Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust

Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust (CSGRT) is a multi award winning, evidence based conservation charity supporting a large regional network of active citizen scientists who routinely survey seals on their local patch in order to learn more about our globally rare grey seals.

CSGRT’s pioneering long term photo identification research began in 2000. Our network of volunteers continues to snowball as more and more people who enjoy the coast tell us about the seals they have seen. Each sighting is entered into our custom built database, which together with tens of thousands of other records helps to build up the big picture of how individual seals are moving around and using our coastal habitat.

As our knowledge has grown, it had become apparent that it is not enough to simply focus our research on seals, but a more holistic understanding of our marine environment is needed to inform our conservation work. So CSGRT don’t just survey seals. We partner with a range of local marine related organisations to carry out land and boat based marine and coastal surveys collecting a range of data about seals, seabirds, other marine life and the environment we share with them.