A grey seal which was released into the sea with tracking equipment worth £5,000 attached to its back has gone missing. Nine-month-old Bran was released into the Irish Sea at Dublin at the end of June by the Irish Seal Sanctuary.
The sanctuary believe it was the first project of its type to be undertaken in Europe, but after two weeks of monitoring, the seal's tag stopped emitting signals, which had been relayed back to Dublin by satellite.
Mr Terry Flanagan, director of the sanctuary, was convinced the animal had not died as it appeared healthy when recently recorded diving up to 130 metres and staying underwater for 16 minutes at a time.
He said: "We actually believe the tag fell off. We did get some results from him but it was 14 days instead of the planned 250." The seal was last tracked to the west of the Scottish island of Colonsay on July 11th.
Mr Flanagan said it had been tagged in a bid to find out more of the life of the grey seal, an elusive animal. "Grey seals are very nomadic and spend most of their time at sea and 80 per cent of that underwater."
Bran had been tracked from Dublin down to Wexford and then back north to Belfast, before it crossed the Irish Sea to the west coast of Scotland and Colonsay.