25 years of SRT

31/01/2025

2000 to 2025 Sue’s first seal friend Chairlift

Time flies when you're having fun! But quarter of a century? Wow where did that time go?

SRT’s Founder and Director Sue Sayer MBE on 12/06/2020! 1459 surveys later and Sue is still surveying in 2025. Incredibly four of the seals that she first met and ID’d in 2000 were still around to celebrate SRT’s 25th Anniversary! What are the chances of that?

2000 surveying with friends and taking slide photography

It soon became apparent to Sue in 2000, that other people were interested in the seals she was recording and a small and passionate team quickly developed through their shared fascination with Cornwall’s amazing seals. Little did Sue know then, that the seals she and her friends were recording were not really Cornish seals, rather they are Celtic Sea seals swimming between their own unique selection of favourite sites that can be huge distances apart – 450km to the north, 800km to the south and 650km to the east!

By 2004 Cornwall Seal Group (CSG) was formalised and held their first official meeting in Sue’s lounge. As other people started sending in survey data, Sue wrote her first seal reports to feedback what was being learned to motivate everyone to carry on and do more! The group’s main aim then was for everyone to enjoy themselves and this remains to same today. Sue know that this is the only way to sustain peoples’ interest in seals over the long term! Even then she also knew that giving seals a voice was vital, so the first meeting agenda had a seal pup with a speech bubble saying ‘ You should work hard to agree a list of aims that you are all happy with, so you can help me more!’

By 2005, CSG was meeting bi monthly at Sue’s workplace in the Learning Space, when food and drink were key components of every gathering of 10 to 15 volunteers. As the data set grew, so did the challenges as well as the value of the data. Partnering with Universities, data analysis showed that seal numbers on the West Penwith South offshore haul out pulsed with the tide cycle and that fewer seals were present in sea states 5 and above. By 2008, meetings were monthly and held at the Inn for All Seasons in Redruth which saw an ever increasing attendance.

2008 Isles of Scilly boat surveys

Boat surveys began in the Isles of Scilly funded by the then Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. These proved so amazing and insightful that by 2011 CSG began three boat survey transects across a 115km stretch of Cornwall’s north coast that continue to this day led by our longest running Ranger Sarah Millward. 

It soon became apparent that a database was needed to store and manage the rapidly expanding dataset, so in 2011 Jeff Loveridge  thankfully designed a bespoke data management tool for us and taught us all how to use it. From 2013 onwards, new volunteers offered to survey more local sites and things snowballed from their all across Cornwall and into Devon and more recently south Wales! 

2015 saw CSG change to Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust (CSGRT) as we registered with the Charity Commission for the first time. Multiple awards later, CSGRT had a new patron – the wonderful Gillian Burke who at the time was a regular Springwatch presenter. Gillians arrival coincided with that of Septimus, CSGRT’s 2.4m long adult male grey seal skeleton, which surprised us all by having an incredible back story to tell! Septimus and Gillian finally met during his appearance on Springwatch before his legendary trip to Lundy by land, sea and air!

2018 Septimus meeting Gillian Burke for the first time

By 2018, Sue set up and led the Seal Alliance (supported by the Seal Protection Action Group) – a forum where like minded groups from around the UK could meet and collaborate to share experiences, advice and expertise to benefit seals much more widely. 

Business advice in 2019 from John Pomeroy, set CSGRT on the road to financial self sufficiency as he encouraged us to progress our Wild Seal Supporter and Adoption Scheme and our One Stop Online Sealy Shop. Both have proved highly successful and have continued to generate increased funding year on year to enable CSGRT to manage up to 4.5 full time equivalent Rangers in 2021, although this has subsequently decreased to two. 

2020 filming with Simon Reeve

COVID saw CSGRT move online enabling our audience to grown dramatically to the extent that our online monthly Seal Sessions routinely have over 60 attendees and even up to 70 from multiple nations and continents. Simon Reeve in Cornwall’s series featured CSGRT that broadened our seal audience, as did Kurt Jackson’s ‘A Seal’s Story’ exhibition in 2024. Publishing research in peer reviewed Journals expanded CSGRT’s scientific reach too and Sue now has two first authored and at least six co-authored papers to her name. Sue has presented talks in six continents and even held a dialogue live in the seventh! She wrote and routinely runs two four week online, self study seal courses for the Field Studies Council that take place multiple times each year.

2021 SRTs first ministerial visit

So we guess it wasn’t surprising (although to us it was and still is) that by 2023 Sue was awarded an MBE in the King’s first New Years honours list. Given CSGRT’s much wider remit and scope, our trustees set about changing the charities name to be more inclusive and to better reflect its aims and outcomes, and so the Seal Research Trust (SRT) was born. 

In 2023/24 SRT faced its biggest challenge to date, that of ensuring due diligence was done by licencing authorities for an application to dose St Ives Bay with thousands of tonnes of Magnesium Hydroxide as a potential climate change solution. The seals responded within 10 weeks of the first secret experiment by occupying a brand new haul out further away from the chemical release site. By asking key questions and meeting with relevant stakeholders in a professional manner, SRT and partners the Cornwall Carbon Scrutiny Group and Keep Our Sea Chemical Free exposed the gaps in the scientific arguments being used and the project was thankfully abandoned by the Canadian startup company in April 2025. 

All through our charity’s history, seals have amazed us  as we have discovered their incredible uniqueness and behaviours. From mums pupping in more than one country, to feeding up to three successfully weaned pups, to having the world’s first wild successfully weaned twins (shout out to mum Key!) putting in disappearing acts for over 20 years, thriving post rescue to be dominant males and giving birth to multiple pups, hauling out and pupping much earlier in the year (transitions that started in 2016), mums apparently feeding their pups the least on days 7/8 and one mum (Ghost) who had 20 pups in 21 year. We learn new things about our gobsmacking seals all the time. 

Ghost had 20 pups in 21 years

Of course IT plays a key part in everything SRT does so the future is exciting as we use of established Seal Detector software and we look forward to a custom built fully automated holistic set of tools designed to process survey data right through to Photo ID in one software suite of apps thanks to the University of Oxford. Industry partners at Celtic Sea Power are developing innovative SealSpy audio visual kit to monitor at sea seal behaviour which will revolutionise this research to better conserve seals and let’s face it that is what we are all about….Helping people to help seals and sharing our seas successfully! 

All of these incredible achievements were celebrated at SRT’s 25th Anniversary at our Corporate Sponsors, the Bowgie Inn, where 50+ people shared their passion and experiences about seals for all to enjoy. Long may this continue.

SRT’s 25th Anniversary celebration