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(c) S & T Waterhouse |
(c) Caroline Curtis |
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3 dead seals have been seen around Godrevy in the last 3 weeks.
The first was recorded by Sue and Trev Waterhouse on 25/12/04. Heavily decomposed, this seal torso (1 m in length) had lost much of its pelt. Both flipper joints and spinal cord were visible. What looked unusual was the existence of a hole behind the right flipper that went right through the seal torso and was visible on both sides of the seal's body. Twine was seen coming out through both holes, which when pulled proved to be a single length.
The second was reported by Carol Hogg, who saw the dead seal on 09/01/05. This young seal (0.7m long) was washed up on rocks below the winter car park at Godrevy. The seal had a light grey/brown coat and lighter flippers. The head was not visible and gulls had pecked holes in the seal's stomach and were pulling strands from it. The wound was so bright red that the seal looked recently dead. No photos were taken of this seal before it was washed back out to sea, but the stomach wounds clearly distinguish this seal from the dead seal seen a few days later.
The third dead seal was first recorded on 13/01/05 by Dave Jarvis and Tim Bain after a report from a member of the public in Gwithian. This young seal (1m long) was headless. The neck 'wound' had clean, smooth edges and the back vertebrae were precisely separated. Apart from this, the only other injuries were abraision wounds to the rear flippers.
The wild weather of the last few weeks is bound to take its toll and casualties are inevitable. We should, however, not ignore the unusual elements of 2 of these deaths, namely the threaded twine of the first and the missing head of the third.
It is vital that any dead seal washed up around our coasts is reported so that numbers and circumstances can be monitored. The first point of contact is the Cornwall Wildlife Trust 's Strandings hotline 0845 2012626. Please ring this as quickly as you can to enable a team of volunteers to go out to the stranded animal to make vital recordings and take photographs. Naturally the Godrevy Seal Group is interested to hear of any seals spotted in our area, so as a seond thought, emailing us at ssayer@suesseals.eclipse.co.uk would be appreciated.
(Many thanks to Sue & Trev Waterhouse, Dave Jarvis and Caroline Curtis for sending in photos of the stranded seals.)