A seal-ly good time on Sussex's beaches!
Think sun, think stones, think seals, think the beaches of Sussex! Over the weekend the Mammal Society and Brighton Dolphin Project joined forces and took to the Sussex coastline to spread the word about the local marine mammals: grey seals and common seals. In particular we wanted to let people know that their local shores are home to these wonderful creatures, to keep an eye out for them, and subsequently record them on our Mammal Mapper app. We were delighted to hear many people had seen seals recently and were now keen to use the app to record their sightings. One couple even saw a common seal in the River Arun a couple of weeks ago!
We spent the Saturday at Pevensey Bay beach and the Sunday at Selsey beach, where we were joined by lots of enthusiastic locals and visitors. In fact, we had a very special visitor on the Saturday at Pevensey Bay in the form of a grey seal that bobbed up and down around the buoys for the majority of the day! It’s always nice at events like these when the animals in question actually make an appearance and don’t show you up for once!
In the afternoons we were joined by the Big Blue Ocean Clean Up and several eager volunteers who, armed with litter pickers and bin liners, did a sterling job of sweeping the beaches clean of any litter. An array of items were collected, from smaller bottle tops and beer cans to larger fishing nets and even a lonely broken bucket missing its spade. All of the items collected will be sorted and catalogued by Brighton Dolphin Project and anything that can be recycled, will be recycled.
On both days we were blessed with beautiful weather, enthusiastic passers-by, and lots of dogs to fuss! Many people we spoke to were very keen to start using the Mammal Mapper app so we’re hoping for lots of new users and records 😊
Thank you to Thea Taylor at Brighton Dolphin Project for working with Beth and Frazer on this project – collaborative efforts are key to conservation! So, overall, we think it was a very successful Sussex seal weekend!
For more information about/to download the Mammal Mapper app click here.