Caribbean Monk Seal - History

History

The first historical mention of the Caribbean monk seal is recorded in the account of the second voyage of Christopher Columbus. In August of 1494 a ship laid anchor off the mostly barren island of Alta Vela, south of Hispaniola, the party of men went and killed eight seals (Sea Wolves) that were resting on the beach. The second recorded interaction with Caribbean monk seals was Ponce de Leon’s discovery of the Dry Tortugas Islands. On June 21, 1513 Ponce de Leon discovered the islands, he ordered a foraging party to go ashore, were the men killed fourteen of the docile seals. There are several more records throughout the colonial period of seals being discovered and hunted at Guadelupe, The Alacrane Islands, The Bahamas, The Pedro Kays, and Cuba. As early as 1688 sugar plantations owners sent out hunting parties to kill hundreds of seals every night for to obtain oil to lubricate the plantations machinery. A 1707 account describes fisherman slaughtering seals by the hundreds for oil to fuel their lamps. By 1850 so many seals had been killed that there were no longer sufficient numbers for them to be commercially hunted.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries scientific expeditions to the Caribbean encountered the Caribbean monk seal. In December 1886 the first recorded scientific expedition, to research seals, led by H. A. Ward and Professor F. Ferrari Perez as part of the Mexican Geographical and Exploring Survey, ventured to a small collection of reefs and a small cay known as the triangles (20.95° N 92.23° W) in search of Monachus tropicalis. Although the research expedition was in the area for only four days, forty-two specimens were killed and taken away; the two leaders of the expedition shared them. Two specimens from this encounter survive intact at the British Museum of Natural History and the Cambridge Zoological Museum respectively. The expedition also captured a newly born seal pup that died in captivity a week later.

The first Caribbean monk seal to live in captivity for an extended period was a female seal that lived in The New York Aquarium. The seal was captured in 1897 and died in 1903, living in captivity for a total of five and one-half years. In 1909 The New York Aquarium acquired four Caribbean monk seals, three of which were yearlings (between one and two years old), and the other a mature male.

The final extinction of the Caribbean monk seal was triggered by two main factors. The most visible factor, contributing to the Caribbean monk seals demise, was the nonstop hunting and killing, of the seals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to obtain the oil held within their blubber. The insatiable demand for seal products in the Caribbean encouraged hunters to slaughter the Caribbean monk seals by the hundreds. The Caribbean monk seals’ docile nature and lack flight instinct in the presence of humans made it very easy for anyone who wanted to kill one to do so. The second factor was the over fishing of the reefs that sustained the Caribbean monk seal population, with no fish, or mollusks to feed on the seals that were not killed by hunters for oil died of starvation or simply did not reproduce as a result of an absence of food. Surprisingly little was done towards attempting to save the Caribbean monk seal, by the time it was placed on the endangered species list in 1967 it was likely already extinct.