On 29 September, MUCBO received a preserved skin of Monachus monachus, the famous Mediterranean monk seal that could still be found along the coast of Mallorca until the 1950s.
The monk seal skin was donated to the Museum’s collection by Sebastià Miquel Avellà Salvà and his family. It had belonged to Francesc Josep (Xisco) Avellà Salvà, a biologist and founder and president of the FFM (Fondo para la Foca del Mediterráneo), who acquired it from an Algerian fisherman sometime between 1989 and 1993, during one of the monk seal research and awareness-raising campaigns among North African communities that he carried out between 1988 and 2004.
The Mediterranean monk seal has been considered extinct in the Balearic Islands since 1958, when the last known specimen was shot by two Civil Guards at Cala Tuent, Escorca. Since then, only a fleeting sighting near Calvià in 2008 and the detection of environmental DNA from the species near Sa Dragonera in 2023 have been recorded.
With a global population estimated at between 400 and 600 mature individuals, the species survives mainly in Mauritania, Madeira and Greece, where the Mediterranean’s only breeding colonies are found. Sporadic sightings have also been recorded in Tunisia and Algeria.
Nevertheless, the relationship between people and the Mediterranean monk seal remains conflictive in areas where its presence is considered harmful by some fishermen, bringing them into conflict with the conservation efforts of various organisations involved in protecting the species.
