THE RSPCA has issued urgent advice to the public after a number of alarming incidents involving seals along the Yorkshire coast.

In one incident a seal was injured when it was attacked by a dog – but in others it has been the actions of humans that have created concern.

RSPCA officers have been called out a number of times over the past few weeks to seal-related calls, including the Whitby and Scarborough areas, and one injured seal had to be collected from the beach on Monday and is now underground treatment.

RSPCA inspector Claire Little said: “We had been monitoring the seal for two days – an officer had been out to check on it on Saturday and again on Sunday – and the seal was doing fine but when I attended on Monday it was injured.

“It had clearly been attacked by a dog, and had multiple puncture wounds around it’s rear flipper - which meant it needed to be brought into care for treatment.

“Fortunately infection hadn’t set in so we’re optimistic it will make a full recovery, but this needn’t have happened. People must not allow their dogs to go near seals.”

She said the actions of some members of the public was also causing concern.

“I got to one job and found someone sitting their child on top of the seal to have a photograph taken,” said Inspector Little.

“Clearly this is not good for the seal but there is also a public health aspect to it too – seals can give a nasty bite which will become infected by the bacteria in a seal’s mouth.”

She added: “Someone told me they had picked a seal up by the rear flipper and dragged it down the beach to try to put it back into the sea.

“Another man was bringing a washing up bowl to a seal he had come across and was dousing it in water.

“There’s no excuse for the first of these examples of course, but I do recognise that sometimes people are doing what they think is the right thing for animal welfare, but it isn’t.

“Just because a seal isn’t in the water doesn’t mean there is something wrong with it - and sometimes people are interfering when they don’t need to and doing more harm than good.”