MY friend and I took our four young girls for an afternoon on New Brighton beach.

They were playing happily in the sand by Fort Perch Rock when they alerted us of an object they thought might be a huge rock.

Distressingly, they had already been touching it with their hands until we realised it was a dead seal after I moved some sand aside with a spade.

The smell was disgusting and its skin was peeling. It must have been there for a while as it was decomposing.

We reported it to the lifeguard who told us it wasn’t their problem but was up to the council to deal with.

He told us there was a similar report a few days ago of another seal further up the beach and the council knew, yet still hadn't done anything about it.

We asked the lifeguards to cone-off the area but they implied it would draw more attention to it.

People need to be warned as we were playing with our kids their and easily could have ran over it and who knows if it's rotting flesh could have exploded on standing on it.

This should definitely be dealt with ASAP.

Gemma Hawkins by email