The Monachus-Guardian — Headlines-News-Articles — 2008-2018
Dedicated to Monk Seals and their Threatened Habitats
Spanish filmmaker Rafa Herrero Massieu has released a brief film tribute to biologist Didier Marchessaux and his colleagues Alain Argiolas, Gerard Vuignier and Ely ould Elmine, who were killed in a landmine explosion on 16 October 1988 while researching the important Mediterranean monk seal colony in the disputed Western Sahara.
August / Agosto from Rafa Herrero Massieu on Vimeo.
Editor’s Note: Despite oft-reapeated calls for monk seal conservation and science to find a wider public audience — thereby spurring efforts to save the species and its habitat — most research continues to be published in closed access “subscription-only” scientific journals with a limited circulation. In view of this issue’s importance to the survival of the Mediterranean and Hawaiian monk seal, we take this opportunity of drawing our readers’ attention to the following article, “The Lairds of Learning”.[…] Reading a single article published by one of Elsevier’s journals will cost you $31.50(1). Springer charges Eur34.95(2), Wiley-Blackwell, $42(3). Read ten and you pay ten times. And the journals retain perpetual copyright. You want to read a letter printed in 1981? That’ll be $31.50(4).
Of course, you could go into the library (if it still exists). But they too have been hit by cosmic fees. The average cost of an annual subscription to a chemistry journal is $3,792(5). Some journals cost $10,000 a year or more to stock. The most expensive I’ve seen, Elsevier’s Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, is $20,930(6). Though academic libraries have been frantically cutting subscriptions to make ends meet, journals now consume 65% of their budgets(7), which means they have had to reduce the number of books they buy. Journal fees account for a significant component of universities’ costs, which are being passed to their students. […]
Source: The Lairds of Learning, by George Monbiot, The Guardian, 29 August 2011.
Within the framework of the Second International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas, which is being organised in Fort-de-France, Martinique, from 7-11 November 2011 by the French National MPA Agency, a workshop is being planned on the role of MPAs in the conservation of monk seals.
Building on the results of a previous meeting, which took place during the First international Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas (Maui, March 2009), the aim of this workshop will be to further explore ways in which the MPA tool can be used to protect the two extant critically endangered representatives of Monachus which still survive in their respective Mediterranean, North Atlantic and Hawaiian habitats. Emphasis of this workshop will be to emphasize the differences of the challenges posed to conserving the two species, and on such basis to explore the pros and cons of MPA establishment, as opposed to the implementation of “conventional” conservation measures.
In order to make plans for the monk seal workshop and to allow a structuring of its programme, it would greatly help me to have an idea of who is likely to attend. If you intend participating to the ICMMPA in Martinique next November, and if you are interested in attending the monk seal workshop, I would appreciate it if you could kindly let me know. It would be also great to know if you have any direct experience in the field of monk seal MPAs and conservation (in the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic or Hawaii) that you would be willing to share during the workshop.
Feedback will be particularly appreciated if sent to the email address below before the end of August, thank you.
Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara — giuseppe@disciara.net
Following her death in late 2008, Madeira’s most popular monk seal, “Desertinha”, will be put on public display as a taxidermic model. The work, by a Portuguese taxidermist and sponsored by Deutsche Bank, was first presented to the public on 17 June at the Museum of Natural History in the Botanical Gardens, Funchal.
‘Desertinha’ gained local fame in 2006 after sustaining a serious injury to the lower limbs, her plight creating a huge wave of sympathy from Madeirans. This resulted in the most prominent conservation campaign ever made in the region [see Seal finds stardom, TMG 9(2): 2006].
Desertinha was first identified in 1993 and was monitored by the staff of the Parque Natural da Madeira Service over 16 years. After being found ill in Madeira in 2008, she was transferred to the Rehabilitation Unit on the Desertas Islands, where she died due to cardiac arrest, on 1 December [see Our monk seal ambassador, ‘Desertinha’ dies in Madeira, TMG 12(1): 2009].
Following display at the Museum of Natural History, the Desertinha exhibit was presented at the Expo Madeira from 8 to 17 July. The work will be put on permanent display at the Whale Museum of Madeira, which will be inaugurated in September this year.
Croatian NGO Blue World has released footage of a Mediterranean monk seal filmed on 24 June around the island of Cres, in the Northern Adriatic (via the Italian OggiScienza TV magazine). Having studied the footage, Jasna Antolović of the Grupa Sredozemna Medvjedica has expressed the view that the seal might be a young female that her group has been monitoring since 2009 around the Kamenjak peninsula (Pula).
The FAO’s General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) adopted a series of recommendations aimed at protecting monk seals from accidental entanglement in fishing gear at its 9-14 May 2011 session in Rome.
Recommendation GFCM/35/2011/5 on Fisheries Measures for the Conservation of the Mediterranean Monk Seal (Monachus monachus) in the GFCM Competence Area calls for Contracting Parties and Cooperating Parties of the Commission (CPCs) to implement the following measures:
— Prohibit fishing vessels from taking on board, transporting or landing monk seals unless required to assist in the rescue of injured individuals, and only then with prior official authorisation.
— Seals encountered entangled in fishing gear must be released unharmed and alive.
— Seals found dead in fishing gear must be brought ashore and the authorities promptly notified (at the latest upon arrival at port).
— Any incidental take and release must be recorded in the vessel’s logbook, and reported to the relevant authorities for onward notification of the GFCM Secretariat.
— No later than 2015, CPCs should adopt fisheries management measures designed to attain a “very low and close to 0 risk” of incidental take and mortality of monk seals in fishing activities.
— CPCs must provide the GFCM Secretariat with the geographical positions of already known, past and current monk seal caves, with corresponding information on fleets deploying bottom-set nets within a maximum 20 mile range. Preliminary maps and data should be completed by December 2011, and transmitted to the GFCM no later than 31 January 2012. (Access to such potentially sensitive data, the document is at pains to point out, will be restricted.)
Continue reading “FAO adopts watered down protection measures”