Seal pup spotted swimming up flooded Norfolk road

A keen wildlife spotter photographed a seal pup swimming past him on a flooded road. The young creature was seen swimming up the A149 at Cley on Friday morning through the water brought inland by Thursday night’s high tide.

Marcus Nash, from Hindolveston, took these pictures of it as it swam along the road and for a brief moment pulled itself onto a bank. Mr Nash, 44, a keen bird watcher, said: “I’ve never seen anything like this before. I’ve seen seals on the beach and been out on seal boats as a family but I’ve never seen one swimming along a road.”
He said: “I was chatting to a group of people down there. Somebody was looking towards the Cley Norfolk Wildlife Trust visitor center and suddenly said ‘oh look, there’s an otter’. I turned and at that point it had dived, then it’s head came up and (said) no it isn’t, it’s a seal. It proceeded to swim right in front of us in what would have been the A149.”

Mr Nash and his fellow spectators became concerned for the pup as it was clearly in distress. “It was calling all the time,” he added. “It’s over 1km from there to the sea where it should have been.” The group of onlookers tracked the pup’s progress and were ready to call for it to be rescued, but it did not surface after pulling itself onto the bank, and the group did not see it again.