‘We’ve had pups try to head to the pub’: grey seals make remarkable comeback

With record numbers of the once heavily hunted mammal popping up around the UK, they have been seen in some unlikely places

Grey seal numbers are booming in the UK. After nearly disappearing a century ago, they are now so abundant that in the past few weeks pups have been rescued from outside kebab shops, fish and chip restaurants and farmers’ fields.

It is a remarkable conservation success story, say environmentalists. Numbers dropped as low as 500 in the early 20th century due to hunting, as seals were often treated as pests in fishing communities. Today, about 120,000 grey seals make the UK their home, representing about 40% of the global population. They have become more common than the UK’s other main seal species, the common seal, sometimes known as the harbour seal.