The Secret Behind Sammy the Seal

Interview with Alan Hegarty, from the Lighthouse Restaurant and the Fishman shop.

Sammy arrived in 2012 when we opened the fish shop and he has actually trained me into feeding him 3 times a day at 9 o'clock, 1 o'clock and 4 o'clock. In the high tide he would jump out of the water on to the footpath since we opened the restaurant that has become a regular occurrence and it does not have to be high water, it can be 3 feet from the water's edge and he will still jump so we approached the seal sanctuary and asked them to help us train sammy to stay in the water so they gave us some tips and we now have a herding board that we lean up against sammy and he realises that’s a negative thing and he will stay in the water and he is not getting up as much.

The problem with him getting up is that he could be injured and he is really good for business i don’t want it to be at any expense, he can also snap at people because people tendency to think he might be tame , but he is not tame he is a wild animal and he is an aggressive animal and all grey seals are so i have asked people not to ask to feed him and to keep their distance at the end of the day he is a wild animal and we want him to remain that way but he has done wonderful things for wicklow we have had a video online on youtube that has had 20 million hits which has mention wicklow in all parts of the world and we find that we are getting tourists coming down that would normally pass us by are getting off the ferry and coming down to see sammy the seal, Italian, American people, some people from England and even some people from the midlands are coming to see him, he is a bit of an attraction and hopefully he will be Wicklow’s Fungi. http://visitwicklow.ie

Видео The Secret Behind Sammy the Seal канала Wicklow Tourism