Horror at UK beauty spot as seals killed off slowly at 'unprecedented' rate

Members of the public are being warned to be careful what they bring to beaches this summer amid an "unprecedented" rise in seal entanglements along Norfolk's coast. Conservationists at Horsey Gap, home to one of the UK's biggest seal colonies, said the number of incidents involving the animals getting caught in litter - particularly plastic flying rings - is at a record high, placing a significant strain on the local animal hospital.

Sally Butler, rescue coordinator at the Friends of Horsey Seals, told the Express: "It's life threatening for them. What happens is when they're young seals, they're so inquisitive, they play about and get their heads stuck inside a flying ring or in any other piece of plastic and they can't get that plastic off. So as they grow, it gets embedded in their neck.

"It inhibits their foraging and ultimately it kills them. It is an extremely slow death, it can take years for them to die."

In the first half of 2025, the charity received almost the same number of callouts for entanglements as it did for the whole of 2024 (28).

Sally, 61, has worked with seals along the East Anglia coast for a number of years and said the recent months have been the hardest yet.

"The callouts that we get now are mainly entanglements," she explained, with seals also getting caught up in things such as fishing nets.

"From the pupping season onwards it seems to be all entanglements that we get called out for.

"During the peak season, we definitely struggle with the amount of callouts," added Sally, who said it once took two-and-half years to catch one entangled seal, while some are never caught.

Sally is backing a nationwide campaign set up by The Seal Alliance to bar flying rings from British beaches.

Jenny Hobson from the Flying Rings Campaign 2025 said the first case she was made aware of was in 2017, with numbers gradually increasing since.

She told the Express: "Our message is to please not sell, buy or throw flying rings, especially over the summer holidays. The fact is that most plastic enters the sea from inland. So it's also a problem if people play with them inland, they can get lost and discarded and get into waterways.

"We're really asking for people to swap to seal-safe toys and that can include solid disc frisbees which seals can't get their heads through."

Jenny said there have also been incidents recorded along England's south-west coast, with Cornwall Council recently introducing a voluntary ban on the flying rings.

She added: "We're concerned that we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg because seals spend most of their life at sea. They don't want to be in the eye of human beings.

"They're travelling, they're swimming across the Channel and they're out of our sight. We fear that we're only seeing a very small proportion of seals that are stuck in these flying rings."

Seals with serious entanglement injuries in Norfolk are brought to the RSPCA East Winch Wildlife Centre near King's Lynn.

The number of entangled seals admitted to the hospital has more than doubled compared to 2024 and the increase led to the RSPCA putting out a public request for donations of salt - used to clean and heal wounds - amid dwindling supplies.

The centre's manager Evangelos Achilleos told the Express the rise in cases has been "quite alarming" and costly.

"If we've got an adult seal, it can cost between £10,000-£15,000 for us to be able to rehabilitate, which is an astronomical amount in comparison to a pup which is approximately £5,000," said Evangelos, explaining the rehabilitation process usually takes from between one to three months.

He added seeing the seals' injuries is an "emotive experience from admission through to rehabilitation".

"It doesn't matter how many you work with, every single time you get one that's caught in litter, which is because of human behaviour, and when you actually see how horrific these injuries are, it's always emotive."

Like Sally at Friends of Horsey Seals, Dan Goldsmith, 40, also brings wounded seals to the East Wich animal hospital.

Dan is the chairman of the Marine and Wildlife Rescue which covers the whole of Norfolk and parts of Suffolk, and he too has seen a rise in entanglement cases.

"It's an awful sight sometimes," he said. "We're a bit immune to it now because we see it so often and you try to focus on the job to catch them safely and without causing them any more injury.

"But the thing that doesn't leave you is the smell of the infection.

"It's something you cannot describe until you've been exposed to it, because it really is the rotting flesh. It really is dreadful and a sad thing to see."

Dan, who has worked with the region's seals for around 20 years, is "very much" backing the calls to voluntairly ban flying rings from UK beaches and says he has also seen the animals caught up in ropes, gaskets, buckets and even clothes over the years.

The Seal Alliance's awareness campaign has also received support from a number of MPs, as well as some coastal councils in Norfolk and Wales.