*Grey Seal*

With its large appealing eyes and sleek coat, the grey seal is a popular sight on remote northern shorelines. The grey seal's large nose distinguishes it from the common seal. An expert and streamlined underwater swimmer. it is as clumsy on land as it is graceful in the water.

FOOD & HUNTING
The grey seal feeds on many types of open-sea and bottom dwelling fish as well as some crustaceans and moloscs varying its diet according to the food avaliable. In coastal waters, it eats salmon, herring, flatfish and occasionally squid and crab.

It's larger eyes enable it to see well in murky waters but hearing is more important when hunting and even blind seals have little difficulty in catching prey. The grey seal has no external ear flaps but does have a sensitive internal hearing apparatus, which it can close to keep water out when diving.

Once it detects prey, the grey seal gives chase using its mobility and speed to catch fish. Its muzzle and whiskers are highly sensitive, picking up water movements made by escaping prey as the seal moves in for the kill. It may also be able to track fish by sensing changes in the chemical composition of the water.

Due to the grey seal's blood contains high amounts of haemoglobin (red blood pigment that carries oxygen around the body) it can stay underwater for up to 16 mins, althought five to ten mins is normal. During a long dive, the seal's heart rate slows down substantially in order to conserve oxygen.

BREEDING
Around the north Atlantic shores, the breeding season for the grey seal runs from September to December. The female comes ashore to give birth to a single pup. The pup has a creamy-white coat but this is replaced by a greyish juvenile coat after about 3 weeks. Breeding beaches are usually crowded and the mother protects her pup from being crushed by other seals.

When the pup is 3 weeks old, the female is ready to breed again and loses interest in her offspring. Bulls(males) haul out of the sea and fight to establish breeding teritories. A mature, experience bull usually dominates and wins the territory with the most females. All the females in one part of the beach mate with the dominant bull in that territory.

After mating, the female returns to the sea. The development of the foetus is delayed so the birth will be at the same time the next year. Driven by hunger, the pup takes to the sea on its own, to hunt for its first solid meal.

GREY SEAL & MAN
Grey seal has been hunted by humans for thousands of years. Its skin was used for making clothes, while its blubber was turned into oil for lamps. Many coastal communities also ate seal meat as part of their staple diet.

Later, the grey seal was culled around Altantic shores in order to protect fish stocks and salmon farms and to reduce damage to nets caused by seals 'stealing
fish. This culling has largely stopped, although some fishermen believe that grey seal numbers should be controlled to protect the fish stocks. The fishermen blame the grey seal for the depletion of salmon and cod stocks in the North Sea. This depletion has in fact been caused largely by years of overfishing and many scientists say that grey seals do not seriously reduce stocks of fish.

DID YOU KNOW???
Celtic legends tell of 'seal women', whom fishermen hear crying out mournfully for their children or trying to lure men to their death in the sea.

Scientists estimate the age of a dead seal by counting the rings in the roots of its canine teeth, rather like counting the rings in a tree trunk.

As the grey seal cannot control its eye secretions, thus it often looks as if it is crying.

The beaches on which the grey seal breeds are known as rookeries.
(A rookery is a colony of breeding animals.)