Abstract
Due to the expansion of the tidal energy industry and the concern surrounding the risks posed to marine megafauna, there is a requirement for knowledge on how marine animals use tidal environments. Potential interactions are poorly understood, largely due to the complexity of tidal stream environments that make traditional survey and monitoring methods challenging. Although tide patterns have long been known to influence seal haul out behaviour, the behaviour of seals within fast flowing, turbulent environments is less well known. In the UK in recent years much interest has focussed on understanding how seals use tidal environments and a number of datasets are starting to emerge. The purpose of this report is to review these studies with a view to synthesising the current state of knowledge, to identify similarities and differences across datasets and to determine whether there are common factors across studies, which shape seal behaviour and explore the extent to which we can generalise across sites and between species.