Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust is a multi-award winning, evidence-based marine conservation charity. What we do really works. We support a large network of active citizen scientists across SW communities, who routinely survey seals on their local patch. This gives seals a voice and enables us to protect them and their ocean home.

Seals face many ocean challenges, yet we all depend on them to balance our marine ecosystem. This is essential to make the oxygen we breathe. Seals are our globally rare wildlife tourist attraction, helping diversify coastal economic prosperity.

Each seal has a unique fur pattern that enables it to be photo identified throughout its life. Learn the pattern and you can recognise the seal! CSGRT hold identification catalogues for numerous sites from Somerset round to Hampshire.

Meet four of our seals:

• GHOST. A world record breaking mum – 18 pups in 19 years on exactly the same beach bar the first and last!
• LUCKY BUNTING. Seriously injured by entanglement, we rescued her, giving her a second chance – she has since had her first (on a public beach) and second pup (on a more remote and suitable beach!).
• LEWIS. We’ve tracked him since he was born in 2000 and discovered he commutes 285km between N Devon and SE Cornwall.
• TULIP BELLE. First identified in 2001. She’s had 4 pups in the Isle of Man and returns to Cornwall, 450km away, in between.

Some key learning outcomes from this work have shown that most of the seals seen at sites in Cornwall just appear to be moving through – stopping off to rest on their way to somewhere else. A small proportion of seals seen at a site may remain there for several months, using the site as their base from which to forage. Very few seals (if any) spend all year in one place. Each seal seems to take a unique pathway and seals seen in Cornwall have also been identified in north and south Devon, Dorset, Somerset, the Isle of Man, Wales, France, Ireland, Belgium and Holland!