I was dismayed to read about the endangered status of the monk seal in the Mediterranean. I have seen a monk seal on the beach in Hawaii where they are protected in Hawaii also. But I was surprised to discover they were also in the Mediterranean. Wow! Migration... how.?? Alex can you help out here?
So I wanted to include a picture here of a "really cute" monk seal so everyone could go “Awwww”. I found plenty of stock photos but happened to run across this 2018 story about some juvenile monk seals in Hawaii. OMG! The story was amusing as well as their theories behind why it was happening. Being a "mom" their theory made sense ( I will leave out details of my own experience). I included the url below. Apparently there were a couple of incidents and scientists are not r"eel"y happy about it!
https://www.resetera.com/threads/endangered-hawaiian-monk-seals-keep-getting-eels-stuck-up-their-noses-and-scientists-want-them-to-stop-wapo.85926/
Also just wandering around, I stopped the at the Liberation tram stop to meander through the fish vendors looking at the variety of fish, squid, shrimp and octopus. I saw what an anchovy looked like in the wild. That was new. Now I happen to love anchovies so don't have pizza with me. (My dad loved them, maybe an inherited trait?) I will do you the courtesy of putting them on AFTER the pizza has been baked.
Laura
Looking up information on this topic, it looks like historically (evolutionarily), there were 3 monk seal species, Hawaiian, Mediterranean and Caribbean but the Caribbean species went extinct in the 1950's. Recent genetic analysis showed that the Hawaiian and Caribbean monk seals were closely related but the Mediterranean monk seal was different enough to be not only a different species but also a different genus (the larger Linnean group above species). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/smithsonian-scientists-discover-new-seal-genus-180951420
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