Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 85, January 2009, pp. 1-20. | Page 7

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Today it is estimated that only two seals live around the shores of Sardinia, in the east
coast‟s Golfo d‟Oresei. They may share the tragedy of being the only surviving members
of their species in the whole of Italy. With tens of thousands of holiday-makers visiting
the island every summer and a boom in pleasure-boating and spear-fishing, the last seals
of Italy could literally become extinct at any moment. The coasts of Sicily and Tuscany
probably lost their last seals more than ten years ago. In 1978, another pair of seals was
regularly observed around the island of Montecristo, but once again, government
protection, in the form of a marine sanctuary, came too late to save them. The tragedy
illustrates the archetypal reaction of bureaucracies to the plight of the monk seal, that of
reluctantly taking measures which are habitually too little, too late.

A neonate monk seal pup photographed in a cave
in the Golfo d‟Orosei in Sardinia in 1971.
In a similar bureaucratic blunder, Corsica‟s last pair of seals was killed by fishermen in
1976, just eight weeks before the inaugural ceremonies of a marine sanctuary designed to
protect the animals. The last seals of greater France died on the Isles d‟Hyeres in 1935,
and today the only trace of the monk seal is its depiction in the prehistoric cave paintings
found in the Pyrenees. The seal became extinct in Palestine, Libya, Syria and Lebanon in
the 1950s, helped on its way by war. Up to fifty seals may survive along the coasts of
Algeria, in part because Moslem fishermen still believe the killing of the animals to be a
sin. Further west, small groups of seals are still found along the shores of Morocco and
the nearby Chafarinas Islands which belong to Spain. Of the Atlantic monk seals, which
may differ genetically from their Mediterranean cousins, the wounded seal that was
captured on one of the Lanzarote Islands in 1983 probably spelled the extinction of the
species in the Canary Islands.
Monk seals were abundant around the precipitous and volcanic coastlines of Madeira
during the last centuries, but human pressure has driven them away to the desolate and
uninhabited Desertas islands lying off the southern tip of Madeira. Here, no more than six
individuals have managed to retain a precarious hold on life. The Desertas also lie in
traditional fishing grounds where fishermen often lose their nets to the rocky seabed.
Because these are now made of synthetic materials, they then become what are known as
„ghost nets‟, trapping and killing marine wildlife almost forever. As young seals play

Gazelle – Number 85 – January 2009