Ariel the grey seal pup who arrived at the sanctuary last month is now outside in one of the wee pools where she is learning to eat fish, having steadfastly refused to touch them while inside the seal unit where all she did was gaze wistfully at her paddling pool and make a lot of noise. Now she’s out in the fresh air, she’s beginning to get the hang of it. #selkie #sealpup #greyseal #shetland #wildlife

We’re extremely happy and quite relieved to see Dodie still with us five days after he was rescued from Sumburgh. Yes…this is Dottie, but when we had a closer look we realised we’d made a mistake so we re-gendered his name. So…Dodie is not a happy seal. His chest still heaves with all the parasites in his lungs, but he appears to want to live so he’s putting up an amazing fight. This morning we found the first lungworm he’s coughed up so far. Tomorrow we plan to worm him properly after five days on antibiotics and decongestants. What a fighter he is! #selkie #sealpup #greyseal #shetland #wildlife

Just when we thought the grey seal season was ready to calm down, our 13th pup of the winter turned up! This young female was found by Emma Mylett this morning on the beach down at Sumburgh Airport looking exhausted from the huge seas we've been having in Shetland with these incessant south easterlies. We could see from the images Emma sent us that she was seriously unwell - short of breath with much blood around the mouth, a likely case of lungworm infestation. We drove straight down and picked her up, along with medication from Shetland Vets to treat the lungworm and any infection it may be causing. Dottie, as Emma has called her, is also extremely dehydrated, so for now we are treating her with antibiotics and decongestants, while keeping her warm and giving her lots of fluids. She is a very poorly seal, but grey seals are tough creatures so we are not giving up hope and will do our best to keep her alive over the next few days. If you would like to contribute to the work we do here at Hillswick Wildlife Sanctuary, please visit https://www.hillswickwildlifesanctuary.org/donate/ Thankyou everyone for all your support. #selkie #sealpup #greyseal #storm #shetland #wildlife

It has been a truly devastating week here at the sanctuary with the loss of the second otter cub, Turvil just days after his brother passed. We are in a state of shock. Over the past six months we have lost seven otter cubs. Each one has been an individual case, which we can find a rational explanation for. In Turvil’s case it was the loss of his brother Ziggy that amplified the stress of losing mum and coming into captivity. But we have to acknowledge something is not right here. In the early 2000s we kept losing common seal pups every year and had to completely overhaul our approach to seal care and increase our vigilance. The same is true now with otter cubs. Why we have had such an unprecedented number of cubs coming in and why they have become so much more vulnerable we do not know. These are highly sensitive creatures who stress extremely easily and are never easy to raise after losing their mums at such a young age. But we have never experienced anything like this before and will do all in our power to address this problem. Thankyou everyone for your continued support. It means a lot at times like this. #draatsie

We are extremely saddened to announce that young Ziggy the otter cub rescued with his brother from East Voe, Scalloway, last week has died. Ziggy put up a good fight and at first seemed strong and determined, but it turned out he never had the strength of his brother Turvil. So while we kept the pair together for comfort and reassurance after the trauma of losing their mother, it seems Turvil may have been too demanding of Ziggy. They both seemed to be doing fine, until yesterday evening when we took them out to be fed. Ziggy had suddenly lost all his strength and in the early hours despite our constant attention he passed away. Otter cubs can be such a challenge and can give up the ghost quite easily if they feel stressed, which seems to have been the case with Ziggy. We did what we could for him…and the good news is that Turvil appears to continue to thrive on his own. But we are a sad sanctuary at the moment. #draatsie

After last week's storms abated we noticed a weather window open up so we could safely release our two Orkney boys Hodr and Odin back to the wild this morning. We have been amazed at how these two have progressed since they came up on the ferry, Hodr five weeks and Odin four weeks ago. They have both more than doubled in weight in that short time and weighed 38 and 40 kilos respectively when we hauled them out of the sanctuary's big pool where Smudge still resides. Tipping them out onto the beach here in Hillswick, Odin the black took no time to head off into the water, but Hodr the fair was too frightened and needed much encouragement, which he really did not appreciate. But as soon as he took the plunge he was off. The pair stayed in the bay for some time and to our delight we actually saw one of them bring a fish to the surface and swallow it. There will be no stopping these two...maybe they'll even make their way back to where they came from. #selkie #sealpup #greyseal #shetland #wildlife

Another seal pup joined us last week making two new seals in the first two weeks of 2026! The phone rang at 6:30am on a very windy Sunday morning. Danielle Smith from Cunningsburgh had found this seal pup wandering across the field near her house about 300 yards away from the coast. Somehow it had managed to ascend steep banks to reach the land and seemed to be trying to get as far away from the sea as possible. We asked Danielle to pen it in somewhere safe, but the pup managed to escape and it took some time to find her when we arrived after dawn broke. Once we had found and captured her, Danielle's daughter Ada named her Ariel after her favourite Disney princess. Ariel is a tiny almost moulted pup who weighed just 12.8kgs on arrival. She's difficult to feed, quite noisy and seems to have an aversion to water along with a desire to climb...which, no doubt, is why she was found where she was in the first place. There's no accounting for the behaviour of some seal pups, but perhaps the stormy seas left her traumatised and in need of getting as far away from those waves as possible. She's safe now and slowly getting the hang of things here, but it's going to take a while to get her plump and confident enough to go back to the wild. #selkie #sealpup #greyseal #shetland #wildlife If you would like to support the work we do with seals and otters, please go to https://www.hillswickwildlifesanctuary.org/donate/ Thankyou!

It has been a busy few days here at the sanctuary...and our busiest grey seal season for a decade with our tenth seal arriving on Tuesday after she was found by Carleen Hughson on the Kirk beach as she was on her way to visit her father Charlie's grave just one week after his funeral. "In all my years on Whalsay I have never seen a seal on that beach," Carleen said. "So I knew something must be wrong with it." The fully moulted seal pup indeed seemed very flat when we went to collect her and by yesterday tucked up in the sanctuary she was sneezing and coughing badly. But with a course of antibiotics she seems to be making a rapid recovery - she's certainly extremely fierce - and now needs to put on some weight as she was a mere 15kgs on arrival. Fortunately she's already able to take fish no problem, which makes caring for her a lot easier. And Carolyn called her Charlie, for obvious reasons. #selkie #sealpup #greyseal #shetland #wildlife

A great way to start 2026...releasing Helena and Scatty the grey seals rescued in Ronas Voe and at Scatness in October and November respectively. They would have gone earlier if it wasn't for the gales we've been having here in Shetland. So with today's calm, sunny weather the time for freedom finally arrived. However when we released them on the beach here at Hillswick they headed in opposite directions. Scatty went straight for the sea and disappeared, while Helena took off in the opposite direction going inland towards the sanctuary. She soon realised her mistake though, turned around and had a nice slide on the thick snow back to the water's edge where she gently eased her way in. Have a good life you pair out in the wild. #selkie #sealpup #greyseal #shetland #wildlife #snow

And finally...and possibly most challenging of all, here is Loki - as you can guess from his name, he too arrived on the ferry from Orkney this morning. Another Norse god to join Hodr and Odin. But unlike those two healthy specimens, poor Loki is extremely thin and covered in sores, which look like seal pox, a nasty herpes virus that is highly contagious while not considered a real danger to a seal's long term health. We've not had a case for many a year, but with six other seals in the sanctuary we are having to be extra vigilant to avoid any cross infection. So underweight Loki is stuck inside a small pen on his own for the foreseeable future. Mind you, it's the best place for him while he works on recovering his strength and putting on some weight. Whether he'll make it or not remains open to question, but as ever, we are keeping our hopes up and will do the best we can. #selkie #sealpup #greyseal #shetland #wildlife