Mediterranean monk seals Monachus monachus are phocids or true (earless) seals and are one of the few pinniped species, along with members of the closely related genus Neomonachus, to reside in tropical and subtropical waters (Gilmartin and Forcada 2002). The Mediterranean monk seal is considered the rarest and most endangered pinniped and exists primarily as three geographically and genetically isolated subpopulations in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, off the coasts of the Cabo Blanco peninsula (on the borders of Mauritania and Western Sahara), and throughout the archipelago of Madeira (Karamanlidis et al. 2015).

Public Domain