Caribbean Monk Seal - Sightings

Sightings

Through the first half of the twentieth century, Caribbean monk seal sightings became much more rare. In 1908 a small group of seals was seen at the once bustling Tortugas Islands. Fishermen captured six seals in 1915, which were sent to Pensacola, Florida and eventually released. A seal was killed near Key West, Florida in March 1922. There were sightings of Caribbean monk seals on the Texas coast in 1926 and 1932. The last seal recorded to be killed by humans was killed on the Pedro Cays in 1939. Two more seals were seen on Drunken Mans Cay, just south of Kingston, Jamaica in November, 1949. In 1952 the Caribbean monk seal was confirmed sighted for the last time at Serranilla Bank, between Jamaica and Nicaragua.

Unconfirmed sightings of Caribbean monk seals by local fishermen and divers are relatively common in Haiti and Jamaica, but two recent scientific expeditions failed to find any sign of this animal. It is possible the mammal still exists, but some biologists strongly believe the sightings are of wandering hooded seals, which have been positively identified on archipelagos such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. On April 22, 2009, The History Channel aired an episode of Monster Quest, which hypothesized an unidentified sea creature videotaped in the Intracoastal Waterway of Florida's southeastern coast could possibly be the extinct Caribbean monk seal. No conclusive evidence has yet emerged in support of this contention, however, and opposing hypotheses asserted the creature was simply a misidentified, yet common to the area, West Indian manatee.