Claire said she was trying to be really ambitious with the scope of the work.
“What I’ve tried to do is collect a data point once a week for two years and that’s right the way through a very Aberdeen winter,” she said.
“This gives a really good idea of the seasonality of how the seals use the beach. My drone footage is getting GPS locations of where they’re sitting.”
She said that during summer the seals are at the mouth of the estuary, where they spend more time foraging and at sea.
This coincides with when the beach is busier with people.
In winter, when they are breeding and moulting, she said they tend to haul out at the high tide mark which is quite close to a new walkway and viewing point for people to use.
The beach is usually quieter due to the poorer weather at that time of year.
She said artificial intelligence was really helping her process data, rather than having to manually count seals on a screen.
“I was getting 1,000 seals a survey so I needed something which would help me streamline the data,” she said.