Dutch grey seals, immigrants from Britain

This video from England says about itself:

Some footage shot in the Farne Isles diving with Grey Seals.

Filmed with a Sony FX1 in a Gates FX1/Z1 housing with a Fathom Imaging wide-angle lens in ambient light.

Translated from IMARES research institute in the Netherlands:

September 10, 2014

In the Middle Ages, the gray seals in the Netherlands became extinct. Now they are back, gloriously so! Today here live the largest number of Atlantic gray seals of the European mainland. In less than thirty years this grew from some visitors to more than 3,000 individuals. It went so fast that it cannot be explained by the number of births only. Researchers from the research institute IMARES on Texel have now calculated that the seal population of Great Britain plays a large role in this story.

The British gray seal population bring permanently “immigrants” affecting the growth in the Dutch Wadden Sea. In spring and summer there are also another temporary ‘tourists’. “The development of the population in the Wadden Sea is strongly influenced by seals from the other side of the North Sea. Therefore, cooperation with other countries is extremely important for conservation, policy and research,” said biologist Sophie Brasseur. She has published, along with her colleagues, an article about the successful return of the gray seal in the scientific journal Marine Mammal Science.

See also here.

Discover four of the best places to see a grey seal in the UK: here.

Exposing the grey seal as a major predator of harbour porpoises: here.

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