Septimus & Springwatch

My name is Septimus (#SeptimusSomeSeal) and I am an adult male grey seal – technically a dead grey seal skeleton! Amid Coronavirus lockdown easing, I was asked to appear on National TV on my favourite programme of all time – Springwatch! After sorting out some logistical issues, my chaperone (Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust’s Director…

Our latest photo ID hub!

In 2018 a generous grant from the Postcode Local Trust (supported by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery) enabled us to formalise and take forward 15 photo ID hubs around the coast of Cornwall and Devon – including Lundy and the Isles of Scilly.

The latest team to join this exciting adventure with CSGRT…

Business supporters

Our work works! Help seals promote your tourist business across the SW and beyond!
We love grey seals – they are amazingly beautiful and the SW’s iconic, globally rare speciality species. By identifying the unique fur patterns of each individual seal, we can monitor their health and activities, checking that they can continue to thrive…

CSA award for CSGRT

At CSGRT, we have won our second prestigious award in two weeks. We are genuinely gobsmacked at this incredible achievement. The Cornwall Sustainability Awards recognise leaders proactively managing and growing the natural environment and CSGRT won the Individual category.

It was an honour for CSGRT trustees (Sue, Dan and Kate) and Ranger (Marion –…

Sealy activities

At the beginning of this year, we were excited to work on making some sealy activities. Primarily for use at the National Trust’s Lizard Watchpoint they will also be a great resource for our stalls and workshops.
Marion designed a few different games: Top trumps, ‘Memory’ and a ‘Seal Photo ID Challenge’ thanks to Alec and Enid…

Looe ID Hub

2018 will see the 10th anniversary of our systematic surveys that are done on Looe island! This was the very first team marine group survey that CSGRT undertook, making it a pioneer project for us thanks to generous funding from Postcode Local Trust supported by the People’s Postcode Lottery.
The project entirely led and run by…

WiSe course

On the 7th of March, Sue along with Dan Jarvis from British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) joined Colin Speedie (Wildlife Safe – WiSe – founder) to deliver a WiSe training course in Padstow.
Sue has been updating the WiSe seal code of conduct recently and was honoured to be invited to give a southwest…

Touring mini exhibition

On week 9 of our Seal Squad XP Roadshow a very important part of our Touring Mini Exhibition arrived: our ten big informative display banners in frames and our new leaflets!
Many thanks to Tom at Attic Design and Print (http://www.attic-design.co.uk/) for researching and sourcing such amazing frames for us. They are easy to put…

Audience participation

At the beginning of October 2017, Marion attended the ‘Community Science in the Natural World’ conference organised in Plymouth by the National Marine Aquarium and the Community Seagrass Initiative. Having learned about some really exciting new engagement tools she came back raring to use them. This was especially true for ‘slido’ (https://www.sli.do/) a tool for…

RSPCA West Hatch

The second week of February was quite busy with talks! After two evening ones for different WI groups (Germoe District and Mylor) we had the pleasure of travelling up to the RSPCA Wildlife Hospital at West Hatch to deliver an afternoon talk to the team there. Arminel (Scott) did a fantastic job of organising this…

Meet our Patron!

Our first contact with Gillian Burke was during Springwatch 2017 for their piece on grey seals. We then met her at several local events and felt an instant connection with her through our shared values and ethos. We immediately decided that Gillian would make an excellent ambassador for our charity and we were absolutely delighted…

Microplastics are here!

CSGRT volunteers were not surprised, but were still shocked by the findings of a recent paper by Sarah Nelms from our local University (the University of Exeter’s Penryn campus) on microplastics in seals. To cut a long story short, Sarah found half of her seals scat (poo) samples and a third of fish analysed contained…