Vol. 11 (2): November 2008

One talking fish with a whale of a tale

William M. Johnson

Thanks to Leiden publisher Backhuys and the Netherlands Commission for International Nature Protection, TMG is pleased to announce that two landmark studies on the Mediterranean monk seal in human history and culture, Monk Seals in Antiquity, and Monk Seals in Post-Classical History, are being made available for PDF Open Access download [see Recent Publications]. To mark the occasion, in this issue’s Cover Story we are also publishing One Talking Fish… an overview of humanity’s historical relationship with Monachus monachus, commissioned recently by the Czech Ministry of Environment for the forthcoming anthology ‘Of Animals and Men’.

The Mediterranean monk seal is Europe’s most endangered marine mammal – but why? What has made it so?

Taken at face value, the evidence has always appeared to implicate the grinding ecological pressures that ‘algae-bloomed’ during the 20th century – overfishing and destructive fishing methods, rampant coastal development, the locust swarms of summer tourists and boaters, the toxic ooze of industrial and agricultural pollution.

A reading of more distant history, however, tells a somewhat different story, and arguably delivers a lesson as pertinent today as it was two millennia ago, when ancient Rome first witnessed the spectre of overfishing, erosion, urban overcrowding, forest denudation and the disappearance of species.

In ancient minds

Although it may be thought of as an obscure species today, its very survival hanging by a thread, the Mediterranean monk seal has appeared in numerous writings inked onto papyrus, parchment or paper during the last 3000 years.

While most Europeans today are scarcely even aware of its existence, the seal formerly touched the lives of many, including emperors, poets, philosophers, sorcerers, physicians, explorers and, of course, fishermen.

Homer, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Plutarch, Galen, Avicenna and Gesner are among some of the ancient and Renaissance world luminaries who recorded observations about the Mediterranean seal and its relationship to human culture, folklore, science and economy.

Monk seal colonies were once found throughout the Mediterranean, the Marmara and Black Seas. The species also frequented the Atlantic coast of Africa, as far south as Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia, as well as the Atlantic islands of Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, Madeira and the Azores. It is likely that across its original range, the Mediterranean monk seal once numbered in the tens of thousands.

Today, several thousand years later, fewer than 600 individuals are thought to survive, mainly in two disconnected populations, one along the mainland coasts and islands of Greece and Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean, and the other in the Atlantic, along the cliff-bound coasts of the disputed Western Sahara.

France, Spain, Italy, Egypt, Israel and Lebanon are among some of the nations that saw the disappearance of the species during the 20th century. More recently, the monk seal is also thought to have become extinct in the Black Sea. Despite sporadic sightings – possibly of stragglers from other regions – Monachus monachus is also effectively extinct along the Adriatic coasts and islands of Croatia, and the Sea of Marmara. Similarly, only a handful of individuals now reportedly survives along the Mediterranean coasts of Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Morocco.

Habitat

With all the threats arrayed against the species that have involved killing by spear, trident, club, rifle or dynamite, it is sometimes easy to forget that habitat plays its own hidden role in the monk seal’s tenuous survival.

Significantly, ancient texts portray the animals as living in large herds, and inhabiting open sandy beaches, shoreline rocks and great, arching sea caves.

In the Odyssey Homer describes how the seals, herded by their guardian, the sea god Proteus, son of Poseidon, flocked to such great caverns to sleep, finding shade from the noonday sun. The animals – numbering hundreds in some respected translations and commentaries – then lay in rows “along the sands” near the breaking waves.

In his Historia Animalium, the Father of Natural History, Aristotle, describes seal rookeries on rocky outcrops or promontories, observing that both adults and pups would allow themselves to slide down steep inclines into the sea. He also describes mothers giving birth to their pups “on dry land… near the shore.”

Today, throughout the Mediterranean, it is rare to hear even of a solitary seal basking on an open beach or clambering onto shoreline rocks.

Similarly, although the great “arching caverns” immortalised by Homer can be found in many parts of the Mediterranean, most – if not all – appear to have been abandoned by seals long ago because they could offer little security from hunters and fishers or, in more recent times, summer tourists. [see Tourists captured on seal monitors, this issue]

The species is normally characterised as shy, retiring, and craving solitude, behaviour patterns that convinced some present day naturalists – albeit in error – that the animal was christened the ‘monk’ precisely because of these reclusive traits.

In fact, the name was inspired by the animal’s physiognomic rather than its behavioural traits. German naturalist Johann Hermann, in the first modern scientific description of the species in 1779, proposed the name Phoca monachus following his detailed study of a captive individual he discovered in a travelling show in Strasbourg, France. Observing how the animal arched itself up against the edge of its container, and vaguely recalling how some people along the French Mediterranean may have known the animal colloquially as the ‘moine’, he wrote: “It looked from the rear not dissimilar to a black monk in the way that its smooth round head resembled a human head covered by a hood, and its shoulders, with the short stretched feet, like two elbows protruding from a scapular…”

That said, the conventional scientific description of the seal’s retiring character and temperament is seriously at odds with many older historical records. Over the centuries, these have portrayed the creature as gregarious, inquisitive, docile, and even mischievous towards humans.

Why the discrepancy? – Evidence in the historical record suggests that this apparent change in temperament is linked both to human persecution and habitat deterioration.

Rather than being a learnt reaction alone, it is also possible that the change came about by natural selection, in that it was those docile, gregarious, sand-loafing seals that naturally presented the easiest targets for hunters and fishers. Once these had been exterminated, only those animals of a naturally shy and reclusive disposition survived.

Various historical accounts record the apparent docility of seals when confronted by hunters. Describing the hunting of seals in Roman times in his treatise Astronomica, Marcus Manilius states that the unsuspecting animals “deem themselves as safe as in the open sea”. Portuguese explorers exploiting the 5000-strong seal herd at the Bay of Dakhla in 1436 found the animals “easy to kill”, reported the official chronicler of the expedition. Similarly, records from the conquest of Madeira portray sleeping seals “outstretched on the beach... disinterested, not dreaming of the new enemy which was coming to take them by surprise in a barbaric fashion.”

Today, the monk seal in the Mediterranean occupies habitat far more marginal than in ancient times, including desolate cliff-bound coasts, and narrow, inaccessible caves, some with underwater entrances and escape routes.

Though offering some protection from human disturbance, such deteriorated habitat has, in some cases, also been described as being incompatible with the biological needs of the species; sometimes, they are little more than water-filled crevices, with no inner beach or haul-out area.

While discouraging colony formation because of their limited size, some caves may also be vulnerable to autumn and winter storm conditions during the height of the pupping season. Waves and surges have been known to funnel into such caves, washing weaning pups out into the sea, either to drown or to become stranded, orphaned from their mother’s care.

Myths and legends

In Greek mythology, monk seals were placed under the protection of Poseidon and Apollo because they showed a great love for sea and sun.

Animistic imaginations transformed the creatures into nymphs and mermaids.

Several Greek and Roman texts also link the animals to the myth of the Sirens and the sweet, irresistible song that could reputedly lure sailors to their doom. Recently discovering some grains of truth to the ancient legend, field researchers have noted the high-pitched, siren-like cry that mother seals make in warning their pups of danger, the sound echoing out from desolate, cliff-bound coasts. [see The Song of the Sirens, this issue]

One of the first coins, minted around 500 B.C. by the powerful city state of Phocaea – itself named after the species – depicted the head of a monk seal.

In recent excavations on the island of Rhodes, archaeologists discovered the skeleton of a monk seal ceremonially buried next to a dog and several humans; they theorise that the seal may have become a pet who received honoured burial rites after its death.

Subsistence

Though there may have been regional exceptions at one time or another, there is no evidence to suggest – as was the case with the ‘sacred’ dolphin, whose killing was sometimes deemed tantamount to murder – that there were any legal or moral injunctions against killing seals.

The historical record suggests that coastal dwellers hunted the animals for the basic necessities of their own survival – fur, oil, and sometimes meat – but initially did not kill them in large enough numbers to endanger their existence as a species.

Furs were used as clothing, or the skins turned into leather for shoes, sandals, belts and farm harnesses. The fat of the seal fuelled oil lamps, and made tallow candles.

That subsistence approach to the hunt, however, was eventually eclipsed by a far more systematic and intensive exploitation as coastal cities expanded, trade routes proliferated and demand increased. It was an exploitation that resulted in the monk seal being killed and captured for far more than its skin.

Medicine men

While Hippocrates and Aristotle had both extolled the virtues of seal oil and ‘rennet’ to treat such illnesses as epilepsy and gynaecological disorders, it was in ancient Rome that the seal provided the greatest number of remedies – and body parts – to the Roman pharmacopoeia. So too, did many other future endangered species of animal and plant found around the Mediterranean basin.

Vying with medicine men, magicians, faith healers and street hawkers, droves of poorly-qualified doctors descended upon Rome and her greater urban centres, finding a thriving market in illness ripe for the picking. With them came new, exotic remedies from distant parts of the Empire, and beyond. Among their eager patients, these rapidly grew in popularity.

In terms of its impact on wild animals, the Roman obsession for quack medical recipes and rituals has been equated with today’s insatiable demand for magic cures in the Middle East and Asia, where a thriving trade in aphrodisiacs and other dubious remedies is driving some species, like the Siberian tiger, to the brink of extinction.

Unwittingly, Rome’s renowned scholar Pliny the Elder did much to encourage this trend, cataloguing several thousand remedies in his 37-volume encyclopaedia Natural History. Rather than conducting his own research, he tirelessly amassed recipes, both botanical and zoological, from every source imaginable, including the bizarre concoctions of the Magian priests, for whom he actually professed nothing but contempt. Yet, within a few years, his inventory of remedies had insinuated itself firmly into Roman lore and traditions.

The sheer abundance of popular remedies involving seal derivatives suggests that the trade must have had a severe impact upon the species during this period.

What was termed seal ‘rennet’ – but what was in reality the curdled milk found in the stomachs of unweaned pups – was regarded as a particularly valuable and efficacious medical by-product, and was used to treat diseases ranging from epilepsy to tetanus, dysentery to tonsillitis.

In the first century A.D., physician and botanist Dioscorides observed that, ideally, the ‘rennet’ should be extracted from seal pups before they had learnt to swim. Assuming that physicians and traders heeded those words, the impact upon the species, in losing its progeny, is likely to have been substantial.

Pliny the Elder, who confirms that seal pups were hunted specifically for their ‘rennet’, also lists numerous other cures and remedies, the fat of seal, for example, being recommended as a treatment for gout, hydrophobia arising from “the bite of a mad dog,” ringworm and leprous sores.

Magic and superstition

Like many other wild species, the seal was also prized for its uses in magic and superstition – even if it was difficult, under the influence of the Magian sorcerer-healers, to tell magic from medical practice.

Because of its infamously sleepy habits, the right flipper of a seal, placed under the pillow, was thought to cure insomnia. The whiskers, distilled into a potion, could win friends and lovers or drive off enemies.

Since the seal was never known to be struck by lightning, Roman tents were covered with seal hides.

Such superstitions were not only confined to poor fisher folk, farmers, or even the legions. The Roman biographer and historian, Suetonius, tells us that thunder and lightning also struck terror into the most powerful figure of the Empire, Caesar Augustus, “against which he always carried a piece of seal-skin as an amulet.”

Plutarch adds that ship-owners had their mastheads wrapped in seal pelts, in the belief that they would offer protection against lightning strikes. When allied with the apotropaic powers of coral, the skins were also reputed to guard against supernatural forces, protecting vessels against perilous winds, waves and storms.

Such superstitions also made their way into other walks of life.

According to a fourth century A.D. treatise on agricultural pursuits, a seal pelt dragged around a field and then hung at the entrance or yard would save a farmer’s crops from hail storms.

Coliseum

Along with countless other wild species, the monk seal was also destined to suffer ritual abuse and public torment in the Roman circus and amphitheatre.

More than any other single factor, it is this icon of popular Roman culture that can provide an unambiguous reflection of then prevailing human attitudes towards nature and animals, and the scope of that civilisation’s exploitation of wildlife.

The tests of stamina and skill in athletics and chariot racing inherited from the hippodromes of ancient Greece had gradually given way to gladiatorial contests, animal baiting and finally, the wholesale carnage of both man and beast under the thin guise of ‘hunting’ and ‘sport’. The resulting crowd frenzy only led to demands for more – demands that even an emperor-god would have been foolhardy to deny.

Such was the insatiable public hunger for the games, that a vast organisational apparatus was established to capture and transport wild animals, and to keep the Empire’s amphitheatres well-stocked with victims. Powerful, private syndicates dominated this highly-lucrative enterprise, and because the passion for the blood games consumed commoners and emperors alike, the animal round-ups were ably assisted by the army.

“The vast numbers of animals,” observes the historian H.H. Scullard, such “as elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, panthers and hippopotami, that had to be shipped to Rome to gratify Roman cruelty gave rise to a large-scale trade in wild-beasts.”

Indeed, even by today’s standards, it was an exploitation of astronomical proportions, and may even have acquainted the Romans with the concept of species extinction.

In 55 B.C., at the inauguration of Pompey the Great’s amphitheatre in Rome, officials offered 500 lions, 410 leopards and 17 elephants. Similarly, at the dedication of the Coliseum by Titus in 80 A.D., 9,000 wild animals were sacrificed in a spectacle lasting a hundred days.

In a deceptively innocuous account of monk seals entertaining the crowds, Pliny emphasises the docility and intelligence of the animals, and their ability to perform tricks for their audience. As a result of their training, sea-calves could “be taught to salute the public with their voice and at the same time with bowing, and when called by name to reply with a harsh roar.”

Other accounts, however, paint a far darker picture, describing animal baiting contests in the arena, with bears and seals provoked into attacking one another. First century poet Calpurnius Siculus expressed his dazed wonderment at the sight, as exotic beasts emerged, one after the other, from the warren of cellars beneath the arena: “Nor was it my lot only to see monsters of the forest: sea calves also I beheld with bears pitted against them...”

Fish and fishing

Fish was an important staple of the ancient Mediterranean diet, but it was the Roman era that saw a marked increase in the sophistication of boats, equipment, and trading infrastructure.

While Hellenistic art largely conveyed a romantic view of subsistence coastal fishing, archaeological digs at Roman sites have unearthed various artefacts illustrating large-scale fishing with nets in the open seas. Roman authors such as Manilius and Oppian of Cilicia describe the use of huge dragnets – an early form of trawling – whose catch would fill large tanks and wine vats.

In cities throughout the Empire, fish of the finest quality gradually assumed luxury status, the exorbitant prices they commanded in the marketplace reflecting not only the actions of profiteers and speculators but, in some areas, also the effects of over-exploitation.

Seas and rivers were scoured far and wide to meet escalating demand. While improvements in roads and shipping led to booming trade routes throughout the Roman Empire, and even beyond to India and the Orient, the rich fisheries of the Black Sea and the western and eastern reaches of the Mediterranean were still days or weeks away by ship. Apart from thriving local demand, such outposts were geared towards the preservation and processing of fish for export – especially garum, a spicy fish sauce that the Romans used to garnish many a dish.

For its fresh seafood, Rome had to rely on the Ligurian and Adriatic Seas, and it was here that the spectre of over-exploitation first became apparent.

Pliny even notes that an attempt was made to boost local fish yields by restocking the coast between Ostia and Campagna with fish caught in the southern Aegean.

Such measures, however, appear to have had little impact on scarcity and prices.

In Natural History, Pliny complains that one mullet equalled the price of nine bulls. Small fish may have been cheap and plentiful, but they were also looked upon with disdain – arguably another compelling reflection of the decadence that was eating Rome alive. The Roman poet Martial, in Epigrams, confirms Pliny’s observations: “Do not dishonour your gold serving-dish by a small mullet: none less than two pounds [908 grams] is worthy of it.” As Juvenal scathingly remarks in his Satires:

“Did you pay so much for a fish, Crispinus, you who once
Went around in a loin-cloth of your native Egypt? Why,
You could have bought the fisherman for less than the fish.”

A later writer, Macrobius, observes that in his time – the fifth century A.D. – such exorbitant prices had disappeared, yet intriguingly, this also coincided with the final disintegration of the Empire, and with a tumultuous period when demand for fish, and supply through the export trade, almost certainly plummeted because of collapsing infrastructure.

While Roman overfishing might pale in comparison to today’s scouring of the Mediterranean by industrial pelagic trawlers, its intensive coastal and open sea seining also appears to have increased competition between fishermen and seals. Modern studies indicate a clear link between the intensity of competition among fishermen, the severity of overfishing, and the level of fishermen’s hostility towards the monk seal.

In an account uncannily reminiscent of today, Oppian describes how fishermen looked upon the seal as a net-damaging, fish-stealing pest, the animals being swiftly dispatched with “trident and mighty clubs and stout spears.”

The Edict

There can be few better illustrations of the starkly utilitarian nature of Roman attitudes towards wildlife than the numerous ways in which the monk seal was exploited for commercial gain.

By implication, the scope of the trade itself, and the vast numbers of animals required to feed it, also provides additional evidence of the seal’s abundance during the height of this exploitation.

By 301 A.D., however, there were significant signs of change, as revealed in a document known as the Edict of Diocletian, the military-elevated emperor who instituted a command economy in an effort to tame rampant inflation and profiteering by merchants, hoarders and speculators.

His Edict set compulsory maximum prices for a wide range of goods and services, and was applied throughout the Roman Empire, appearing on papyrus scrolls, painted wooden display boards, and even engraved onto stone tablets.

By comparing the Edict’s maximum prices for seal skins with other animal hides, and with wages in the various strata of the social hierarchy, it is possible to ascertain just how rare a luxury monk seal skin had become by 301 A.D. At the bottom rungs of the ladder, labourers, herdsmen, mule-drivers and sewer-cleaners were paid 20-25 denarii a day. Three days of toil were enough to buy a cheap pair of shoes; a month’s savings, a shirt. Carpenters, bakers, and elementary schoolteachers could double those salaries; a skilled and respected figure painter might expect 150 denarii a day, and an advocate 1,000 denarii for pleading an entire case. Yet a single untanned seal skin would set them back 1,250 denarii, a tanned hide 1,500 denarii. Clearly, this was beyond the means of all but the most affluent. Among other skins, seal also ranks as the most luxurious commodity, outclassing even the hides of leopard, lion, lynx, wolf and bear.

Though some monk seal colonies may have experienced a temporary revival of fortunes with the collapse of the Empire, transport infrastructure and demand, it appears likely that the large herds depicted by Homer and Aristotle were a thing of the past.

While the large colonies populating the Atlantic coast of Africa, Madeira, and the Canary Islands may have been beyond the reach of the Empire, history tells us that these were quickly exterminated in the 15th century by colonial explorers from Portugal and Spain, in search of quick profits in skins and oil.

Symbolism

Today, the species that was once placed under the protection of Poseidon and Apollo because it showed a great love of sea and sun has come to possess a different kind of metaphor altogether: one of ecological decay and destruction.

As the Mediterranean’s most critically endangered species, the monk seal is now viewed as an ecological symbol of the ailing sea and coastline it inhabits, its very fate tied to the threats facing the marine ecosystem as a whole.

In summer the monk seal must run the gauntlet of tourist-invaded beaches and, with a boom in pleasure boating, diving and snorkelling, their own caves, too. They must try to find food in a sea depleted by industrial overfishing, trawling and dynamiting. They must avoid the fisherman’s gun while trying to snatch what food there is left from the nets. They must nurse and care for their pups in caves that they were never meant to raise them in, and be on alert for the storm that might wash their offspring away.

What then, does a reading of history tell us about the seal of the Mediterranean and human attitudes towards it?

At its most favourable, mythology saw seals protected by the gods, and transformed them into sea nymphs and mermaids. At one time, catching sight of the animals frolicking in the waves or loafing on the beaches was considered an omen of good fortune for seafarers.

And yet aside from such benign traditions, history shows that the human relationship with monachus has always been starkly utilitarian.

Although there are some notable exceptions, by and large this relationship was governed by the species’ perceived value in fur, oil, and meat, its efficacy in medicine and magical rites, its public appeal in circuses.

 

Some explorers won small fortunes by boiling seals into oil, and even the poorest fisherman or farmer might benefit by turning the animals into shoes or harness leather.

For the most part, then, monk seals have always been worth far more dead than alive.

Even when counting costs rather than profits, attitudes towards the species were still essentially utilitarian in nature – the seal branded as a pest that threatens fish stocks and damages fishing nets, for example. Such hostility was probably responsible for transmuting the mermaid seal into the Sea Devil in the folklore in the Dark Ages, and also inspired the myth that the seal would hunt down fishermen in vicious, tooth-gnashing, packs.

Even for zoos and menageries of the 18th century – which presumably had a vested interest in keeping their captives alive for as long as possible – monk seals were obviously worth far more out of their element than along the coasts of their birth. The showman’s ‘Talking Fish’ may have had a limited shelf life as it was carted around Europe in appalling conditions, but still generated more than enough gold and silver coin to enrich its owner and pay for its own replacement.

Historically, even conservation of the species has rarely risen above the prevailing utilitarian tide.

In the 19th century, hunters noticed the decline of the monk seal and appealed for its preservation – if only to allow other specimens to be peppered with shot.

A century later, international charities and scientific institutions were voicing concern about the plummeting fortunes of the seal, yet largely inspired by the same utilitarian reasoning. Monk seals had to prove their value and usefulness to human beings in order to be deemed worthy of survival. A report to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 1962, for example, advocated the following measure to halt the continuing decline of the species: “To point out to governments that Monk Seals are an important but now only a potential natural resource. Managed properly the seal could become a permanent source of skins, meat and oil”.

More recently, scientists have pondered whether the monk seal might, if protected, regain some of its legendary tameness, thereby becoming a potential attraction for the tourist industry, whose current indifference bears no small measure of responsibility for shunting the species into an early grave. Others have suggested that fishermen might be persuaded to relinquish their traditional hostility towards the seal by ferrying paying tourists into marine protected areas.

While the logic of bringing such protagonists into the conservation process may be unassailable from a pragmatic standpoint, it does little to alter the fact that, fundamentally, utilitarian attitudes towards the species remain intact.

Even passive arguments tend to reflect the same utilitarian and anthropocentric values, the disappearance of the species, for example, being lamented as a loss to ‘our’ human heritage. In much the same vein, research that is often invasive in itself is justified on the basis that it will benefit science. Few words are ever spoken, it seems, of the monk seal’s intrinsic value, irrespective of human self-interest.

The apparent reluctance of the international conservation community to address, consistently and comprehensively, the dwindling fortunes of the monk seal may eventually prove attributable to the same factors.

Shunned by most multinational conservation charities, it appears that the Mediterranean monk seal – despite the dubious privilege of being elected Europe’s most endangered marine mammal – has yet to prove itself capable of rivalling the financial clout, public recognition and press coverage of, say, the giant panda, the African elephant or the harp seal.

While many myths are rooted in utilitarian values, on occasion, the inverse may be equally true.

For coastal fishermen, for example, the seal continues to be a scapegoat for ‘their’ diminishing fish stocks, even as industrial trawlers plunder the sea a figurative stone’s throw from their own boats.

Or consider the comforting myth – so reminiscent of a more ancient one, “Rome has spoken; the matter is settled!” – that legislation outlawing the killing of monk seals has actually had a measurable effect in stemming the decline of the species. Indeed, with remote, tortuous coastlines and lack of enforcement, direct killing has consistently remained the most serious mortality factor affecting monachus in the eastern Mediterranean.

Likewise, international conference resolutions, treaties and conventions, action plans endorsed by governments and scientists, often conjure up the myth that conservation of Monachus monachus is a coherent, tangible force with assured funding, established targets and regular audits of results. Such is not the case, however, and has little prospect of becoming so in the foreseeable future.

The reality on the ground is that conservation of the species continues to be met by official indifference.

Apparently paling at the measures required, and the reluctance of governments to take them, some have even labelled the extinction of the Mediterranean monk seal as “inevitable”.

That, however, again speaks more loudly of human attitudes than seal realities. Among other lessons, it also ignores the conservation success story at Madeira where, on the uninhabited Desertas Islands, monk seals have been brought back from the brink of extinction as a result of strict enforcement, non-invasive research and other measures. In recent years, mothers with pups have even been observed returning to open beaches in the Desertas Islands Nature Reserve, suggesting that the seals now feel sufficiently confident to leave the security of their cave shelters for resting and nursing. Similar progress is now also being seen along the Coast of Seals, in the disputed Western Sahara. [see Lactation on an open beach in Cabo Blanco: first known record since 1945, this issue]

The Mediterranean presents a bleaker picture altogether, despite the single-minded efforts of grassroots organisations in Greece and Turkey to persuade governments and industry to take their obligations and their responsibilities seriously.

It is now almost thirty years since a landmark UN-sponsored conference in Rhodes drew up a raft of measures to prevent the seal’s extinction and promote its recovery. At that time, there were still hopeful presentations being made of saving the seal in the Black Sea, the Marmara, the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean coasts of Africa.

Yet today, almost three decades after the event, governments have barely established even one fully-functioning marine protected area for the species in the Mediterranean basin, let alone the interconnecting network of reserves envisaged at Rhodes.

Arguably, it is only through the reading of history that we can begin to understand why the seal of the Mediterranean sea is so perilously close to extinction. Travelling these 3000 years, we begin to perceive the monk seal’s significance to the fate of other wild species, to the marine and coastal environment, and above all, to the human relationship with the natural world as a whole.

Beyond the deceiving bark, this is one ‘talking fish’ with a whale of tale.

Author's note: Full references to sources cited in this article can be found in Johnson (2004) and Johnson and Lavigne (1999); see below.

Literature and further reading

Androukaki, E., S. Adamantopoulou, P. Dendrinos, E. Tounta and S. Kotomatas. 1999. Causes of Mortality in the Mediterranean Monk Seal (Monachus monachus) in Greece. Contributions to the Zoology & Ecology of the Eastern Mediterranean Region 1 (1999): 405-411. [PDF  47 KB]

Dendrinos, P. and A.A. Karamanlidis. 2008. The Song of the Sirens. The Monachus Guardian 11 (2): 2008.

Herrmann, J. 1779. Abhandlung von der Münchs-Robbe. Beschäftigungen der Berlinischen Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde, 4 (XIX): 456-509.

Hughes, J.D. 1988. Land and Sea. In: M. Grant & R. Kitzinger [eds.]. Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean – Greece and Rome: 89-133. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.

Johnson, W.M. 2004. Monk seals in post-classical history. The role of the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus) in European history and culture, from the fall of Rome to the 20th century. Mededelingen 39. The Netherlands Commission for International Nature Protection, Leiden: 1-91, 31 figs. [PDF  2MB]

Johnson, W.M. and D.M. Lavigne. 1999. Monk seals in antiquity. The Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus) in ancient history and literature. Mededelingen 35. The Netherlands Commission for International Nature Protection, Leiden: 1-101, 17 figs. [PDF  1.6 MB]

Johnson, W.M. and D.M. Lavigne. 1999. Mass tourism and the Mediterranean monk seal. The role of mass tourism in the decline and possible future extinction of Europe's most endangered marine mammal, Monachus monachus, The Monachus Guardian 2 (2): 1999. [PDF  465 KB]

Johnson, W.M. 2002. Honoured in ancient Greece. The Monachus Guardian 5 (1): May 2002.

Ronald, K. and R. Duguy. (eds). 1979. The Mediterranean Monk Seal. First International Conference on the Mediterranean Monk Seal. 2-5 May 1978, Rhodes, Greece. Pergamon Press, Oxford, UK. 1-183.

Scullard, H.H. 1972. From the Gracchi to Nero. Methuen & Co. Ltd., London: 1-484.

Sergeant, D., K. Ronald, J. Boulva and F. Berkes. 1979. The Recent Status of Monachus monachus, the Mediterranean Monk Seal. In: K. Ronald and R. Duguy, eds. The Mediterranean Monk Seal. First International Conference on the Mediterranean Monk Seal. 2-5 May 1978, Rhodes, Greece. Pergamon Press, Oxford, UK: 1-183.

Wijngaarden, A. van. 1962. The Mediterranean monk seal. From a Report to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Oryx. Fauna & Flora Preservation Society, London 6: 270-273.

Copyright © 2008, William M. Johnson, The Monachus Guardian. All Rights Reserved