Mediterranean Monk Seal – Page 14 – The Monachus-Guardian — Headlines-News-Articles

16 June, 201116 June, 2011

Monk seal favourite killed on Amorgos

— by Erwin Werdenigg, Amorgos Island Magazine

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — The young seal was found dead on an Amorgos beach

Amorgos – June 15th, 2011: The young friendly male monk seal appearing in the port of Aegiali at the middle of April quickly won the hearts of the people and became a “mascot” of tourists and also the magazine. On last Friday (June 10th) Dimitris Synodinos (Amorgos Diving Center) alerted that the animal was found dead on the beach.

People from MOm (the Greek monk seal protection group) could not travel to Amorgos themselves due to increased ferry occupancy. The animal was send to Athens on Saturday for autopsy. The examination at MOm showed that:

It was a young male seal, 6-7 months old, in good nutritional status. The animal had injuries in the back sustained by a sharp object, which crossed the side to reach the thoracic cavity, thus injuring the lung. Histological analysis will give us information on whether the animal eventually died from suffocation or internal bleeding. In any case, death resulted from the trauma deliberately inflicted upon the animal, from close distance.

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30 May, 20119 January, 2012

A message to our readers and contributors

Seeking a more effective model in reporting the challenges affecting conservation of the Mediterranean and Hawaiian monk seals, we have decided to cease publication of The Monachus Guardian as a biannual journal. Perhaps inevitably in this age of cutbacks, lack of funding for the Guardian also proved a contributing factor.

After 26 issues and 13 years, we take this decision with some regret, but believe that the redesigned TMG offers advantages in reporting developments as they happen, as well as allowing publication of articles or features, editorials and letters to the editor on an intermittent basis. Please consult our submissions guidelines for further details.

As a consequence of these changes, requests for submissions and announcements of publication will no longer be sent to existing subscribers by email. Readers seeking timely alerts of newly published articles or news items are encouraged to subscribe to our RSS-feed.

As always, we would look forward to hearing your views, both on The Monachus Guardian itself and monk seal conservation in general.

Needless to say, any leads on possible funding avenues that might keep TMG alive and kicking, would be gratefully received.

— William M. Johnson (Editor) | Matthias Schnellmann (Publisher)

30 May, 201130 May, 2011

Mother and pup visit Aegiali, Amorgos

On 26 May 2011, a Mediterranean monk seal mother and her pup visited the harbour of Aegiali, on the Cycaldic island of Amorgos. “They stayed there for around three hours,” reports Amorgos Island Magazine, were extremely friendly and played with people on Aegiali Beach.”

17 May, 2011

Hundreds of species face extinction across Europe in ‘crisis of biodiversity’

Media Watch, Mail Online, 17 May 2011

young mediterranean monk seal Hundreds of species are facing extinction across Europe in a ‘crisis of biodiversity’.

According to the EU’s Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik, animals such as the Iberian lynx, the Mediterranean monk seal and the Bavarian pine vole could soon be gone.

These are among hundreds of species – up to a quarter of the total native to the continent – that are threatened with extinction according to a warning issued this month by the European Union.

‘Biodiversity is in crisis, with species extinctions running at unparalleled rates,’ said a statement from Mr Potocnik.

The threatened species include mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and butterflies and plant life is also under threat.

The crisis is due to several factors, including loss of habitat, pollution, alien species encroachment, climate change and overfishing.

Critics say the EU’s proposed solutions don’t go far enough and lack funding. […Continues…]

Source: Hundreds of species face extinction across Europe in ‘crisis of biodiversity’, Mail Online, 17 May 2011.

29 April, 20112 June, 2011

Monk seal sightings in Egypt

— Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, Tethys Research Institute, Milano, Italy

— Mahmoud Fouad, Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, Cairo, Egypt

On 7 April, during a recent trip along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast to establish stakeholder contacts in implementing a National Action Plan for the Conservation of Cetaceans in that country, funded by the Regional Activity Centre for Specially Protected Areas (RAC/SPA) of Tunis, we were informed by the local community of Marsa Matrouh of a spate of monk seal sightings in the area. The news had generated considerable excitement, since the species has long been considered extinct in Egypt.

In a meeting at the offices of the Director of Environmental Affairs of the Marsa Matrouh Governorate, fishermen reported that seals had been observed several times during the previous 10 days. Mr. Abd El Malek in particular, a fisherman about 60 years old, was very clear. He had begun noticing that something was pulling fish out of his trammel nets, “in a very professional way”, i.e. without breaking the mesh. His boys had told him that they had seen a very strange animal around the nets, similar to those they had watched on TV, in the “yellow square” (National Geographic) eating penguins under the ice. At first he didn’t believe them: throughout his life, he’d never seen a seal in these waters; other fishermen said the same. After several attempts, however, they indeed caught a glimpse of a seal resting on one of the small sandy beaches along the local rocky coastline, and managed to take a few pictures and even a short video with their cell phones. Other fishermen agreed, asserting that they had frequently seen up to five seals during the same period, in a location about 5 km away from the first, and that their nets had been completely destroyed.

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28 April, 201129 April, 2011

Croatian and Italian groups continue joint monitoring at Kamenjak

Jasna Antolović reports that Croation and Italian groups (Grupa Sredozemna Medvjedica; Gruppo Foca Monaca) continue their regular monitoring of the Kamenjak peninsula (Pula), where sightings over recent years suggest that the species is attempting to reestablish itself after a long absence.

On 24 March, GSM member Marko Jelic succeeded in taking a photograph of a monk seal resting on the beach of a cave in the area — apparently a first in the history of the conservation of the species in the Adriatic.

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