Wardens have spotted 10 rare black-coloured seal pups among England’s largest grey seal colony on the north Norfolk coast.
Grey seals are born white, shedding their fur at about two to three weeks old to expose a grey coat underneath.
But around one in 400 grey seals have a velvety black coat instead, which is revealed when they moult, the National Trust said.
These are called melanistic seals – with melanism being the increased development of the dark-coloured pigment melanin.
Rangers have spotted 10 of the melanistic pups over the course of the winter’s pupping season at Blakeney Point and volunteer warden Hanne Siebers managed to photograph some of them.
The colony at the National Trust’s Blakeney National Nature Reserve in Norfolk is expected to see a record 4,000 new seal pups this season.
Numbers have grown to such an extent in recent years that rangers have had to rethink the way they count the seals born at the breeding ground.
Instead of counting them all individually, they will be counted in one area to give an indication of what is happening across the colony.
Due to the density of the colony, the National Trust has deemed it unsafe to walk through it, both for staff and for the seals.
The first grey seal pup was spotted at the nature reserve in 1988 and since then it has grown to be England’s biggest colony for the marine mammals, with numbers increasing from 25 youngsters born in 2001 to 3,399 pups in 2019.
This season’s count is ongoing.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here