Sue Sayer

Dave Jarvis

Born at an early age, Dave was brought up in North Birmingham. He trained as a quantity surveyor with an international construction contractor & was involved in several major projects such as the National Exhibition Centre & M54 Motorway. Following stints with house building & shop fitting companies, he started his own quantity surveying business in 1994. Dave has been married to Lesley since 1980 & they have two sons, Phil ( 23 ) & Dan ( 19 ). For several years he was a civilian instructor with the West Midlands Fire Service Young Firefighters Association. He was also a team manager & Treasurer at Handsworth Little Football, which was organised by West Midlands Police officers, whilst also serving as Divisional Treasurer overseeing all of the 23 leagues locally. The Jarvis family spent several years commuting between Birmingham & Cornwall, until eventually making the permanent move in 2001, when Dave also re-located his business to the area. For several years Dave has maintained an interest in marine wildlife, making regular visits to the Seal Sanctuary at Gweek & as a volunteer for the Cornwall Wildlife Trust cetacean strandings network. In 2003, together with Tim Bain, Dave was asked to take over as British Divers Marine Life Rescue area co-ordinator for West Cornwall, to improve its status locally within the marine conservation field. His overall aim is to help in ensuring that all of the main stream wildlife & rescue organisations operate in a unified & compatible way. To this end he is a founder member of the Godrevy Seal Group & minutes secretary for C:SMOG.

Caroline Curtis

I suppose ‘Scooby’ was the first marine mammal to win my heart. Of course, I didn’t know then that he was a grey seal, nor that there were more than one species of seal inhabiting British waters. But I did know that since Ken Jones moved his Seal Sanctuary from St. Agnes to Gweek , way back in the early seventies, it became a favourite and regular outing on the frequent holidays that my family were fortunate enough to spend in Cornwall and that Scooby was one of its longest term residents. Scooby was the clown amongst his fellows, he slapped his flipper loudly against his side or on the waters surface every time the fish van bearing his dinner drove towards his pool and thus interfered so much with the informative talk given by members of the animal care team that they had to throw him an early and extra fish to shut him up. Having been delighted by this wonderful character, I was more than intrigued to encounter a wild seal in Lamorna Cove not long afterwards. It had not occurred to me that seals were indeed wild and indigenous to the waters around the British Isles and I still recall the revelation vividly.

Although I was lucky enough to spend all of my school holidays in Cornwall, I did most of my growing up in Windsor in Berkshire, far away from the sea, and inevitably my attentions turned to other more ‘land-lubbing’ pastimes and eventually to my career as a press photographer working mainly around Greater London. Although always passionate about the natural world, my work was very time consuming and my interest in marine creatures was not rekindled until the beginning of the 1990’s when a trip to Hawaii introduced me to Humpback Whales. This time the ‘bug’ bit hard and all I wanted to do was watch and learn about these beguiling leviathans. Being one prone to obsessive behaviour, finding out about whales was not enough for me – I wanted to know all about other marine mammals too so dolphins, manatees and seals naturally became of equal importance.

My dream to be nearer the sea came true in 1997 when my partner, Gary, and I moved to Cornwall permanently and since then, with a new Biology HND and a teaching certificate under my belt, I have begun working part-time offering a recreational course in Whales and Dolphins at Truro College. I have also become involved in volunteer work for the National Seal Sanctuary and the Cornwall Seal Monitoring Group, British Divers Marine Life Rescue, Cornwall Wildlife Trusts’ Strandings Network and any other spare time I have is devoted to sitting in a usually windy spot on the cliff top recording the comings and goings of the seals for the Seal Group– what a blissful life!

Profiles of other members of the Seal Group will appear here soon.

Seal Group Members
Sue Sayer Founder member of the Seal Group, Sue is passionate about Grey Seals. Sue's interest in seals grew gradually and finally snuck up on her and took over in June 2000 when she started making detailed observations of the seals locally. Inspired by Stephen Westcott, Sue began the painstaking job of building up a catalogue of digital photo images of individual seals. She now has images of around 350 different seals, far more than she ever expected to be present. Sue can identify many seals by eye as they haul out on the beach or island and can often be heard muttering seal code numbers whilst using her video camera as she lies prone with her head stuck over the cliff tops around the headland. In her day job, Sue is an Advanced Skills Teacher on secondment, working as Learning and Teaching Team Leader for the Cornish Education Action Zone in the Classroom of the Future.	A ridiculously excited Sue, recording notes during a seal clinical examination at the National Seal Sanctuary.
Dave Jarvis Born at an early age, Dave was brought up in North Birmingham. He trained as a quantity surveyor with an international construction contractor & was involved in several major projects such as the National Exhibition Centre & M54 Motorway. Following stints with house building & shop fitting companies, he started his own quantity surveying business in 1994. Dave has been married to Lesley since 1980 & they have two sons, Phil ( 23 ) & Dan ( 19 ). For several years he was a civilian instructor with the West Midlands Fire Service Young Firefighters Association. He was also a team manager & Treasurer at Handsworth Little Football, which was organised by West Midlands Police officers, whilst also serving as Divisional Treasurer overseeing all of the 23 leagues locally. The Jarvis family spent several years commuting between Birmingham & Cornwall, until eventually making the permanent move in 2001, when Dave also re-located his business to the area. For several years Dave has maintained an interest in marine wildlife, making regular visits to the Seal Sanctuary at Gweek & as a volunteer for the Cornwall Wildlife Trust cetacean strandings network. In 2003, together with Tim Bain, Dave was asked to take over as British Divers Marine Life Rescue area co-ordinator for West Cornwall, to improve its status locally within the marine conservation field. His overall aim is to help in ensuring that all of the main stream wildlife & rescue organisations operate in a unified & compatible way. To this end he is a founder member of the Godrevy Seal Group & minutes secretary for C:SMOG. Caroline Curtis I suppose ‘Scooby’ was the first marine mammal to win my heart. Of course, I didn’t know then that he was a grey seal, nor that there were more than one species of seal inhabiting British waters. But I did know that since Ken Jones moved his Seal Sanctuary from St. Agnes to Gweek , way back in the early seventies, it became a favourite and regular outing on the frequent holidays that my family were fortunate enough to spend in Cornwall and that Scooby was one of its longest term residents. Scooby was the clown amongst his fellows, he slapped his flipper loudly against his side or on the waters surface every time the fish van bearing his dinner drove towards his pool and thus interfered so much with the informative talk given by members of the animal care team that they had to throw him an early and extra fish to shut him up. Having been delighted by this wonderful character, I was more than intrigued to encounter a wild seal in Lamorna Cove not long afterwards. It had not occurred to me that seals were indeed wild and indigenous to the waters around the British Isles and I still recall the revelation vividly. Although I was lucky enough to spend all of my school holidays in Cornwall, I did most of my growing up in Windsor in Berkshire, far away from the sea, and inevitably my attentions turned to other more ‘land-lubbing’ pastimes and eventually to my career as a press photographer working mainly around Greater London. Although always passionate about the natural world, my work was very time consuming and my interest in marine creatures was not rekindled until the beginning of the 1990’s when a trip to Hawaii introduced me to Humpback Whales. This time the ‘bug’ bit hard and all I wanted to do was watch and learn about these beguiling leviathans. Being one prone to obsessive behaviour, finding out about whales was not enough for me – I wanted to know all about other marine mammals too so dolphins, manatees and seals naturally became of equal importance. My dream to be nearer the sea came true in 1997 when my partner, Gary, and I moved to Cornwall permanently and since then, with a new Biology HND and a teaching certificate under my belt, I have begun working part-time offering a recreational course in Whales and Dolphins at Truro College. I have also become involved in volunteer work for the National Seal Sanctuary and the Cornwall Seal Monitoring Group, British Divers Marine Life Rescue, Cornwall Wildlife Trusts’ Strandings Network and any other spare time I have is devoted to sitting in a usually windy spot on the cliff top recording the comings and goings of the seals for the Seal Group– what a blissful life! Profiles of other members of the Seal Group will appear here soon.
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