Archive film of a seal
taken in 1956 by an amateur cinephotographer on the remote
Shetland Island of Foula has set all Britain’s naturalists
agog.
The film, showing brief footage of the seal, was screened
recently on a Grampian Television nostalgia series The
Way It Was, which features people, places and events,
captured on film in bygone eras.
Seals are a common enough sight around the shores of Shetland,
but this one got the marine mammal specialists jumping
to try and confirm what they thought they were seeing:
an extremely rare British visitor, a bearded seal.
Sightings of this animal in UK waters are so rare that
this 1956 film turned out to be the first confirmed sighting
of a bearded seal in seventy-five years.
Dr Gibson of the Scottish Natural History Library contacted
Scottish Film Archive Curator, Janet McBain to enquire
about the originator of the film and confirmed its rarity.
He wondered though, why it had not been reported to the
Mammal Society of the British Isles at the time. The curator
suggested that as this was amateur film, the photographer
probably had no idea of the rarity of his subject!
Marine mammal specialists across Britain are now keen
to verify the 1956 Foula sighting for themselves and the
Archive has put them in direct touch with the filmmaker.
This week...
o Scottish Screen in Shetland Film Controversy >>>
o Scotland’s Mansions put on the Movie
Map >>>
o Edinburgh Conservatives decry refugee
video diary project >>>
o Who Dressed Harry Potter?
>>> archive >>>
Archive film of a seal
taken in 1956 by an amateur cinephotographer on the remote
Shetland Island of Foula has set all Britain’s naturalists
agog.