Secret Location

Hello, today is just a quick post to say that there is progress at my new secret location. That is all. I will have to keep this one secret even in the final film however there should be some interesting results.

Seal Pup Release 17th January 2012

Hi guys, Im sorry for the lack of posts recently.

I hope to now keep up to date with this and to almost use it as a diary for me to keep up to date with my work and also to keep people informed about grey seals in Cornwall.

Yesterday (17th January) 5 seal pups were released on the North Coast of Cornwall from the Gweek Seal Sanctuary. These 5 pups had been rehabilitated after they were rescued earlier in the year. They were rescued for a number of reasons, some were abandoned by there mothers and some had injuries to their fins, preventing them from surviving natural in the wild.

It is great to see them going back to the wild, each with their own unique flipper tag which one day might help the Cornwall Seal group to identify it.

One of the young pups in the pool before release 

A close up to show some of the adaptions Grey Seals have gained. 

One of the young seals last look back at the people that have helped care for it over the past few months

before heading out to sea

Over the next few days I am hopefully shooting in some new locations, unfortunately I cant give any more information on these but my images (if I get them) will be up here shortly.

Grey Seals from London?

So yesterday I was on the North Coast of Cornwall photographing anything going really. I ended up seeing a lot of stuff that I dont normally see, including dolphins off shore!

Once the dolphins had passed I started photographing a pair of seals playing just off the rocks in the shallow water. After a few minuets I realised that the seals had taggs on there flippers and I spent a few minuets trying to capture an image of these taggs to send to the Cornwall Seal Group for Identification.

The first tag said: "informLondon Zoo"

The second said : "80005"

I reported this data to the Seal group and I found out that, the seal with 80005 is a male called Triffid and he was last seen on 05/09/11.

This is the information I sent to the seal group with the images of the tags, 

Project Trailer

Here is a link to a project trailer that shows film from a project im working on.

please have a look at let me know what you think

http://vimeo.com/31534042

Please Watch This

A video of a young seal pup caught is a lobster pot. I will let you make up your own opinions of the video.

But please comment and let me know your thoughts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15480929

Lizard Point Seal Story

Today was a very sad day down at Lizard Point. In the last week an unknown grey seal had given birth in the back of a natural sea cave close to the lizard point. The pup had been out of sight of the public until yesterday when it was seen close to the waters edge feeding from its mother. When I went down this morning at about 10.30 the mother was around looking upwards into the cove. All day the mother would haul up the beach get to the top look around for the pup but she never seemed to find it. After many attempts of looking for the pup to feed it, she eventually gave up and kept returning to the water. At around 3.30 myself and an employee at the seal sanctuary were asked to see if the pup was still present in the cove. 

After a few minuets of waiting for the mother to dive we crept round the rocks in to the cove only to find that there was no seal pup present. Large piles of kelp and a lot of litter was in plentiful numbers but the young seal pup was no where to be seen. My guess is that spring tides and rough seas must have carried the pup away last night, or that is was caught and buried under large piles of kelp on the beach. Either way, watching the female trying to find its pup was heat breaking. 

On a brighter note, here is a shot of a healthy seal pup called Quiche on the North Coast

1/1000 sec f 3.2 @ 300mm

Pups

Yesterday was the second day of my project and it got off to a great start. With two newly born pubs on a small secluded beach near to one of the north coast haul out sites. While filming these pups I was able to observe the behaviour the two mothers were showing towards not only their own pup but also each other and particular males that entered the area. I have produced a short 2 minuet sequence with my own narration and this will be posted on monday as I will be showing it to my class within a presentation.