of a poor quality.

The Scottish government passed a law

to try and control the number of seals being shot.

Anyone killing one must now hold a licence

and only kill as a last resort.

But there are many who don't want to see any seals shot

and feel the law isn't being enforced properly.

David Ainsley is a tour boat operator who worries

that salmon farming in the same area

is having an adverse effect on the wildlife.

We run a wildlife tourism business

so we're taking people to see seals, dolphins and porpoise

and all of them are affected unnecessarily

by the way salmon farmers currently operate.

He wants to see a change in working practices

which he claims would prevent the need to shoot.

The answer is simply to do what is already happening in Canada

and very effective at solving the problem - you use two nets.

You use a double layer of net, these nets are kept tensioned

and kept separated so that the seals can't get close to the salmon

and you don't have a problem.

Any farm which is using a single net

and shooting seals is not shooting seals as a last resort,

they're simply shooting seals because single nets are cheaper than

double nets and they don't want to spend the money.

Dr John Webster from the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation.

He says that doubling nets would only slow the water current down

and reduce oxygen to the fish.

And he stresses that they ARE following the law.

The first line of defence is to prevent the seal

And only when those methods don't work

do we resort to shooting under licence.

It's not going to eat them all, then?

What they tend to do is take a single bite out of each fish,

out of the belly, just under the throat,

The effect on fish welfare is extraordinarily bad.

And the effect on the wellbeing of the people whose job it is

to make sure these fish are in good order

We're moving on, we're developing technology and new approaches,

which we hope, in the very near future, will eliminate

the need to shoot seals at all.

Until the day that seals and salmon can be kept apart more effectively,

and it's an example of the ever-growing conflict

between food production and wildlife conservation.

quite a controversial creature.

But seals came to these islands long before we did,

so how have they coped with our more extreme infringements

to discover how the seals there

choose to live with rather noisy neighbours.

The shore around here was my playground as a boy.

I loved to explore.

But there's one site I never got to see.

There's a bit of beach just out of bounds,

where even the locals are kept at bay.

SHEEP BLEAT

This is Tain, an RAF firing range,

where bomber pilots train for war.

For obvious reasons, the public are kept well away.

But, during a pause in the pretend hostilities,

I've been given permission to explore this sandy battleground.

Very few people get to witness what goes on here.

But there are eyes watching.

On a beach over there is a big group of seals.

PLANE ROARS

Just half a mile away, seal pods seem relaxed enough.

They've picked this beach to raise their pups.

But what's the appeal of such a noisy spot?

How can seals bear to bask under the bombers?

To uncover the secret of this odd relationship,

I'm meeting Sean Twiss, who studies seal psychology.

'Ironically, we are taking cover.

'Seals seem OK with planes, but people spook them.'

PLANE ROARS

So, Sean, why is it they can cope with this sort of disturbance?

Well, a classic example there,

not even any head up in response to that.

It happens so often, it doesn't pose a threat to them.

Why waste your energy responding to something

if it's not a threat to you?

Do you think the bombing helps, cos it keeps people away from the beach?

Certainly. I mean, because people are effectively excluded

from this beach, there's none of that real threat to the seals

of people casually walking down here with their dogs,

so that's one of the reasons why they like to haul out.

We're more of a threat to them, as individual human beings

walking down this beach, than any amount of aeroplanes.

Nearby RAF Lossiemouth is the base for the bombers.

I'm here to meet Flight Commander Brian James.

ROARING

We drop small munitions, which are practice bombs,

to minimise the effect on the environment.

So, although it has the same flight characteristics

of our larger weapons, it has a very small charge.

And the charge is only used to put out a puff of smoke

on the range, so you can actually see where the weapon went.

If we do drop the larger weapons, because we need to practise

handling the aeroplane with the sort of weight the weapons are,

then they are concrete, so they have no explosive charge,

again, minimising the effect on the environment.

Do you think the seals are bothered by what you do?

I don't think they are, to be honest.

They seem to lie there, yawning and scratching themselves.

I think they're quite used to us now.

But this placid bunch wouldn't let me get near on foot.

SEALS WAIL So...the only way is up.

The bird's-eye view confirms the colony prefers planes to people.

This is a popular spot.

There's a good few hundred seals on the beach below us now.

You can see the patches where they've been basking

and the trails they've left as they've crawled out of the sea.

Maybe these are the most laid-back seals in Britain.

Or perhaps they'd rather have the noise

than share their sands with anyone else.

There is one more gem of a place

for watching seals that I'd like to tell you about,

because I managed to get out there myself earlier in the summer.

Right down in the south-west of England,

in the middle of the Bristol Channel, is the island of Lundy.

In July, I caught a boat over there to check it out.

Lundy lies 11 miles off the north coast of Devon.

It's an island with a split personality,

the west side exposed to rough Atlantic currents,

while the east is a sheltered refuge.

Cheers, John.

'It's here that I'm landing.'

Hi, Beccy! Hello.

'Beccy MacDonald is the island's warden.'

Lundy's home to an abundance of wildlife -

sika deer, hardy ponies and stunning bird life,

such as razorbills, guillemots and puffins.

BIRDS CAW

But it's the grey seals that I'm here to see.

SEALS WAIL

Every two weeks, Beccy does a seal population survey,

by walking around the outer edges of the island.

And today, I'm joining her.

What makes Lundy such a special place for seals?

You've got the unique remoteness of the island,

so they don't really get any problems over here,

so they go relatively undisturbed.

There's plenty of space for them, in terms of sea caves.

Lots of haul-out spots. But also, there's plenty of food here.

'Beccy takes me along the dramatic east coast,

'until we spot our first seals.'

And if you have a look down there,

we've already got two females hauled out. Oh, yes. Fantastic.

The one on the left is looking quite pregnant. Brilliant.

They just bob in the water, like a bottle would.

They do that when they're sleeping, or it could just be

when they're resting, trying to digest food. They can also digest

food when they've just hauled out on the rocks as well.

How many are you seeing there?

Five females altogether. So we will pop them down. Two juveniles.

Your total is seven? Yep. What's the latest count for the whole island?

We reckon there's about 200 to 250 seals here at any one time.

Right now, what do you think is happening with the population?

They're pretty stable, at the minute.

We're doing quite well. I'm quite happy with them.

To get an idea of how the grey seals are doing countrywide,

I'm meeting Matt Carter from Plymouth University.

Matt, the Lundy seals seem to be thriving,

but what's the story for seals all around the UK?

Well, grey seals in particular seem to be something

of a conservation success story, really.

Before seal protection came in... SEAL WAILS

..in 1914, we were at probably around about 1,000 animals.

But now we certainly have a very robust population

and we're at just over 100,000 animals.

What are the challenges facing seals today,

now that we no longer hunt them?

Declining fish stocks. And then some less obvious ones.

Things like noise pollution under the ocean,

so things like shipping noise.

We don't really know how this might affect their behaviour.

Beccy, do the seals here in Lundy have a completely charmed life

or do they face problems, too?

Some of the marine plastics that we get that come in

do cause entanglements, so we do see them around their necks

Ooh!

'it's because today we're hoping to swim with the seals.'

What do you both think about humans getting in the water

and interacting with seals? Is that an OK thing for us to do?

I think it's important that people are aware of seals

and are passionate about seals,

and getting in the water with them is a fantastic way.

But it should always be on the terms of the seal,

so never touch a seal.

If a seal wants to approach you, that's fine,

but don't go chasing after it. Ah!

'Well, I'm dying to swim with them,

'I just don't know if they'll want to swim with me.'

'I needn't have worried.

They're just so unbelievably cheeky!

And incredibly agile, they make me feel very, very clumsy in the water.

It's like they're dancing all around me.

I really don't know where to look.

'Once they've overcome their natural shyness,

'seals are surprisingly tactile,

'exploring new things with their mouths and whiskers.'

while the other was trying to steal my camera.

It was like a cunning double act.

One of the most rewarding things I've ever done in the sea.

'But when you get this close, you can't fail to realise

that that was a truly joyous experience.

And you know, what we have here in the UK is an internationally

important population of seals that's chosen our islands

to make their home.

And I can't recommend getting out to meet them more highly.

Absolutely. And, you know, releasing those two seal pups

back into the wild was such a special experience for me.

In fact, it's been an extraordinary week altogether. It certainly has.

We've met the biggest...

..the fastest...

..and the weirdest.

Every one of them a crucial part

of the UK's extraordinary marine ecosystem.

And, for all of us, a wonder to watch.

I want a nice, bold stripe.

Lace, lace, lace...

Oh, the haberdashery is amazing.