The grey seal population has increased sharply over the past 20 years and has gone from the category of near threatened to viable. In the past, the grey seal has been threatened by intensive hunting and environmental toxins, but protection efforts have meant that the population has grown year by year.
However, a larger seal population poses problems for fishermen and recreational fishermen, through competition for fish stocks and damage to gear. Both protection and license hunting are allowed on grey seals in Sweden following a decision by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.
Seal cubs were inventoried by helicopter
In 2021, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, with the support of the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, conducted an inventory of grey seal cubs with the help of a helicopter. From the air, the seals were counted with binoculars.
Most of the Swedish grey seals live in the Stockholm archipelago. 38 percent of the seal cutters, over 1000 individuals, were counted on the cormorant archipelago in the outer archipelago.
Here, nature filmmakers captured, among other things, the moment when a female grey seal had to abandon her cub in order to go back out to sea and fish.
See The Nature of the World: The Coast of Scandinavia on SVT Play, or on 23/3 at 21.00 in SVT1.