Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 85, January 2009, pp. 1-20. | Page 11

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glowing altruism of conservation. One over-zealous employee of the aquarium had even
barged into the nearest seal cave and virtually snatched a pup from its mother. Bringing it
back to these concrete pools, the creature perished after only 40 days, and perhaps
predictably, Science was unable to determine the cause of death, since to its clinical mind
the pup could not possibly have succumbed to something as simple as loneliness and a
broken heart.
Another seal, an adult, had been brought to the aquarium by a fisherman who had
captured it by clubbing it over the head with a piece of wood. Although it survived for a
remarkable ten years after this event, the seal remained antagonistic to humans until its
last breath, bitterly resenting its captivity.
Snatched from the wild, most monk seals promptly begin to starve themselves – often to
death. The pups that were brought to the Rhodes aquarium were therefore force-fed with
a pair of wooden pincers, or sometimes through a syringe delivering a bizarre mixture of
Ovaltine and sugar. None of the seals ever accepted their captivity and all but one died
within a few weeks. They would tremble violently in their concrete habitat and were
often heard to cry out in anguish (William Johnson in: The Monk Seal Conspiracy).

Habitat
Mediterranean monk seals mostly seek refuge in inaccessible caves, often along remote,
cliff-bound coasts. Such caves may have underwater entrances, not visible from the
water line.
Known to inhabit open sandy beaches and shoreline roc