Seal colony's pup numbers up 70% on last year

Orford Ness has welcomed 228 grey seal pups this winter

A grey seal colony in Suffolk has seen a 70% year-on-year increase in pups.

The National Trust revealed last year that Orford Ness had become home to the county's first breeding colony of grey seals.

The most recent pupping season has now come to end and staff at the site have counted 228 newborns, compared with 133 last year.

Matt Wilson, the trust's countryside manager, said the team was pleased to see so many pups.

Matt Wilson said he was pleased at the progress the colony was making

"We were hoping that we'd get over 200 this year and it's great that we have," he said.

"Every year for the first three years our pup numbers have doubled more or less, so this is perhaps slightly lower than we were expecting, but it's still a really good sign for the colony."

The pups started to arrive slightly earlier than expected in November, but they have continued to appear up to the point when the team would expect them in January.

Mr Wilson said the pups had done "really well", surviving several storms and cold weather.

He added that it was thought only about 10 of the pups had been lost, which was a low mortality rate for a wild colony.

The pups and their mothers have been enjoying long sleeps at Orford Ness during the winter

Access to Orford Ness is available to the public only by a National Trust boat

Orford Ness is a 10-mile long (16km) spit joined to the mainland just south of Aldeburgh. During the 20th Century, it was a military testing site.

It is closed to the public for the winter but will reopen in April.

The colony has about 400 seals, and the number has been increasing every year since the seals arrived in 2021.

The pups have begun to shed their white fur coats to allow them to become waterproof.

Mr Wilson said he expected them to remain at the site over the summer.

He has previously explained that the National Trust believes the colony enjoy Orford Ness due to a lack of human disturbance.