Sunday 29 September 2013

What a way to end the season



  The puffins may have kicked off the 2013 season but the seals well and truly finished it. For the last 2 days that visitors could visit the island this year we made the seals the focus and it was a chance for visitors to find out a bit more about these special creatures. The weather and the seals themselves helped to make the Seal Weekend absolutely fantastic. With 5 pups born on the island now and the big bulls starting to appear around their beaches the seals are now dominating the island and even Jules reappeared for the visitors on the Sunday after disappearing for a few days.
 
Jules
 Over the weekend over 200 visitors made it across to the island. They heard from some of the seal researchers that spend 6 weeks of the winter living on the island in amongst the seals, the heard songs and stories from Claire in the South Horn and they got to look down telescopes at various vantage points to get better looks of seals and most popular of all seal pup no. 2 who managed to get itself into a position for most people to get a glimpse of him.
Pup no. 2 learning to swim.







And so today the Osprey and the May Princess headed out of Kirkhaven harbour to bring an end to what is likely to be the busiest visitor season in the history of the May. (Well actually in recent times, we do know that in medieval times 50 000 pilgrims a year made it across to the island and we are not at that level ..yet!).
I haven't added all the figures up yet but when I do I will post them but in the meantime many thanks for everyone who came over to the island and made it such and enjoyable season.

But this isn't the end of the blog so keep following it and we will keep you posted on what is happening out here.


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