Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 85, January 2009, pp. 1-20. | Page 10

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ecological equilibrium of the entire island. In the buffer zones to the reserves, it was
proposed that pesticide use should be banned and that a sub-project on biodynamic
farming be established. Tackling the over fishing crisis of the islands, it was hoped that
the undisturbed reserves would also act as fish breeding grounds, but a pilot project was
also advocated in small-scale aquaculture, in which a family or group of families could
raise fish for their own consumption or for the marketplace. This might allow other
important fishing grounds around the islands to recover.
It was hoped that alternative energy sources might also be utilized in these sub-projects,
and perhaps even in the exhibition centers which was envisaged would be built in the
buffer zones to the reserves. The use of sun, wind and water energy might show how
individual families could lessen their dependence on the polluting and oil-burning
generators of the islands.
We would get the message across to the local population with educational Programmes in
schools, with concerts and exhibitions. We would thus try to point out the links between
the cultural decline of the islands, the dying villages and crafts, and the dying forests, sea
and seals. Only when these links could be clearly perceived would alternatives be
embraced voluntarily by the people. By restoring traditions and local crafts, for instance,
and by portraying their island as a friend of Nature, an alternative and dignified kind of
tourism might develop in harmony with a fragile culture and environment.
We would also need to establish a bond of trust with the traditional subsistence fishermen
of the islands who feel most threatened by the monk seal. We would have to convince
them that the seal has become little more than a convenient scapegoat, eclipsing the
culpability of the commercial fisheries which are poaching and exhausting their fishing
grounds. Although the larger open-sea trawlers are not permitted to lower their nets
within 3 kilometers of the coast, they regularly flout the law, taking advantage of the
fishery authority‟s lack of staff end patrol boats. The end result is that the traditional
fishermen are left with dwindling catches, and prompted by hunger; the seals then attack
their nets to obtain the food that they and their pups need to survive. It is a vicious circle,
and one largely ignored by the government because only the commercial fisheries have
lobbying power in the city.
There is a government-run Hydrobiological Station on Rhodes, the aquarium there, had
over the years, tried to rear a number of monk seals in captivity. The facilities in the
aquarium are shabby and primitive. It was wondered how on earth any scientist worthy of
the name could expect a monk seal to thrive under such deplorable conditions, the filthy
concrete pools, the squalid hutches meant to simulate the protection of their caves, the
rusty railings behind which goggling visitors could observe the most endangered seal
species in the world. And indeed every seal that had been brought into captivity here had
perished; a total of eight individuals between 1960 and 1980. On one occasion,
apparently desperate for seals, fishermen had been asked to bring to the aquarium any
that they happened to find wounded, orphaned or abandoned. Not surprisingly, some
fishermen promptly wounded a number of seals and dutifully brought them to the
aquarium. But still this did not quench the vain curiosities of Science, all cloaked in the

Gazelle – Number 85 – January 2009