Terschelling Seal Watching off the West Shore
Yet another great thing to do on the Wadden islands: Terschelling Seal watching. We try to do it every time we visit and it never gets old. Whenever the light changes on the water the whole world around you changes with it.
This year we booked a tour through VVV Terschelling with the Jhr. J.W.H. Rutgers van Rozenburg boat. Love that catchy name, haha. It’s the oldest motorised rescue boat of the island, built in 1907! It has obviously been restored and looks amazing.
The whole tour takes about 2 hours and takes you to the sandbanks between Texel and Terschelling. You get beautiful views of Het Groene Strand (the Green Beach) and the high dunes on the west coast of Terschelling. Since we always get hungry on the water we brought some snacks and drinks from our favourite to-go little bistro ‘t Lokaal. I had a yummy cheese sandwich with cranberry chutney for a perfect picnic on the water.
Contrary to whale watching – something we did in Norway and Cape Cod– , chances are almost 100% you will spot seals while seal watching around Terschelling. They love the water here, especially the sand banks close to shore, where you’ll find them sunbathing in groups.
Two types of Seal.
Dutch waters house two types, the common and the grey seal. The grey seal gets quite big, looks really cute and fluffy with baby eyes. The common seal looks a bit darker, or has black spots, v-shaped nostrils and ghost-like eyes. You get pretty close with the boat, but it really helps to bring binoculars or a zoom lens (we brought a Nikkor 70-200 2.8 with a Nikon TC-20E III Teleconverter which effectively gives you a 140-400 mm 5.6 tele.) to really see their faces.
[…] swimming seal somewhere far away. (If not, but you really want to, book a seal watching tour, like this one. You’ll almost always spot a few seals sunbathing on one of the […]