A guide to seal spotting

Can you tell the difference between a common seal and a grey seal? Genevieve Leaper shares some identification tips

- Genevieve Leaper

‘When angels fell, some fell on the land, some on the sea. The former are the faeries and the latter were often said to be the seals.’

While this old Orcadian view of seal origins is more poetic, modern science suggests they evolved from land-dwelling carnivores and are more closely related to bears than angels.

Seals are so ubiquitous around our coasts that it’s easy to take them for granted. Most people probably don’t realise that Britain is the best place in Europe to see seals. We may only have two species but the UK is home to more than a third of the common seals and almost all the grey seals in Europe. Indeed our 120,000 grey seals represent 40% of the world population. There are a few ringed seals in the Baltic but to find more species you’d really need to head north to the Arctic.

Grey seal distribution extends south to the Wadden Sea and northern France, but sailors further south are unlikely to see seals of any sort. The Mediterranean monk seal, the only species in southern Europe, is now very rare and endangered.

There are in fact only 18 species of true seals worldwide (not counting the recently extinct Caribbean Monk seal), mostly found in polar and temperate regions. Their close relatives the eared seals (sealions and fur seals), are not found in Europe, and their tusked cousin, the walrus, is (normally!) confined to the Arctic.

Misconceptions