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There is a seal waving at us, silhouetted against the evening sky like a reclining monarch, head high and tail too, back arched on the rock with front flipper raised like a hand in salutation to her passing subjects. She could be the queen of Dalkey Island, half sea creature, half land mammal – one of the mermaid-like Selkies, perhaps, of which Celtic legends tell.

She’ll have been basking on that rock all afternoon, our kayaking tour guide Jenny Kilbride tells us, and now that the tide is rising around her, she’s not quite ready to get off her perch and back to the high-tide work of fishing for her supper.

We float in repose nearby, taking a welcome rest from our easy-paced sea-kayak trek from Bullock Harbour along the rocky coastline of south county Dublin. As our eyes adjust, more of this queen’s court of seals emerge from hiding in plain sight on the rocks.

Their mottled skin is brilliantly camouflaged by the seaweed and lichen-covered rocks, shades of slate grey and taupe brown inflected with hues of egg blue and creamy white. Soon we can spot dozens of them, melting out of the living landscape that they are an integral part of. Not that they need to hide: there are no seal predators here.

“This is seal paradise,” Jenny confirms. “They have their rocks to bask on, all these delicious cold-water fish to catch and no-one to disturb them. The boats can’t get near them because it’s too rocky at this end of the island, so it’s only us kayakers, and we don’t bother them.”