Last week, I have attended the Annual Conference of the European Cetacean Society in La Spezia, Italy, where I gave a short talk on ‘Enhancement of Pinniped Conservation and Management via Active Stakeholder Engagement and Non-Invasive Genetic Sampling’. It was a fantastic experience with many interesting and inspirational talks. Oliver Ó’Cadhla (National Parks and Wildlife Service) presented the main results from the ObSERVE project, a large-scale acoustic and aerial survey project that was conducted by GMIT and UCC over the last two years. Surveys under this project were run year-round (!) and results highlight the importance of Irish waters for numerous cetacean species. Two talks that I found particularly interesting were one by Guido Parra on genetic diversity and gene flow of Australian humpback dolphins and one by Iben Stokholm on the origin and spread of Phocine Distemper Virus in 1988 and 2002. Iben also won the student award for best 15 minute talk. Congratulations to all the award winners, you absolutely deserved them! The ECS Mandy McMath Conservation Award 2018 was awarded to two winners this year: Dan Jarvis and Tilen Genov. You can find Mark Simmonds’ brilliant presentation of this award here.
Being back in Ireland for just a few hours, it was time to get all equipment ready and head into the field for our grey seal moult survey on the Great Blasket. The Blasket Islands hold one of Ireland’s largest grey seal breeding colonies (the other one being located around the Inishkea Islands) with over 1000 seals. After the pupping season in winter time, the seals breed and subsequently moult (i.e. they shed their fur) from around February to April.
Because seals in the process of moulting need to haul-out on land for long periods of time, this time of year is very useful for us as it offers optimal conditions to collect faecal samples from the animals. We arrived at Ventry pier just in time and headed out to the main island with Eco Marine Tours. Approaching the island, it was apparent that there was still a large number of seals hauling out even though we are nearing the end of the moult. I did count them from pictures after being back in the office and in fact there were about 800 seals present at the site!
After observing the general behaviour and acquiring photographs from the top of the cliff so that I could later count the seals, we made our way down to the beach to start the sampling procedures. Arriving there, we made the sad discovery of a relatively freshly dead seal pup. Considering the rough weather that Ireland has seen throughout the 2017-2018 grey seal breeding period, this would not exactly have been a surprise. What was very surprising though was that it was still relatively freshly dead and it was a whitecoat. That means that is still had its white lanugo fur when it died, which means it must have been born recently. In Ireland, grey seal pups are born between the months of October to December. Considering it is now April and it takes about 4-6 weeks to shed their lanugo fur, this pup must have been born very late!
After observing the general behaviour and acquiring photographs from the top of the cliff so that I could later count the seals, we made our way down to the beach to start the sampling procedures. Arriving there, we made the sad discovery of a relatively freshly dead seal pup. Considering the rough weather that Ireland has seen throughout the 2017-2018 grey seal breeding period, this would not exactly have been a surprise. What was very surprising though was that it was still relatively freshly dead and it was a whitecoat. That means that is still had its white lanugo fur when it died, which means it must have been born recently. In Ireland, grey seal pups are born between the months of October to December. Considering it is now April and it takes about 4-6 weeks for a grey seal pup to shed its lanugo fur, this pup must have been born very late!
Moving on after this finding, the survey was very successful with over 60 faecal samples collected along the beach. Samples were collected wearing nitrile gloves and new gloves were used for every samples to avoid cross-contamination. Samples were collected in labelled zip-lock bags and were necessary were double/triple bagged to avoid contamination. They were stored in a cooler bag until we were back in the van where we put all samples on ice for transportation back to Galway. Using these samples, it is very difficult to tell how old the individual was. Luckily for us, adult grey seals have very large droppings and pups can be identified from the very small size in comparison. This is a clear advantage over collecting harbour seal samples as those do not show such clearly visible differences and cannot be identified. Differentiation between juveniles and adults is not as easy even for grey seals and a lot of the time impossible. Once back in the lab, I will extract DNA from all samples collected and data are used for analysis of grey seal genetic diversity.
When we left the beach, all individuals were in the water. However, we are happy to say that they did haul out again very quickly and did not show signs of stress. As soon as we were back up the cliff we could observe the seals coming back to rest ashore again.
Overall, we had a very successful day out with a large number of seals present and lots of interesting behavioural observations. The survey resulted in a large number of non-invasively collected samples and seals showed no signs of agitation. Even the weather was very good, resulting in better survey conditions and myself getting sunburnt (yes, you can catch a sunburn in Ireland!).