Brittany’s coastline is also home to a second seal species, the harbour seal (Phoca vitulina), recognisable by its V-shaped nostrils at the end of a short, blunt snout where the grey seal has vertical nostrils and a long, curved snout. They weigh between 100 and 250 kilograms and can be up to 2 meters long. Both species can be found slightly south of their usual species distribution and today there are more than 1,300 in France.
The only known French seal colony in the XIX century was one in the Bay of Somme, but it completely died out around 1960. The area was recolonised by seals from northern Europe and a group of breeding adults was re-established 20 years later. It expanded to the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel where there was a birth as early as 1976. In fact, it has now become the third largest breeding zone in France, with 120 individuals and 37 births in 2022. The species continued its expansion westwards, establishing itself in the Rance estuary and the Bay of Arguenon where there have been births since 2019. Conservationists have even been able to identify a female accompanied by a young male, spotted in 2019 and again in 2022. She was first observed on 26th July 2013, not long after her birth, washed up at Saint-Cast-Le-Guildo. She was successfully nursed back to health by the CHENE association’s conservation centre and released back into the wild in October of the same year.
Sporadic spottings of harbour seals have increased more to the west, with up to six in one go spotted in the Iroise marine nature reserve in 2023.
Translation: Tilly O'Neill
