A surfer from west Wales says it was a “brilliant experience” to swim so close to an “inquisitive” young seal.<\/p>\n
Gethin Rowlands, 28, from St Davids in Pembrokeshire, filmed the encounter while surfing at Newgale beach at about 16:00 BST on Thursday.<\/p>\n
He said he has been around seals “all his life” through his work as a wildlife skipper – but this was the longest one has ever stayed with him, following him for around 45 minutes. <\/p>\n
“It actually stopped me from wanting to surf – I was just content being there and didn’t want to disturb it,” Gethin said. <\/p>\n
With seals now in breeding season, Gethin, who has been working with them for the past 10 years, stressed that people must avoid deliberately approaching them.<\/p>\n
British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) said to not approach seals or allow children or dogs near them, adding to give the animals “plenty of space”, by keeping a minimum distance of 100m from them.<\/p>\n
BDMLR said seals are easily disturbed on land where they are far more wary of threats, stampeding into the sea when they are startled, which will likely cause injuries and, in extreme cases, even death.<\/p>\n
“Please stay calm, quiet, downwind and keep a low profile during your encounter so they don’t notice you.”<\/p>\n
Video edited by Nathan Avis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A surfer from west Wales says it was a “brilliant experience” to swim so close to an “inquisitive”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-212577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}