Cute Seals Spotted On Remote UK Island | Our Tiny Islands

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]10 mi off the North Devon coast is the island of Lundy.

[00:00:06]It's around 3 mi long and 1 mi wide and is home [music] to 28 people.

[00:00:12]Tara is the island's marine wildlife specialist and works as part of the conservation team.

[00:00:20]I take people rock pooling, snorkeling in the spring months I take school children around the island on school trips for the day and give them a really nice kind of day out really.

[00:00:31]Lundy has been a marine nature reserve for over 50 years and is a designated special area of conservation.

[00:00:41]Tara regularly checks for changes in the coastline, for new species that may be appearing due to warming seas or familiar faces that could be at risk.

[00:00:51]I love finding [music] creatures. I think they're all so different and different colors, shapes and sizes.

[00:01:00]At low tide lots of creatures like to hide underneath the rocks cuz it's cool and damp. So the best [music] place to find stuff is to carefully lift up rocks and have a look underneath. Lots of crabs underneath this one.

[00:01:11]52 species of crab and lobster have been recorded here but Tara is on the lookout for one that stands out from the crowd.

[00:01:19]So this is um >> [music] >> a Montagu's crab.

[00:01:23]Um sometimes known as a bodybuilder crab cuz they have very muscly kind of looking um carapaces. [music] I won't hold him for too long.

[00:01:33]It's a very varied job.

[00:01:35]I do seal surveying, um butterfly surveying um and record other things I see as I walk around.

[00:01:41]Sometimes random jobs come up and you go and help out with whatever's needed.

[00:01:46]Tara's been tasked with installing a new Lundy letterbox.

[00:01:52]So it's a weatherproof box. It rains a lot here. So when someone finds the box um obviously they can open it up.

[00:01:58]Um, inside [music] is kind of a bit of information, so um, people can kind of learn about the location they're in.

[00:02:03]>> [music] >> And then you'll find, um, the stamp, which is obviously the most important bit.

[00:02:08]Similar to geocaching, the Lundy letterboxes are a 27-step long treasure trail.

[00:02:15]It's a really nice way to explore bits of the island that you wouldn't normally go to. Some of them are quite intrepid and you have to kind of go down a bit of a slope or traipse through the bracken to find them.

[00:02:24]I've just literally finished [music] putting the stamp together kind of yesterday.

[00:02:31]So, sometimes it comes out better than other times, but, um, you can see most of the Heligoland track.

[00:02:36]Many returning visitors undertake [music] this quest year after year in an attempt to collect all the stamps.

[00:02:42]It's quite exciting to have designed [music] the new letterbox cuz obviously letterboxing has been on the island longer than I've been alive.

[00:02:49]So, it's nice to [music] be able to add to that and leave a bit of a legacy with my design for the stamp that will hopefully stay there for years to come.

[00:02:59]Across the Bristol Channel on the Pembrokeshire coast of Southwest Wales lies the island of Skomer.

[00:03:07]It's just 2 mi wide by 1.2 mi long, and for just over 8 months of the year, it has a population of up to four people.

[00:03:17]Rob is a zoologist and conservationist living and working on the island.

[00:03:22]He's been here for the past 2 years after first visiting to volunteer.

[00:03:28]Coming to Skomer, you can't help but be amazed by the seabirds and the seals that you get here coming so close to you. It's really important and it feels really privileged to to sort of be able to work with them now.

[00:03:40]Today, it's the island's population of Atlantic gray seals that are getting Rob's attention.

[00:03:46]Skomer has nine beaches they use as pupping sites.

[00:03:50]The team of wardens on the island gather data about [music] the seals numbers and health for scientific study.

[00:03:58]Skomer is such a an attractive home for these seals because of these nice big beaches we've got.

[00:04:03]We're right in the middle of the season, so we're just at that point where there's going to be lots of pups uh sort of popping out everywhere.

[00:04:10]So, we've got about 10 seals on the beach just now. Um we've got five five females. There's a male down there as well. And I can see at least at least three or four pups down there as well.

[00:04:20]Different sizes, a couple of size twos, also a size three.

[00:04:23]Monitoring the seals like this allows Rob [music] to watch out for any decline in numbers or environmental problems such as discarded [music] fishing net which could be affecting the population.

[00:04:34]The wardens are allowed to get close for surveying. In general, it's important to keep 100 m away whether on foot or in a boat.

[00:04:43]Got a seal pup just down here.

[00:04:45]Probably a couple of days old just tucked into the rocks just behind us here.

[00:04:49]The great thing about North Haven slip really is that we can get kind of quite close to these seals and we're still keeping enough distance that [music] we're not disturbing them. And but we can get a bit closer and see a bit of behavior and see what these seals are up to.

[00:05:06]Seals have always fascinated me. I think I've always uh felt really felt something for them.

[00:05:11]Definitely a bit of a spirit animal I think as well.

[00:05:16]When it's nice weather like this, you can't help but work outside >> [music] >> on the bench.

[00:05:20]This data is really useful on a small scale. We can keep an eye on our pup numbers, how they're changing every year.

[00:05:25]It's also useful on a more wider scale.

[00:05:27]It helps influence government policy and in terms of marine areas and helps them sort of >> [music] >> pinpoint species that really need need help.

[00:05:35]The wildlife to this island is everything. It's bread and butter really. This is this is why we're here.

[00:05:39]We're here for the wildlife.

[00:05:41]We hope that this island will stay as it is.

[00:05:45]We're cautiously optimistic that these uh these seals will have a home here for many years to come.