Sue Sayer Rebecca Allen Abby Crosby Kate Hockley Dan Jarvis Derek Spooner Sue Sayer1, Bex Allen1, Abby Crosby2, Kate Hockley1, Dan Jarvis1, Derek Spooner3 Snowdrop Duchess 1Cornwall Seal Group, c/o Copperleaf Cottage, Phillack Hill, , , TR27 5AD 2Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Five Acres, Allet, , TR4 9DJ 3Senior Fellow, University of Hull, Voluntary Marine Conservation Area volunteer

A transferable, scalable model of research Wotsit empowerment - engaging local people in long term, cost-effective, sustainable and systematic Lucille research into grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) in Southwest England to inform their conservation.

Aims and objectives 1: Model Aims and objectives 2: Seals Pawprint Looe Island Seal Photo Identification Project (LISPIP) is a novel project LISPIP aims to discover the following seal information from Looe Island to inform enabling local people to research pinnipeds in their own area. It involves future conservation decisions:- collaboration between Cornwall Wildlife Trust (CWT), Cornwall Seal Group • The sites used by seals in the sea and on land and the seasonality of any use (CSG) and Looe Voluntary Marine Conservation Area (VMCA) volunteers. • The number of seals visiting the sites, including information about the seals’ The project aims to enable the local people of Looe to become self sufficient ages, sex as well as information about their nutritional and health status and proficient seal surveyors conducting long term, systematic research of • Links to other seal sites in Cornwall made by individual seals, using photo seals in their local area. identification techniques. Method 1: Model Method 2: Seals Initial interest was generated by a talk organised by Abby Crosby of Cornwall Each month, up to 12 volunteers were ferried over to St George’s Island by Tim Wildlife Trust (CWT) and delivered by Sue Sayer of Cornwall Seal Group or Ernie, leaving Looe harbour around 9.00 and returning around 5.00pm, where (CSG) was arranged for Voluntary Marine Conservation Area (VMCA) they were joined by CWT warden Claire. During each survey the following volunteers. After community consultation coordinated by CWT, an action plan activities were carried out:- was created to build local capacity. This began with a training session by • A planning meeting to organise the day’s activities CSG covering basic survey strategies and key technical information about • A walk around the island to orientate surveyors, identify the 5 survey sites, seals. A pilot survey was arranged by CWT using a boat circumnavigating familiarise new observers with the recording protocol (new surveyors paired the island and from this an island-specific protocol was designed to carry out with experienced ones) and carry out a bird count 1 monthly seal surveys around low tide. All these surveys have comprised ‘on • A 2 /2 hour survey period within a window of two hours either side of low tide survey’ seal training delivered by participating CSG members. • A data collection discussion and analysis Hypothesis 1: local people can be motivated to engage in long term environmental research : PROVED! Locals have coordinated 19 monthly surveys over 24 months with teams of Hypothesis 2: Looe Island, has a static up to 12 volunteers - 42 different volunteers participated in total, with 29 people doing more than two surveys, eight doing more than nine surveys colony of six grey seals: DISPROVED! and more than 11 volunteers actively involved in CSG meetings. After the initial 12 months, the CWT VMCA coordinator was able to stand down, as 30 grey seals were photo identified and at least one common seal. 11 seals one of the VMCA volunteers took over the running and organisation of the were repeat visitors with five seen at least six times (up to a maximum of 30). survey project. Soon after the project started, the CWT island wardens There were two peaks in the monthly distribution of seals – a secondary spring began collecting ad hoc, but more frequent seal data and the most recent moulting peak before the main peak during the summer offshore foraging project development had been the capture of additional data from island season. There were seasonal differences in the gender composition. A smaller visitors and members of the public, making particularly valuable maximum number of seals was observed during surveys in 2010 than 2009 (28 contributions to the photo identification aspect of the work. and 41 respectively) and seal habitat use changed between 2009 and 2010. Seal survey sites LF1 LF3 LM4 LF6 LF8 LM9/14 LM10 LM11 LF12 LMF13 LF15 LM16 L17 Site 1 : Main Beach LF1 Snowdrop LF3 Duchess LM9 Sunrise LM10 Wotsit Snowdrop Duchess Barry Pawprint Lucille Sunrise Wotsit Gus Lightning Nemo Dame Etna Arrow Juvie Site 2 : Jetty Beach 2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010 Site 3 : Little Island East* 30/05/08 15/03/09 29/08/08 26/05/09 26/05/09 21/08/09 21/08/09 21/08/09 21/08/09 21/08/09 07/09/09 29/03/09 07/09/09 Site 4 : Inner Ranneys Bay 14/02/09 26/05/09 17/05/10 10/06/09 24/08/09 24/08/09 15/09/10 27/06/10 07/09/09 Jan 0 Jan 0 Jan 0 Jan 0 Site 5 : Outer Ranneys 26/05/09 24/08/09 30/05/10 14/06/09 02/04/10 07/09/09 25/09/10 02/07/10 27/02/10 Feb 1 1 2 Feb 1 1 Feb 0 Feb 0 Site 6 : Lower Bench 23/07/09 01/10/09 14/06/10 23/07/09 19/04/10 08/10/09 26/07/10 Site 7 : White Rock 21/08/09 15/02/10 20/06/10 24/08/09 23/09/10 19/04/10 Mar 0 Mar 1 1 Mar 0 Mar 0 *( 17/02/10 01/04/10 30/06/10 07/09/09 25/09/10 07/05/10 Apr 3 3 Apr 4 4 Apr 2 2 Apr 1 1 08/04/10 19/04/10 01/07/10 12/10/09 25/10/10 09/05/10 19/04/10 20/04/10 13/07/10 26/04/10 11/05/10 May 1 1 2 4 May 1 2 3 May 0 May 5 5 20/04/10 21/04/10 23/07/10 21/07/10 13/05/10 Jun 7 7 Jun 3 3 Jun 0 Jun 0 12/05/10 17/05/10 08/08/10 14/05/10 17/05/10 31/05/10 12/08/10 12/08/10 Jul 1 3 4 Jul 4 4 Jul 0 Jul 0 01/06/10 02/06/10 13/08/10 13/08/10 Aug 1 9 10 Aug 1 5 6 Aug 2 2 Aug 2 2 4 03/06/10 03/06/10 24/08/10 10/06/10 05/06/10 04/09/10 Sep 0 Sep 1 1 Sep 2 2 Sep 1 1 12/06/10 19/07/10 Oct 0 Oct 1 1 Oct 1 1 Oct 1 1 13/06/10 21/07/10 14/06/10 26/07/10 Nov 0 Nov 0 Nov 0 Nov 0 20/06/10 28/07/10 Dec 0 Dec 0 Dec 0 Dec 0 23/07/10 08/08/10 26/07/10 10/08/10 1 4 25 30 0 4 20 24 0 2 5 7 0 4 8 12 28/07/10 11/08/10 LC18 LM19 LM20 LM21 LM22 LM23 LC24 01/08/10 12/08/10 Common Itchy Icy J Tractor Sore Elisa 07/08/10 13/08/10 01/10/09 13/07/10 30/06/10 30/06/10 12/08/10 05/08/10 01/08/10 LF8 Lucille LF6 Pawprint LF15 Dame Etna LM13 Nemo 08/08/10 04/09/10 12/08/10 13/08/10 08/08/10 10/08/10 24/08/10 2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010 11/08/10 Jan 0 Jan 0 Jan 0 Jan 0 12/08/10 LJ25 LJ26 LM27 LJ28 LM29 LM20 Feb 0 Feb 0 Feb 0 Feb 0 Dame Etna 24/08/10 A spots One spot Claws Golden Chains Earline 29/08/10 22/09/10 27/09/10 25/09/10 25/09/10 25/10/10 07/10/10 Mar 0 Mar 0 Mar 0 Mar 0 31/08/10 07/10/10 Apr 1 1 Apr 0 Apr 0 Apr 0 May 1 1 May 1 2 3 May 0 May 0 Nemo Cosmo Jun 2 2 Jun 3 3 Jun 1 1 Jun 0 Jul 1 1 2 Jul 3 3 Jul 2 2 Jul 0 Aug 1 1 Aug 4 4 Aug 0 Aug 1 1 Sep 1 1 Sep 1 1 Sep 1 1 Sep 2 2 Oct 1 1 Oct 0 Oct 0 Oct 0 Nov 0 Nov 0 Nov 0 Nov 0 Dec 0 Dec 0 Dec 0 Dec 0

Elisa, the common Seal 0 7 2 9 0 1 13 14 0 1 3 4 0 1 2 3 Following the success of LISPIP in engaging locals to generate long term data, CWT and CSG are rolling this methodology out to a second Cornish VMCA. For more information about the work of Cornwall Seal Group, visit www.cornwallsealgroup.co.uk or email [email protected]