Growing up with monk seals in Madeira

Gil Pereira

Park Ranger, Natural Park of Madeira

When I was a kid, I remember my father, a longshoreman in Funchal, telling us stories about a Lobo Marinho (monk seal) that used to swim in the harbour, and sometimes rest on a pebbled beach. If the seal was disturbed by someone, he’d “throw up stones” and escape into the sea. Asked if we could see the seal, my father always told me and my brothers no, because they no longer live around Madeira Island.

In 1997 I became a Park Ranger in Natural Park of Madeira, and started working for the protection of the monk seals. I saw one for the first time in the Desertas Islands, where the seals had found refuge from human persecution after leaving Madeira. Those uninhabited islands south of Madeira were their last hope in the archipelago. At the time our main challenge was to protect the area, because even there life was hardly pleasant for the seals. Interactions with fisheries had become a threat to their survival, the seals being blamed for human mistakes. Some measures had to be taken, and I’m glad they were.

In 1988, the Natural Park of Madeira established a permanent observation station on the Desertas, staffed by rangers and biologists; then, on 23 May 1990, the Desertas Islands Special Protection Area was created. These were the first and most important steps on the road to recovery of the species.

Our work in the Desertas isn’t always easy; there are several factors that can make it harder, but I think I can speak for all the staff of the Natural Park when I say that it’s a very rewarding experience. One of our rewards has been to see the fruits of our work in protecting this species.

Some years after the conservation measures taken at the Desertas, we began observing monk seal pups on the sea. Then, in the early years of this century, seals began using the open beach at Tabaqueiro to give birth and nurse their young for the first days of their lives.

Nowadays the progress seen is more evident than ever, with monk seals feeling safe enough to return to Madeira itself after an absence after almost 50 years, and where they used to live when the Portuguese explorers first arrived in the XV century. It’s no longer unusual to see them in Madeira, and there are areas where it is almost a common occurrence.

Rocking the cradle of my baby daughter, it’s now my turn – almost 30 years after my father’s stories – to tell her stories about the monk seals. Seals that now live in Madeira again. Someday, I hope to show them to her.

Gil Pereira, November 2010.

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Copyright © 2010 Gil Pereira, The Monachus Guardian. All Rights Reserved