We are now over a week into our grey seal pup monitoring which means counting and age classifying pups on our 9 study beaches. We carry this out every 3 days between late August and the end of the season (usually early November) - at the end this data provides with an overall pup estimate for the season.
We usually have between 500-700 pups born in that period making Ramsey the largest grey seal pupping site in the SW of the UK. Small fry in comparison to our friends on the east coast with sites like the Farnes and Isle of May home to several thousand pups. This may all sound like a lot of seals but, like everything, it needs to be put in context. Grey seals are one of the rarest seal species in the world with a global population of around 140,000 animals with the UK being responsible for around 40% of these
So today's pup update (pupdate) was 64 white coated pups which is up from 53 compared to 3 days ago, which in turn was up from 21 on 26th August - this is very similar to this date last year when there were 62 pups recorded. The early 'flying start' we saw seemingly levelling off to something a bit more normal (although last year was a good year so fingers crossed we continue down that road)
At the moment the forecast is relatively settled for the next week (no storms at least) and given we have big full moon spring tides at the moment that is good news.
More pupdates to follow in due course!