Horsey Seal Project

 

 

Seal Warden Bulletin - March 2010

 

 

News and updates for the 2009/10 season

 

 

1)     END OF ANOTHER SEASON - after three months of hard work, enduring the cold winter weather, we have finally reached the end of this year’s breeding season.  As the season began, we were unsure which areas of the beach the seals would use, because the construction of new rock groynes last year meant that the seals may have changed where they wanted to pup.  As it turned out, the seals mostly stuck to the same areas of beach that they had done previously. In fact, the seals colonised the beach between groynes 30–50; a distance of about 2½km. The highest concentration of seals was between groynes 35-45, which meant that there was still plenty to see from the viewing platforms (37/38 & 42/43).

 

 

2)     HOW DID THE SEALS DO? – we were expecting the seals to do well and they did! The first successful births were recorded on 8th November (7th November in 2008).  The number of pups being born soon accelerated and by the beginning of December over 200 pups had already been born (131 pups in 2008) and by mid December over 270 newborn pups had been counted. The last pup to be born was between 3rd and 6th January (16th January in 2009).

 

This final pup made the grand total of pups born 294. This is a 46% increase on last year’s figure.

 

Of the 294 born this season, 20 died, leaving a total of 274 pups successfully weaned and gone to sea.

           

    The table below shows increase in colony size since 2002.

 

Year

Total pups born

% increase

2002/2003

50

 

2003/2004

62

24

2004/2005

78

29

2005/2006

105

34.5

2006/2007

135

28.5

2007/2008

168

24.5

2008/2009

201

19.5

2009/2010

294

46

 

More detailed information on the progress through the season of the colony can be seen in the reports of Bob Jarvis and Bella Rundle.

           

3)     VOLUNTEERS AND VISITORS

 

Seal Wardens – there are currently 104 people registered as seal wardens and we had over 70 people involved in wardening during this season.

 

Seal wardens contributed a total of 622 hours towards protecting the seals and talking to the public. This was a huge effort which led to the overall success of the breeding season this year.

 

Breakdown of hours worked by month:

      November            – 132 hours

      December            – 300 hours

      January                 – 190 hours

 

Visitors – This season resulted in the severest weather we’ve had in previous years, but there didn’t seem to be any marked reduction in the numbers of visitors. Although no formal monitoring of visitors was undertaken for the whole season, we think that more people came to see the seals this year than had done in previous years.

 

During December we installed an electronic monitoring device on the track close to the steps by the viewing platform. This enabled us to log each time someone went past. We aim to analyse this data and calculate an estimated total visitor count for the whole season. We will let you know about this in due course.