OSTEND (Belgium): Visitors to Belgium’s coast are having to get used to North Sea visitors not seen for a while — dozens of seals that are using the short sandy coastline as a resting place.
The reason? During the long period of COVID restrictions between early 2020 and early 2022, the sea mammals found the sandy stretches to be calm, without the usual crowds of people.
Now with people returning, and ahead of what could be a bumper summer season, the challenge for Belgian animal protection groups is to educate the public on how to coexist with dozens of seals getting some downtime.
The exact number of the seals using the coast is hard to pin down but is probably between 100 and 200, according to Kelle Moreau, a marine biologist who is spokesman for the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.
The two species that waddle up here are grey seals, whose adults can weigh 300 kilogrammes, and common or harbour seals, a smaller mammal that weighs up to 165 kilogrammes.
The beaches, though, are essential for seal pups, which hang back in relative safety on land until they get hungry enough that instinct pushes them to go into the sea to find food.
That is why, Moreau explained, it is vital that humans do not feed them.
To keep beach goers at bay, volunteers rope off areas that seals are using.
In one spot near Belgium’s main coastal town of Ostend, a dozen people stand behind a rope fascinated by two seals on the sand.
Around these zones, volunteers with the North Seal Team wearing orange fluorescent vests tell people that dogs have to be kept on a leash.
North Seal Team, created soon after COVID restrictions were imposed in Belgium, worked with Ostend municipal authorities to devise rules for behaviour around beached seals, notably on giving the animals 30 metres of safe distance.
For the seagoing mammals, the return of people to coastline they had thought deserted is an adjustment. – AFP
