‘Britain’s wildlife safari’: baby boom in Norfolk as seal colonies flourish

It is a cold winter’s day to be lying on a beach, but the seal pup suckling from its mother doesn’t mind. A few metres away, a pregnant seal is burrowing into the sand, trying to get comfortable, while a third seal, which has just given birth, is touching noses with her newborn pup.

The shoreline – a mass of seals and their white pups – is one of Britain’s greatest wildlife success stories: a grey seal colony on the east Norfolk coast.

More than 1,200 seal pups were born between the colony in Horsey and a neighbouring beach in November, and 2,500 more are expected to be born before the breeding season ends in January. It is a dramatic increase since 2002, when the seals first formed a colony at Horsey and 50 pups were born.

Standing on a sand dune that overlooks the North Sea, Richard Edwards, a volunteer seal warden, is keeping a close watch over the colony from a distance. “We can all take pride that this is happening on our doorstep,” he says. “It’s incredible.”

Why go to the wilds of Africa when there is such an extraordinary spectacle on the Norfolk coast, he asks, adding: “This is Britain’s wildlife safari.”

Seals are flourishing about 50 miles farther south, too. In 2021, a group of grey seals established the first seal colony in nearby Suffolk and began breeding on a remote shingle beach at Orford Ness, now a National Trust site but once the location for cold war weapons-testing.

“One day, there were none, and the next day there were 200,” says Matt Wilson, a countryside manager for the trust. “Since then, they’ve come back each year, and the juveniles have stayed.”

Grey seals are known to form breakaway groups when colonies reach a certain size and Wilson says he is “fairly sure” the seals migrated from north Norfolk. In just three years, the number of pups born at the site has increased fivefold, with more than 600 seals recorded there this year.

“Mortality seems to be much lower than in other colonies,” he says. The first seal pup of this season was born there just over a month ago.

The 10-mile beach at Orford Ness, which is closed to the public in winter, is a safe haven for seals during their breeding season, says Wilson. “We don’t get a lot of big boats coming close to shore and disturbing the marine environment locally. Also, in bad weather, the seals can come farther inland to shelter behind a ridge.”

This is crucial to the survival of the species because as sea levels rise and storms become more frequent and severe, conservationists fear the mortality rate of seal pups is rising.

Sue Sayer, founder of the Seal Research Trust, says: “In Cornwall last year, we had more seal deaths than births – and over half were of seals under a year old.”

If seals cannot move inland during a storm, pups can become separated from their mothers by a high surge of water or get washed out to sea. Edwards says: “They die of hypothermia or starvation, or drown.”

Some species have seen dramatic declines of up to 90%, just on our site, so to have a species swimming against the tide is amazing
Matt Wilson

In Norfolk, the charity Friends of Horsey Seals has created a safe, fenced-off area of the dune where seals can retreat inland during a storm, and access to the seals’ beaches is restricted over the winter breeding season. Volunteer wardens such as Edwards patrol the site daily to raise awareness about the need for the public to keep their distance and keep dogs on leads: a female seal, if scared enough, will desert her pup and head into the sea.

Wilson and Sayer speculate that more seals are breeding on the east coast because offshore windfarms may have provided a new footing there for underwater vegetation, crustaceans, molluscs, small fish and other marine life, creating a fish nursery that the seals are feeding on.

The structures also form a physical barrier near the coast, pushing shipping traffic further out and preventing commercial fishing boats from competing with seals by the shoreline.

Another likely cause of the population growth is that grey seals have been displaced from northern Scotland, where numbers of sand eels – which seals love to eat – have declined.

“The seals seem to be moving south, and this is likely to be to do with food,” says Sayer. These seals may be preying on other displaced species, such as anchovies from the Bay of Biscay, which are becoming more common in southern British waters due to global heating, she suggested.

Cleaner water in the North Sea may also have contributed to the increase in seal numbers on the east coast, she added. In 2021, an analysis of two decades of research by the North Sea Foundation revealed there is now 27% less beach waste on non-tourist beaches than there was 10 years ago.

Another reason why seals are thriving in Britain today is that people are no longer hunting and killing them. “We only stopped culling seals in 1978 and it only became illegal for a fisher to kill a seal in March 2021,” says Sayer.

For Wilson, the new seal colony in Suffolk is a source of hope. “We do a lot with wetland birds and waders,” he says. “Some species, particularly large gulls, have seen dramatic declines of up to 90% in their numbers, just on our site, never mind the national picture.

“So, to have a species going in the opposite direction – literally, swimming against the tide – is amazing.”

This article by Donna Ferguson was first published by The Guardian on 26 December 2024. Lead Image: A grey seal with her pup, minutes after it was born at Winterton, Norfolk. The colony may have been helped by windfarms off the east coast acting as artificial reefs and boosting food supplies. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian.

What you can do

Help to save wildlife by donating as little as $1 – It only takes a minute.