UKDIVING canines should serve to remind us these are large , wild animals that have briefly accepted us into their world . With this acceptance comes a need to manage the encounter , so that the animal can return to its natural behaviour .
Dive magazines tend to feature photographs taken during the very height of a successful seal encounter . You don ’ t see the patient fieldcraft and uneventful dives that went into getting the good shots . Often , my dives have yielded little more but a few instances of tentative fin chewing . It takes some effort to turn around 180 degrees in a drysuit , by which time the seal has typically fled beyond the limits of visibility .
The best advice for photographing a grey seal is – counter intuitively – to not actively seek or follow them in the water . I help to organise a [ non-commercial ] annual trip to Lundy Island , where I mostly take photos of the lush seaweed gardens and reefs of the sheltered east coast . Even when the first seals arrive and start showing off , I make a point of ignoring them . Perhaps this helps them gain confidence , or perhaps they find it infuriating . The end result is that they relax , gain confidence and start to engage in more involved behaviour .
Always let the seals dictate the pace of your encounter . It ’ s worth stating the obvious : you should never grab or manhandle the seals ( though they may do this to you !), nor should you chase them or harry them if they are snoozing under a boulder .
As we are about to see , rest is crucial to the physical wellbeing of a seal , and the onus is on us to allow them to relax . Of course , if they choose not to respect your space , it ’ s a completely different matter . Sometimes the personal behaviour can be quite boisterous , and for this reason I do not recommend seal diving to raw beginners who may be lacking in confidence .
Face-to-face
I have twice been involved in taking photographs of a seal putting its face right up against a diver ’ s mask . On the first occasion I was the diver , while on the second I took photos of my buddy , Saeed Rashid , carefully interacting with a seal . In both instances , the seal made a calm , measured approach and all we had to do was reciprocate by lowering our cameras .
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