The gray seal population has increased greatly in the last 20 years and has gone from the category of near threatened to viable. In the past, the gray 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 causes problems for commercial and recreational fishermen, through competition for fish stocks and damage to gear. Both protective and license hunting is permitted for gray seals in Sweden following a decision by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.
Seals were inventoried by helicopter
In 2021, the National Museum of Natural History, with the support of the Norwegian Sea and Water Authority, carried out an inventory of gray seal seals with the help of a helicopter. From the air, the seals were counted with binoculars.
Most of the Swedish gray seals live in the Stockholm archipelago. 38 percent of the seals, over 1,000 individuals, were counted on the Skarv island group in the outer archipelago.
Here, nature filmmakers captured, among other things, the moment when a female gray seal had to abandon her young to go back out to sea and fish.
See Nature of the world: Scandinavia’s coast on SVT Playor on 23/3 at 21.00 in SVT1.