Long journeys and deep dives no bother for adventurous grey seals

Seals have historically been persecuted because they eat fish and have been perceived to be ‘in competition' with human fishers

A grey seal pup: when their mother is feeding them, the pups gain more than a kilo a day in weight

Seals are intelligent animals. Their whiskered faces and big dark curious eyes are so endearing. Irish folklore is rich in tales of seals who are humans, and humans who are seals. The Selkie were seal women who could take off their sealskin and be human, then put their sealskin back on and dive away in to the water. Some Selkies would switch between being human by night and seal by day. Many of the folk tales about Selkies involve sailors, fishermen and lighthouse keepers falling in love with a Selkie and coercing her to stay on land. If they took her sealskin from her, they had the power to hold her back from returning to the water.

Some would marry and have a family, though she would always feel out of place and yearn for her life in the sea. Some of the stories inevitably entail both love and loss, and the Selkie would find her sealskin and return to her kin beneath the waves.