31 October 2012: The Common Wadden Sea Secretariat has reported that the Trilateral Seal Expert group, consisting of experts from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, found that the Wadden Sea-wide seal count for 2012 was the greatest since the beginning of the seal count in 1975. The Wadden Sea is a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.

According to the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat, this year’s results mark the ninth year of a continuous growth of the seal population in the trilateral Wadden Sea area since the great seal epidemic in 2002, in which more than half of the population died. The Secretariat notes that the increase is seals in unevenly distributed, highlighting the importance of coordinated counts that provide a single most accurate estimate of the entire Wadden Sea seal population within a few days in August. [Common Wadden Sea Secretariat Press Release]