The Times - UK (2022-01-01)

32 Saturday January 1 2022 | the times

News

ALAMY

Walkers are being urged not to seek out

seal pups for photographs this bank

holiday to avoid putting the animals at

further risk after hundreds were killed

or injured during recent storms.

Matt Barnes, of the Yorkshire Seal

Group, said that 40 per cent of the area’s

young seals had been lost during storms

Arwen and Barra. The bad weather hit

during pupping season and many

mothers and pups were separated.

“For some people it’s a pilgrimage to

go and get their ‘once a year’ shots of the

mums and pups,” he said.

“Obviously we have concerns about

the remaining pups. The mortality rate

for seals is high anyway and that is

exacerbated further by encroachment

by people.”

He said that because seals “look

cuddly”, people often seek them out for

photographs over the festive period.

Particular problems are dogs off leads

and people getting too close or naively

trying to place seals in the water.

At St Abb’s Head National Nature

Reserve in Berwickshire 800 pups died

in Storm Arwen, while a shortage of

rehabilitation places meant that four

Cute selfies with seal pups

can kill, walkers are warned

seals had to be airlifted from Northum-

berland to Cornwall for care.

Dan Jarvis, of British Divers Marine

Life Rescue, said: “It’s still pretty busy.

Last December we had about 400 call-

outs or so, the most we’ve had in our

history as a charity. I’d hazard a guess

that November, because of Storm Ar-

wen, was considerably worse.”

Seal pups stay with their mothers for

three weeks, during which she feeds

them up to make them as fat as possible.

“Once mum is finished, she will just

leave,” Jarvis said. “The pups don’t

know how to feed and they have to

learn through gradually starving and

using that huge fat reserve to forage

and learn how to catch food.

“The more interruptions that happen

while mum is feeding that pup, the

smaller that pup will be and therefore it

has a lower chance of survival because

it’s got a lower fat reserve to survive off.”

Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust

urged drone operators to keep their dis-

tance. Sue Sayer, its founder, said she

had seen 11 sleeping seals dart into the

water after being spooked by a drone.

Walkers planning to visit sites

frequented by seals are urged to read

advice on the Seal Alliance website.

Charlotte Wace

The Yealm estuary near Plymouth is one of several areas to have developed
large populations of Pacific oysters, right, which clump together to form reefs

While walking along the muddy shore-

line of South Devon’s Yealm estuary,

Christine Wood slipped and slashed

open her arm on the razor-sharp shell

of a Pacific oyster.

It was the second time the marine

biologist had been badly injured by the

invasive species, which is undergoing a

Volunteers fight to fend

off razor-sharp invaders

population explosion that threatens to

encrust estuaries and harbours in

metres-deep harmful reefs.

The oysters, which reach maturity in

a couple of years, can each produce up

to 200 million larvae a year and unless

their spread is halted they will signifi-

cantly alter protected coastal habitats

and change the appearance of some of

our most popular holiday destinations.

Wood’s first injury was when she

sliced the palm of her hand open while

turning over a boulder. She now wears

gloves and there are warning signs

along the estuary. “The increasing

presence of Pacific oysters on the shore

has definitely made surveying more

difficult and dangerous,” she said.

The harbourmaster of the estuary,

near Plymouth, has seen numerous

people cutting their feet after jumping

from boats, dogs with injured

paws, inflatable paddle-

boards popped, and the

hulls of boats damaged

by the oyster shells.

“The numbers we

are seeing now are

pretty terrifying,”

Matt Slater, a marine

conservation officer

at Cornwall Wildlife

Trust, said. “About five

years ago there were vir-

tually none in the areas we

surveyed and now we’re

finding thousands. There are

oysters growing on oysters, forming

large reefs.

“If they’re not kept under control we

could end up finding deep beds of oys-

ters, metres thick, encrusting harbour

sides, slipways and also encroaching on

important protected habitats.”

For the past two years a volunteer

army has been tackling the oyster inva-

sion along the south coasts of Cornwall

and Devon. The 16 volunteer groups or-

ganised by Natural England and local

wildlife trusts have killed more than

170,000 Pacific oysters but the non-na-

tive species continues to colonise every

estuary from St Ives Bay and Newlyn in

west Cornwall to the Salcombe and

Kingsbridge estuaries in south Devon.

The largest numbers were killed in

Cornwall’s Fal estuary (85,044), fol-

lowed by the Fowey estuary (35,835)

and the Helford estuary (29,095).

Pacific oysters were brought to the

UK from the United States and Canada

and farmed during the 1960s and 1970s.

They are larger than the native oyster

and prefer the inter-tidal zone, which

exposes them to the public at low tides.

They grow best in sheltered estuaries

and bays but have begun to colonise the

rocky shoreline of less sheltered bays

such as Whitsand Bay and Mounts Bay,

and even Carbis Bay on the north coast

of Cornwall. Reefs can smother mud

flats and soft muddy shores, taking

away vital feeding grounds for protect-

ed fish and wading birds.

A government report

said there was an average

population decline of

89 per cent at sites

culled by volunteers.

The report said most

volunteers consid-

ered “control neces-

sary to protect na-

tive communities

and habitats” but the

sight of groups using

hammers to “smash orga-

nisms on the shore can ini-

tially appear quite shocking”.

Slater said using volunteers was not

sustainable in the long run. “The only

way we will get them under control is if

their value is realised,” he said.

For oysters to be fit for human con-

sumption they must be caught in a des-

ignated shellfish fishery and then treat-

ed to remove the toxins they ingest. The

construction industry has been testing

the shells for use in cement and as gar-

den fertiliser.

“There needs to be a market for

them,” Slater said. “It will be prohibi-

tively expensive to control them in any

other way.”

Will Humphries

Southwest Correspondent

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