If you visit Newburgh today, it is easy to imagine that grey seals have always been one of the defining features.
But this is a relatively recent story.
As part of my PhD research, I have been trying to piece together how the relationship between people and seals at Newburgh has changed over time. I recently had the opportunity to share some of this research with the Ellon and District Historical Society. Looking through old photographs, local records and personal recollections made one thing particularly clear: the Newburgh we know today would have looked very different just a few decades ago.
A working river
Before Newburgh became known for its seals, the Ythan was a busy working river.
Historically, Newburgh was an important coastal port and a point of transfer for goods travelling along the Ythan. Commercial activity reached its peak between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, before gradually declining as road and rail transport became increasingly important (Redwood, 2024).
I thought this photograph of a ship in the estuary was rather wonderful. It gives a real sense of just how different the river must once have looked.
The relationship between people and seals was also very different during this period.
According to the River Ythan Trust, salmon netters legally controlled seals at Newburgh for somewhere between 100 and 150 years. When salmon netting finally ceased in 1997/1998, the Trust later described seal numbers as being “almost zero” (River Ythan Trust, 2026).
Exactly how many seals were being controlled is much harder to establish. There are few systematic records, so it is difficult to reconstruct their numbers over this whole period.
But personal recollections give us some fascinating glimpses.
“I hardly ever saw more than 2 or 3 seals when working on the mudflats … right up till the late 1990s when I recall seeing them in double figures on occasion.”
Of course, this is a personal observation rather than a systematic survey, so we should not treat it as a precise record of seal abundance.
But it does give us a useful sense of perspective.
Seeing a few seals while working on the mudflats was notable. Seeing seals in double figures was something that happened only occasionally.
That is quite a contrast with today, when hundreds or even thousands of seals can gather at the site.
There are other clues in the historical record too.
I came across an older Forvie National Nature Reserve information pamphlet in Ellon library, describing the flora, fauna and regulations of the reserve. What struck me was what was not in it: there was no mention of seals.
The absence of seals from a short information booklet certainly cannot prove that they were not present. But it does suggest that they had not yet become one of the defining features of the reserve.
Today, it is difficult to imagine a Newburgh visitor guide that did not mention the seals!
Something changed in the 2000s
The first quantitative evidence I have found showing a substantial haul-out at Newburgh comes from the 2000s.
An aerial survey of north-east Scotland carried out in 2008 surveyed the Ythan site six times between April and September. Grey seal counts ranged from 22 to 84 animals (Thompson et al., 2009).
There were still no regular long-term surveys at this point, but photographs and other records provide some additional clues. Images from the late 2000s suggest that groups of around 100–200 seals were occasionally seen.
Then things really started to change.
Littlewood and Knox (2018) reported peak counts increasing from 446 seals in May 2010 to 4,367 in March 2018.
In less than a decade, Newburgh had gone from a place where seeing a handful of seals was noteworthy to somewhere that could hold thousands.
So what happened?
This is one of the questions I have found hardest to answer.
There are several possible explanations, but the available evidence does not allow us to identify a single cause with confidence.
For now, it frsutratingly remains educated hypothesises rather than established explanations.
People began to notice
The story becomes even more interesting when we look not just at the seals, but at the people watching them.
As seal numbers increased, so did interest in seeing them.
Mancini et al. (2018) used Flickr photographs to investigate wildlife-watching hotspots across Scotland between 2005 and 2015. Their analysis identified the emergence of Newburgh as a seal-watching hotspot from around 2008, with the site becoming particularly popular after 2011.
There is a lovely parallel here between the biological and social records.
The seals were becoming more numerous — and people were beginning to notice.
Newburgh was changing from a place where seals happened to be present to a place where people were actively coming to look for them.
And that marked another change in the relationship between people and seals.
From fisheries to conservation
During the early 2010s, research and management attention still included questions about how seals interacted with human activities on the river.
For example, Rae (2013) investigated the use of acoustic deterrent devices, or “seal scarers”, in relation to recreational fishing on the Ythan. Other undergraduate research looked at what the seals were eating. Studies by Greenland (2013) and Dzurek (2014) identified prey including plaice, lemon sole, sandeels, cod, whiting and haddock.
These studies provide a snapshot of a period when the increasing presence of seals was still being considered largely in relation to their interactions with people on fisheries.
But as the haul-out continued to grow, the focus increasingly shifted towards protecting the seals themselves.
By the middle of the 2010s, concerns about disturbance at the haul-out were becoming increasingly prominent. Local groups, including Ythan Seal Watch, campaigned for greater protection of the seals.
Then, in 2017, the Newburgh and Ythan haul-out was designated as a protected seal haul-out site by the Scottish Government.
This represented a remarkable change.
For generations, seals had been deliberately controlled because of their perceived interactions with fisheries.
Now, human activities were increasingly being managed to protect the seals.
The relationship had, in many ways, been turned on its head.
From protected wildlife to wildlife attraction
But protection did not mean that people stopped interacting with the seals.
In fact, quite the opposite happened.
As the seals became increasingly popular with visitors, infrastructure was developed to make wildlife watching easier and more accessible. Most recently, the Newburgh and Ythan Community Trust has developed the car park and viewing platform, providing a more structured place from which people can observe the seals.
These developments have also helped make the site more accessible, including for people using wheelchairs and prams, while supporting organised visits and wildlife tourism.
This is another important change in the relationship between people and seals.
Visitors are no longer simply encountering seals while using the river for another purpose.
Increasingly, the seals themselves are the reason people come to Newburgh.
My own research has found evidence of this changing visitor landscape. By analysing 11 years of georeferenced Instagram posts, I have found that appreciating nature is an important motivation for visiting the site, while posts about seals frequently include travel-related hashtags.
A changing relationship
Looking back across the available evidence, the history of Newburgh's seals is therefore about much more than an increase in seal numbers.
It is a story of changing relationships and environment.
Seals that were once relatively rare and subject to deliberate control have become a protected and highly visible feature of the Ythan Estuary.
At the same time, the river itself has changed. A much busier commercial waterway has become a much slower, peaceful landscape.
The Newburgh seal haul-out may look like a familiar feature of the Ythan today.
But the historical record suggests that it is a remarkably recent rapid development.
And the relationship between people and seals in the area is still changing.
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