This time, sad images of a mature adult Grey Seal (Halichoerus grypus) that was washed up with all the sea foam by recent stormy seas at Rhossili on the Gower Peninsula.
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Jessica's Nature Blog 
That’s a fourth post of yours I gave now read about seal carcasses. Are they really that prolific there?
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There were four dead seals on Rhossili beach on that particular day during Christmas week. I am sure that there will have been many more casualties there since that visit, given the prevailing weather conditions.
On previous visits, I have photographed dead seals, a porpoise, several dolphins – and I have heard that a Right Whale was washed up at Burry Holms last year and a Leather-back Turtle was once stranded on Worms Head Causeway. Sheep, cattle and wild ponies are common casualties on the seashore. Birds of many varieties – on occasion more than a dozen gannets along that stretch of the seashore in one day last year – all I think with broken necks. Many species of fish get washed up, including exotic species from hundreds of miles away, as well as thousands of marine invertebrates like common starfish and whelks are subject to mass strandings. Such is the strength of the tides and the nature of the currents especially in storm conditions. This is by no means unusual around Britain’s coast.
These four Grey Seal posts are a series showing first a young seal; then a mature adult; then details of one of the two decomposing carcasses; and most recently one of the seal bones I picked up while beachcombing at Rhossili last summer. All this is a straightforward observation of Nature as it really is. It is about the cycle of life. These posts are an attempt to depict how it really is out on our beaches. Not everything you find on the seashore is attractive or pleasant – although I am aware that most people just want to look at pretty or amusing pictures. I am trying to redress the balance a bit.
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