BBC Knowledge Asia Edition 3

50 Vol. 8 Issue 7

NATURE

carries a huge propeller scar.

Sue has been painstakingly recording grey seals around

Cornwall like this since 1999, when she spotted a few while

rock-climbing. “I started wondering if the animals I saw below

me were the same individuals,” she explains. “When I learned

that each and every seal has a unique coat pattern, I was

hooked.” Sue has now spent countless hours poring over photos,

developing a phenomenal ability to recognise individuals.

STARTING SMALL

At first Sue began recording the details of seals at a single

haul-out site. She started by sketching, then progressed to

film and finally digital photography. Having expected to

identify about 30 individuals in total – the number she

typically saw on the beach on a given day – she was amazed

when it took three months (and hundreds of seals) before

she finally found a match: a male she calls Chairlift.

In 2004 Sue began sharing her data and in doing so

established the Cornwall Seal Group, now the Cornwall Seal

Group Research Trust. In 2008 the project spread to other

sites around Cornwall and Devon, with volunteers sending

pictures to Sue for identification. Seals were taking over her

life. “I had an advanced teaching job I loved. But I realised

that other people could do that. I’m not sure anyone else

could do this.” So Sue gave up her salary and became a full-

time seal researcher.

Realising that the project’s long-term future would rely

on other people being able to record seals the same way,

Sue began teaching her ID techniques to recorders. Seals

are now being monitored independently at 15 sites around

ue Sayer is looking through a digital photo

album in her cottage above the Hayle Estuary

on Cornwall’s northern coast. It contains several

hundred images of grey seals taken the previous day, showing

hundreds of individuals – or maybe it’s a few dozen. You

know how it is with seals. A head bobs up, disappears, then

reappears – or is it a different animal? It’s hard for me to tell,

but Sue doesn’t seem to have any trouble.

An image flashes up on the computer screen. In the time

it takes me to register sunlit water, a sleek head and huge

dark eyes, Sue has already clocked several splodges of paler

fur on the neck, opened another window in her program

and begun flicking though an archived catalogue keyworded

with patterns she sees in the slate-and-

silver fur. In seconds, she’s found a match.

This seal is Trolley. Or, to give him

his full moniker: ‘Line Four-dots

Wave Trolley’. Next up is ‘Antlers

Horns W Glass Goggles Flipper Line

Heatlamp Flying Circle’. “I know – it’s

ridiculous,” Sue smiles. “But it works.”

The improbable names are the result of

individual seals being re-photographed

at different times from different angles,

enabling Sue to see new patterns.

Opening other files on her computer,

Sue shows me more inkblot splodges –

a weeping willow, a key and, incredibly,

the word ‘SWIMS’ in dark swoops on

the back of a beautiful female that also

S

ABOVE: Grey seals

rest on a sandy

beach near St

Ives, Cornwall

BELOW: Sue Sayer

holds a 9m section

of fishing net that

inflicted deep

neck wounds on

a grey seal pup

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50 Vol. 8 Issue 7