Caribbean Monk Seal Research Articles

Reefs since Columbus

History shows that Caribbean coastal ecosys- tems were severely degraded long before ecologists began to study them. Large vertebrates such as the green turtle, hawksbill turtle, manatee and extinct Caribbean monk seal were decimated by about 1800 in the central and northern Caribbean, and by 1990 elsewhere. Subsistence over-fishing subsequently decimated reef fish populations. Local fisheries accounted for a small fraction of the fish consumed on Caribbean islands by about the mid nine- teenth century when human populations were less than one fifth their numbers today. Herbivores and predators were reduced to very small fishes and sea urchins by the 1950s when intensive scientific investigations began. These small consumers, most notably Diadema antillarum, were apparently always very abundant; contrary to speculation that their abundance had increased many-fold due to overfishing. Studying grazing and predation on reefs today is like trying to understand the ecology of the Serengeti by studying the termites and the locusts while ignoring the elephants and the wildebeeste. Green turtles, hawksbill turtles and manatees were almost certainly comparably important keystone species on reefs and seagrass beds. Small fishes and invertebrates feed very di⁄erently from turtles and manatees and could and can not compensate for their loss, despite their great abund- ance long before overfishing began. Loss of megaverte- brates dramatically reduced and qualitatively changed grazing and excavation of seagrasses, predation on sponges, loss of production to adjacent ecosystems, and the structure of food chains. Megavertebrates are critical for reef conservation and, unlike land, there are no coral reef livestock to take their place.

Fossil carnivores from the Leisey Shell Pits, Hillsborough County, Florida

Thirteen species of carnivores have been recovered from the Leisey Shell Pits, late early Irvingtonian of Florida. These species include Armbruster's wolf Canis armbrusteri, the wolf coyote Canis edwardii, the gray fox Urocyon cinereoargenteus, the tremarctine bear Arctodus pristinus, the gracile sabercat Smilodon gracilis, the machairodont Homotherium sp., the bobcat Lynx rufus, the cheetah-like cat Miracinonyx inexpectatus, the raccoon Procyon lotor, the long-tailed weasel Mustela frenata, the spotted skunk Spilogale putorius, the river ottor Lutra canadensis, and the Caribbean monk seal Monachus tropicalis. Of significance, the Leisey carnivore fauna includes (1) the largest, most complete sample of Smilodon gracilis, and (2) the first Irvingtonian record from Florida of Lutra canadensis. The Leisey carnivores rank with those from Coleman 2A and Inglis IA as the most diverse carnivore faunas known from the Irvingtonian of Florida.

Saving the Sea: What We Know and What We Need to Know

A sense of urgency and high drama today pervades the subject of conservation of the world's organic diversity. Most of the attention, however, is being lavished on land and freshwater habitats, especially in the tropics. The many extinctions that humans have already brought about and will undoubtedly continue to cause thanks to the large-scale and rapid destruction of these environments amply justify this urgency. No such atmosphere of crisis surrounds marine conservation despite widely publicized cases of disease and pollution in the sea. One reason for the more relaxed attitude about the sea is that there have been few extinctions among marine species in historic time. Some marine mammals (the Caribbean monk seal and Atlantic gray whale, for example) and flightless marine birds (including the great auk) have disappeared, but their numbers are small compared to the hundreds of larger land vertebrates that humans have exterminated. I know of only one well-documented case of historic extinction among marine invertebrates; this extinction, involving the northwestern Atlantic eelgrass-associated limpet Lottia alveus (J. Carlton, D. Lindberg, G. Vermeij, and E. Dudley, in preparation) may be unique among historic extinctions in apparently not being attributable to human agency. This state of affairs should not, I believe, lead to complacency. In fact, it should encourage us to embark on the kind of careful documentation and conservation planning for which many observers believe time may already have run out for the biotas of the land and freshwater. To survey the field of marine conservation and to chart its future course, the Society for Biology held a symposium entitled Conservation Biology in Marine Ecosystems at Davis, California, on the morning of August 19, 1988. The papers brought together in the present issue of Biology offer radically different approaches to the scientific study of marine conservation, ranging from experimental ecology to paleobiology. Quinn and his collaborators explore the relationship between habitat size and the short-term fates of intertidal populations of snails. By tracking populations of equal initial density on similar habitats of different sizes separated by inhospitable territory, Quinn et al. found no evidence in favor of the widely held view that habitats of large size are associated with population persistence. Although this is a short-term result from only one set of experiments, it forces us to question the wisdom of always favoring a few large reserves over a larger number of smaller ones in order to halt the disappearance of species. Estes and coworkers report on the complex interactions among the sea otter (a once-endangered top predator) and other members of the shallow-water nearshore biota of the temperate North Pacific. It is clear from their work that most competitive and predatorprey relationships among species in this biota would have been altered permanently and drastically had the sea otter been exterminated globally. Another important result is that communities in which sea otter populations have recovered are not necessarily identical to communities living at times before otters were exploited by humans. The results graphically illustrate the ecological cascade that extinction may engender; but perhaps even more importantly, they show that the ecological and evolutionary environment of surviving species may be altered greatly following the extinction of a species with a role as pivotal as that of the North Pacific sea otter or the extinct grazing Steller's sea cow. Two papers deal with the potential effects of invading species. In his survey of species transported deliberately

Caribbean Monk Seal Extinct

Caribbean Monk Seal Extinct

The Status of Seals in the Gulf of Mexico with A Record of Feral Otariid Seals Off the United States Gulf Coast

The only seal native to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean area is the West Indian seal (family Phocidae). It is tan on the upper surface and a yellowish white underneath. It is now extinct or nearly so. Two seals were reported in Louisiana near the mouth of the Mississippi in January 1966. Photographs of one animal taken from a helicopter showed an otariid seal. In late June a light colored otariid seal began to reside on the buoys of the ship channel leading into Mobile Bay. It stayed there about two and a half weeks. The animal was a light tan in color and was a female, with a large healing scar on the right side. It was formerly reported from buoys off Cedar Key, Florida, and a newspaper photo verified that account. The animal was similar in all respects to the California sea lion. It washed up on the beach of the Chandeleur Islands of Louisiana with a bullet hole in it and badly decomposed on 11 August 1966. On 3 April 1967 another sea lion, possibly the second Louisiana specimen, was photographed off Pensacola. Five verifiable records of the California sea lion in the Atlantic have been reported ranging from Louisiana to Newfoundland. Probably man was always involved in their transportation. The California sea lion can probably establish self-sustaining populations in the Atlantic Ocean.

The West Indian Seal

The West Indian Seal

The West Indian Seal at the Aquarium

The West Indian Seal at the Aquarium

The West Indian Seal at the Aquarium

The West Indian Seal at the Aquarium

Capture of the West Indian Seal ( Monachus tropicalis ) at Key West, Florida

Capture of the West Indian Seal ( <i>Monachus tropicalis</i> ) at Key West, Florida

Capture of the West Indian Seal ( Monachus tropicalis ) at Key West, Florida

Capture of the West Indian Seal ( <i>Monachus tropicalis</i> ) at Key West, Florida

Notes on the Life-History of Monachus Tropicalis, the West Indian Seal

Previous articleNext article FreeNotes on the Life-History of Monachus Tropicalis, the West Indian SealHenry L. WardHenry L. Ward Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The American Naturalist Volume 21, Number 3Mar., 1887 Published for The American Society of Naturalists Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/274441 Views: 63 Citations: 10Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Floyd E. Hayes, Sarah Codde, Sarah G. Allen Epizoic Cyanobacteria and Algae on the Pelage of Pinnipeds: A Literature Review and New Data for the Harbor Seal (Phoca vitulina, Pacific Science 76, no.11 (Jan 2022).https://doi.org/10.2984/76.1.6Dolly Jørgensen Erasing the extinct: the hunt for Caribbean monk seals and museum collection practices, História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos 28, no.suppl 1suppl 1 (Dec 2021): 161–183.https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104-59702021000500007Deborah A. Duffield Extinctions, Specific, (Jan 2018): 344–345.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-804327-1.00124-2Morgan Churchill, Mark T. Clementz, Naoki Kohno Predictive equations for the estimation of body size in seals and sea lions (Carnivora: Pinnipedia), Journal of Anatomy 225, no.22 (Jun 2014): 232–245.https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.12199JULIO A. BAISRE Shifting Baselines and The Extinction of The Caribbean Monk Seal, Conservation Biology 27, no.55 (Jul 2013): 927–935.https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12107Deborah A. Duffield Extinctions, Specific, (Jan 2009): 402–404.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-373553-9.00095-XPeter J. Adam Monachus tropicalis, Mammalian Species 747 (Jul 2004): 1–9.https://doi.org/10.1644/747Peter J. Adam, Gabriela G. Garcia NEW INFORMATION ON THE NATURAL HISTORY, DISTRIBUTION, AND SKULL SIZE OF THE EXTINCT (?) WEST INDIAN MONK SEAL, MONACHUS TROPICALIS, Marine Mammal Science 19, no.22 (Apr 2003): 297–317.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-7692.2003.tb01110.xGeorge D. Ruggieri AQUATIC ANIMALS IN BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 245, no.1 Aquatic Scien1 Aquatic Scien (Jan 1975): 39–54.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1975.tb26831.xLaura May-Collado Marine Mammals, (): 479–495.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8278-8_45

The West India a Seal (Monachus tropicalis)

IT will probably be of interest to the zoological portion of your readers to learn of the re-discovery—or the full discovery—of the West Indian seal (Monachus tropicalis). The history of this pinniped is in brief as follows.

The West Indian seal

The West Indian seal

The West Indian Seal

The West Indian Seal

The West Indian Seal

The West Indian Seal

The West Indian seal

The West Indian seal

The West Indian Seal

The West Indian Seal