ON THE WILD SIDE

GROWING seal pups, no longer the little white helpless balls of fluff they once were, are now starting to take their first “steps” into their new ocean home.

Here is a brief and bizarre history of British seals.

We have two different species of seals resident in the UK, the harbour (or common) seal, and the grey seal.

The harbour seal is smaller, silvery grey with freckles all over, and has a dog-like face. The grey seal is not really grey. They are mottled brownish.

They grow much larger than the harbour seals and have a pronounced “roman nose” compared to their smaller cousins. There are twice as many grey seals as there are harbour, and the UK holds a large proportion of the world’s population of greys.

Harbour seals, as you may have guessed, tend to stay closer inland, while the greys venture further out.

This is reflected in the Shetland islanders’ local names, the “Tangfish”, meaning seaweed fish, and “Haaf-fish”, mean- ing deep-sea fish.

People in the Shetlands were not the only ones to consider seals fish, as, historically, wealthy Catholics on the mainland would eat them during lent and on Fridays.

Against the trend, occasionally grey seals will show up almost anywhere. They are commonly seen in rivers and, after storms, sometimes even in ponds.

Seals have historically always been hunted in the UK, thankfully something that officially stopped after the passing of the Conservation of Seals Act in 1970.

Seals have never made themselves popular to fishermen, especially since they have a taste for salmon and are smart enough to take advantage of the free food a fisherman’s full net provides.

In fact, plans to build a seal sanctuary on the Isle of Islay in 1999 were scrapped because of pressure from salmon fishermen.

Shetlands families have always maintained that “seal folk” exist. Seals in the water, “selkies”, can take off their skin and become a human on land, and have to put the skin back on again to become a seal.

If they lose their skins, they can never return to the sea.

And there were many people who claimed to be the descendents of selkies.