What we do

SRT have been using their unique data set to inform government about the multiple issues that seals are facing out in the wild. Grey seals face a wide range of impacts both from environmental and anthropogenic sources:

• Bycatch and entanglement in operational and lost fishing gear;

• Climate change impacts on seals: Warming seas affecting prey distribution; Extreme weather events inundating pupping beaches separating maternally dependent pups; Reducing fecundity following year; Groundswells increasing lost gear increasing entanglement rates; Groundswells disturbing pollutants and contaminants locked in the seabed; Ocean acidification; Toxic algal blooms (domoic acid); Rising sea levels flooding sea caves and haul outs; Increasing rates of coastal erosion with rockfalls injuring or killing seals; Heavy rain increasing disturbance.

• Disturbance by increasing coastal human activity from land, sea and air;

• Fish stocks being depleted, changing and shifting;

• Habitat loss through coastal squeeze and increasing marine activity;

• Persecution using variety of fatal and debilitating actions;

• Pollution in the form of light and sound as well as physical (macro and micro) and chemical outflows ranging from industrial, agricultural, transportational and household activities including emerging issues such as pharmaceutical runoff (e.g. painkillers and hormones);

• Marine carbon dioxide removal geoengineering projects.

This juvenile seal has been spooked into tombstoning into the sea. She will likely swim off, but have broken rib bones as a result. These can never heal as a seal’s rib cage collapses under pressure when it dives, so this poor seal will likely die a slow and painful death from starvation.

This is adult female Legs three weeks after getting a single strand of monofilament gill net caught around her neck back in 2019. Sadly SRT and BDMLR have not been able to rescue her and she is still alive with a hideous open wounds and lesions. Fingers crossed on day she will be in an inaccessible place to make her rescue possible.

Flying rings

Over 34 different seals have been recorded around the UK caught up in flying ring toys. Once over a seal’s head, the ring gets pushed back by water resistance as the seal swims and when the seal elongates and stretches its neck to snatch prey, the ring gets tighter and tighter on its neck. Within just two weeks a flying ring can be so tight on a seal’s neck that it cannot be pulled off but rather has to be cut off with bolt cutters. SRT are not about stopping anyone having fund on their beaches so, along with the Seal Alliance, SRT have been asking people to switch from flying ring toys back to solid disc alternative, preferably plastic free ones.

As part of this campaign, our incredible volunteers have been taking to retailers about switching to selling sold discs and writing to councillors asking them to vote for voluntary bans on their sale and use across the county of Cornwall. We were delighted when our wonderful Cornwall Councillors voted unanimously for a voluntary ban here.

JD was recorded by an SRT volunteer caught up in a flying ring. SRT alerted BDMLR who thankfully were able to capture and immobilise his as they cut the ring away from his neck.

Industrial rings

A new and emerging threat is appearing as our volunteers have begun recording seals in plastic rings from other sources that include gaskets, offshore wind installations and pain tin seals.

Climate Change

Our long term data sets are vital for highlighting trends and changes in the way seals interact with their environment. Shifts began in 2016, when our peak haul out seasons shifted from March/April back to December/January. SRT used to record most pups born in October followed by November and since 2016, this has been September followed by August. As we think these changes are most likely linked to climate change, SRT have been working hard to help their volunteers, supporters and the public to minimise their carbon footprints to help seals and ultimately future generation of people on our planet. This this end, SRT have:

• Designed and created a Sea Change: Seals leaflet to raise awareness about the stories seals are bringing about the state of our seas to us to on land

• Filmed, edited and shared two versions of a short film called Sea Change: Seals – one for the public with a clear call to action about the small steps we can all take to reduce our carbon emissions. The second film was aimed at rehabilitation centres and funding bodies, explaining that because of increasing cumulative marine impacts, more seals that ever are getting into trouble and so increasing amounts of rescue and rehabilitation facilities will be needed in the future. Both these films can be found on SRT’s YouTube channel.

This was the second seal pup of the season, born in January so out of season. With no mother and no chance of rescue, our volunteers had the awful job of recording her suffering as she struggled for several days to survive. Will we are able to do in situations like this is to record her existence to alert policy decision makers to her plight as an indicator of the increasing effects of climate change on seals. Heartbreaking for us all.

Projects

We love working in partnership with other public, private and voluntary organisations to make the world a better place for seals. AI is the in thing, so we have two rather different project examples underway using AI:

• Photo ID software to help our incredible Photo ID teams get even better at what they do – IDing even more seals and making more matches between catalogues. Thanks to partnerships with Seb East at Bristol University and Dan Schofield and Horace Lee in the University of Oxford’s Visual Geometry Department, SRT have AI tools that can snip seals from photos to save us processing time, counting tools to verify field counts and we are currently working to improve photo ID software, associated with a bespoke database

• Underwater audio visual ‘Seal Spy’ passive recorders to capture underwater seal presence from their incredible vocalisations associated with video recordings of their activity and fur patterns. We are super excited to be partnering with the hugely talented and inspirational teams at Celtic Sea Power and Falmouth University to make this project possible. One day we hope that this amazing research kit can be deployed in grids across the renewable energy sector as it develops to enable non invasive ‘at sea’ density maps revealing key offshore foraging areas.

• Marine Geoengineering: SRT first heard about Planetary Technologies (PTs) Marine Geoengineering Project for St Ives Bay on 19/01/23. This is a Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) experiment could have set a global precedent for this industry. SRT began an ongoing dialogue with the licensing authority, the Environment Agency to ensure due diligence was done. SRT’s science advisory team for the project held 3 meetings with South West Water’s Chief Operating Officer whose infrastructure was being used. A pivotal point in this project took place on 15/03/24 when the Cornwall Carbon Scrutiny Group met with 8 of PT’s staff and other stakeholders to discuss the Baseline Survey Report PT had produced. During this recorded meeting PT’s Chief Scientist Will Burt agreed with our point, admitting this wasn’t really a baseline study nor did they have an appropriate control site and that it was actually too hard, too costly, in too challenging an environment to do a proper job! A real silver lining outcome from this project has been our collaboration with Dr Ian Hendy from Portsmouth University and David Jones from Just One Ocean who have planned, led and delivered baseline dive surveys across 4 transect sites in St Ives Bay in both 2024 and 2025 to assess both the habitat and species presence, water quality and eDNA thanks to funding from the Flotilla Foundation. In April 2025, SRT discovered that PT has pulled the plug on this Geoengineering project in Cornwall for good, confirming what we already knew…that their science did not stand up to external scrutiny. SRT are funded by the Flotilla Foundation to continue with these volunteer dive surveys of St Ives Bay annually to build up a vital data set to help inform and mitigate any future developments plans for the bay.

The beautiful St Ives Bay underwater habitats and species surveyed by SRT’s voluntary divers