Counting seals from the headland

Text: an original contemporary personal account-style practice extract.

I joined the coastal wildlife survey expecting to spend most of the morning looking through binoculars. Before we began, the coordinator explained how to distinguish seals resting on the rocks from those moving through the water. I was surprised by how quickly an apparently empty stretch of sea became busy once I looked carefully.

I appreciated two parts of the survey plan. We worked in pairs and compared our totals before submitting them, so a seal surfacing in a new place was less likely to be counted twice. The headland was divided into fixed viewing sectors, which stopped our attention drifting towards the busiest rocks. At the end, I trusted the total more than I had expected.

From the paragraph beginning “I appreciated”, give two things the writer found helpful about the survey plan.