The Monk Seal Conspiracy
2. The Assignment
Strange how a sudden upheaval in one’s life seems to shift the very dimensions of Reality. My mind went back four years, to my first arrival in Samos in May 1975. The battered and rusting old steamer, blue and white, neared the shores of the whale-shaped island. I was standing on deck, and the dawning sun suffused the sky with iridescence and warmth. The scent of pine and herbs and red earth came drifting across the placid waters. As we ploughed along the northern shores I could already see that Samos would be an alluring world, quite different from other Aegean islands, many of which are barren and sun-scorched. In the delicate light of the morning, the air cleansed and refreshed by night, its rugged cliffs, its gaping canyons and its green mountainsides seemed almost pristine. Spring clouds sailed across the sky and showers of fresh rain fell over the wet green land, over the rounded foothills and hunchbacked mountains, over villages perched on the edge of deep forested valleys. Torrents and waterfalls glistened, cascading through their chestnut and platanos glades. Gulls soared against the deep violet sky and a vivid rainbow arched over the terraced hillsides and pebble shores. From solitary houses and hill and mountain villages came the traditional message of welcome from these islands, mirrors flashing back the beams of the rising sun from doorways, windows and gardens, the twinkling light of a hundred mirrors, borne across the water as if by the breeze.
Four years later, crouching in the frigid, ransacked house, a numb turmoil crept over me, a torrent of images and memories, as though the subconscious mind, reflecting the debris scattered across the floor, was desperately trying to regain its faith in life’s predictable and ordered stability. But it is at such times, a shock, a bereavement, a close escape from death, that we realize how fragile and tenuous our bond is with the common, day to day experiences which compose that all too illusory concept of normality. It is as though we are suddenly alone with our deeper selves and everything and everyone outside becomes somehow remote, unreal and unbelievable. We are rudely reminded that our lives, built like houses with solid foundations, have always been vulnerable to the untamed capriciousness of fate. Perhaps this is why we have invested so much time and ingenuity in building our castle-like Reality, our strong-walled cities, our highways and armies. It is almost as though we still harbour the fears of our ancient ancestors, whose ceaseless war against the unpredictable hostility of the elements eventually trapped the human race in a vicious circle, a mania for security which itself produces ever more terrifying hostilities. The more hostile the outside world becomes, the more concrete we pour into our illusions of solidity. It is only when we are shipwrecked and become castaways on some remote island that we perceive the universe as thought rather than substance.
I was born in Birmingham, a decaying industrial wasteland. To my childlike eyes, it seemed as though the city had been built by some strange species of termite, whose bustling and frantic activities and whose motivations for living were entirely obscure to me. Even now, after all these years, I can only remember the city as grey, treeless and impassive, a monolith dedicated to the arrogance of homo sapiens and its vain supremacy over Nature. The polarization of the world and its fragmentation left a stark impression upon me as a child. Almost every year I accompanied my mother to her Yugoslav homeland, the bounteous agricultural plains of Vojvodina and the wild and dusty coastlines of Dalmatia. I felt torn between two entirely different worlds, one characterized by its affluence, its taciturn anonymity and its concrete, the other by its poverty, its close-knit communities and Nature’s wild and sensuous beauty. It was in Dalmatia, enraptured, exploring the seashore, boating and beachcombing, seeing turtles, dolphins and even whales, that my empathy with the Mediterranean was born. As I grew up, the seductive lure of that sea and its coasts never diminished, though the division between the two worlds seemed to become ever more pronounced with each ecological catastrophe: acid rain and dying forests, rivers and lakes; countryside giving way to massive and soulless industrial farms; an urban landscape creeping relentlessly over the entire Earth, devouring villages, trees, birds, flowers – even these expressions of the seasons – and excreting concrete. Evidently homo sapiens was winning its glorious crusade against the elements, processing spirit into solid and dependable matter. This was the Reality, and these were the fruits of its proud rationality. That it possesses all the characteristics of war and conquest does not seem to discourage its adherents. It is a Reality which is undeniably schizophrenic, undeniably suicidal. Yet it is difficult to argue convincingly against something so fundamental and all-pervasive.
In the defiance and vanity of my youth, I suppose my ambition was to expose this fraudulent Reality, and even today, I believe that only a fundamental change in human consciousness can save the Earth. Like many young people at that time, I became disenchanted with the prospects of life in the mainstream of Reality. School and college with their neatly segregated subjects had seemed little more than an anachronism, existing only to assimilate children into this fragmented normality. Ecology and even interdisciplinary studies were non-existent. In biology, the fine art of vivisection had been taught; in history, jumping erratically between the Bronze Age and the First World War, an obsession with precise dates, battles and political intrigues, totally masking what can only be described as the Great Unseen War whose aim has always been the total conquest and subjugation of Earth, including the reflection of Earth’s soul within us all. Disillusioned, I set sail for the Aegean, in search of an inner truth lying buried within, a truth often dressed up in the cast-offs of belief, a truth entombed by city Realism reigning over our own minds. I returned to Samos year after year, wandering over the island and writing, hoping that somehow I would be able to finish the book which was slowly taking form in my mind. But as fate would have it, an unexpected meeting on Samos changed my plans.
It was this chance encounter in the summer of 1978 that introduced me to Greenpeace and the Mediterranean monk seal. Wandering down to Octopus beach just on the outskirts of Ayios Konstantinos, I stumbled across the solitary figure of Susi Newborn, a director and founding member of Greenpeace in Britain. She had left London in disgust, almost feeling like a refugee escaping a civil war. She had come to Samos for tranquillity, her own peace of mind, and wanted nothing else than to sit on this small and deserted stony beach, soak up the rays of the sun and let the mellifluous rhythms of the sea calm and console her. Of Argentine descent, dark-skinned, with piercing brown eyes and raven hair, she bore a striking resemblance to the forest Indians of South America. Only the bluish rings around her eyes seemed to betray her city-weariness, but inside, the frustrations she had been bottling up over the months were seething. Only after several days could she bring herself to talk about the cynical power struggles which were then beginning to disrupt the Greenpeace movement. It was the same kind of fratricide which was to splinter the Greens in Germany several years later, an all too familiar battle between so-called ‘realists’ and ‘fundamentalists’. Behind the image of harmony and brotherhood, conflicts between the two sides were fuming, the atmosphere in the Greenpeace offices often poisonous and unbearable.
At this time, Greenpeace was still a loose coalition of separate national and regional entities, and new Greenpeace groups were sprouting all over the world. There were moves afoot to copyright the Greenpeace name, and to bind the organization under a central international command. Ostensibly at least, this was supposed to increase its efficiency and influence, though the methods used were ultimately self-defeating. As usual, the realists were gaining the upper hand, and during the following years they would consolidate their grip on power, usually by ousting their new-found enemies. They accused the fundamentalists of hopeless naively and of indulging in spiritual values which had become irrelevant. For their part, the fundamentalists would censure the realists for betraying the very bedrock of their philosophy, for the superficiality of their ecology, and for resorting to sheer expedience for the sake of dubious short-term gains.
Gradually, the Greenpeace philosophy was to become little more than a public image. But in the early days, its protests and civil disobedience had been based not only upon Gandian principles of non-violence, but also upon a spiritual understanding of the natural world, and a deep empathy with the animistic religious beliefs of the Indians of North America. With its daring and imagination, Greenpeace seemed to have all the makings of a grassroots movement, especially among the disaffected young of the cities. But now, internal conflicts and moves to structure and control its activities were already beginning to cripple its spontaneity. Susi was convinced that Greenpeace would end up as little more than a hierarchical organization, and as it happened, her own worst fears proved well-founded. The dreams of a mass movement were already crumbling. The image of the organization, to be sold to the consumer, would become of paramount importance. And like any other organization or commercial enterprise, it would surround itself with walls, a defensive reflex which would not only protect the image but would also alienate the very people that it had to reach. The image, like an obsessive and self-conscious ego, would jealously guard its inner secrets and vulnerabilities, and in so doing, would also deprive itself of light, communication, plurality. Its campaigns would become erratic and devoid of continuity; their symbolism would become obscure and insignificant, since spiritual values and ancient wisdom had been swept aside, making way for the juggernaut of pragmatism.
In the overbearing shadow of Realism and its gross superficiality, how could subtle and holistic ecological thought be expected to survive? Chasing media coverage, essential for their financial survival, they would not only chain themselves to chimneys, dying trees and ships dumping toxic waste, but also to their own reputations as pioneering saviours of the Earth. The radical image would be softened until it could appeal even to the reasonable minds of suburbia’s bourgeois inhabitants. This was to become the essence of the realists’ compromise. After all, who in their right mind can argue with Reality? No longer hampered by cranky spiritual beliefs, the derring-do of the actions might even seem suitably macho and sensational for the tabloids of the gutter press. They would finally be reaching people with their message, but what message, and at what cost? They too were to become prisoners of expectation, prisoners of their own category. From that point onwards, they would always be expected to conjure up some new and fresh spectacular to startle and entertain the masses. The symbol of the rainbow would become little more than a splash of pretty colours, its profound message also betrayed by compromise. Greenpeace was becoming assimilated to the fragmentation of the world. The dream of building bridges between the divided family of Earth had already perished.
‘The Earth is sacred and you cannot change it.’ Susi repeated the words like a mantra, as though trying to convince herself that the planet would survive in spite of Reality, and that in the end the supremacy of homo sapiens over Nature would suddenly be seen in its own true light, as pitifully insignificant. Almost burnt out with exhaustion, she had been shunted to the sidelines while others who shared her persuasion were still battling for their survival. She felt dejected and bitter, unsure of whether to stay or resign in disgust. It was as though all the years of commitment had become mere drains for wasted energy. The days of heady idealism were over, sold out to a world of hard realities. She spoke affectionately about how the once close-knit Greenpeace groups in London and Paris had managed to raise enough funds to buy and restore a rusting old trawler which was to become the Rainbow Warrior. Little did we realize that eight years later, after Greenpeace had itself ignored the power of military intelligence in the eastern Aegean, the Rainbow Warrior, on its way to protest nuclear testing at Mauroroa, would be sabotaged and sunk in Auckland harbour by the French secret service. But now for Susi, deprived of the passion for changing life and fearful of the passion for living life, only a stark emptiness remained. Even Samos and the Aegean could scarcely lift her spirits, since she could not help perceiving in them a heart as vulnerable as her own.
It was perhaps a foregone conclusion that the fundamentalists would burn themselves out, certain that the city-trained pragmatists would take over. Cooped up in an office, trapped in the cities, swamped by the frantic tension of the campaigns and their never-ending deadlines, conservation became a business, not an ideal. Over the years, only the realists had the stamina to cope with the stress. The downfall of the fundamentalists became inevitable, simply because they ignored the fact that their greatest strength was also their greatest vulnerability. The matrix of this paradox lay in their spiritual ideals and their empathy with the wild landscapes of Earth. Day after day, month after month, year after year they saw only urban desolation, streets, concrete blocks, offices, cars and trucks. Deprived of the source of their strength, cut off from the very world they were trying to protect, Nature became an increasingly remote and abstract concept. Unlike Gandhi, they didn’t return to the village to replenish their inspiration and strength. They had forgotten that the message had to be brought into the city from the wild, and not manufactured within the city itself. It was no wonder then that they lost sight of the purity of the creative force, that commitment became an almost tiresome duty and a struggle against a million confusing obstacles. But more than anything, it was the most fundamental conviction which was being twisted and polluted, that of fighting for something rather than against something.
At this time I knew virtually nothing about the conservation movement, and all that Susi warned me of seemed remote and perhaps too bleak for my idealism to believe. Here on Samos, in the sparkling summer light, anything seemed possible. To my surprise, it was then that Susi asked me whether I had ever seen an Aegean monk seal. Like most Europeans it had never dawned upon me that seals might inhabit the Mediterranean. I suppose the notion seemed most peculiar at the time, since we generally think of seals inhabiting cold, northern seas. She told me that a close friend and fellow director of Greenpeace, Allan Thornton, was committed to the idea of a project to protect the monk seals, and that he was looking for someone dependable to tackle the job. Perhaps I would be interested?
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A monk seal in Menorca c. 1945, surrounded by the fishermen who caught it in their tuna nets.
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That winter I returned to Britain and visited the Greenpeace offices in London for an appointment with Allan Thornton. Although sharing many of Susi’s ecological views, Allan had thus far been pragmatic enough to survive the onslaughts of the realists, a band headed by ambitious ex-millionaire businessman David McTaggart.
We discussed the idea of a Greenpeace monk seal project in detail and the first step, Allan suggested, would be for me to familiarize myself with the ecology of the monk seal and existing preservation efforts. After completing this short but intensive study, I should formulate a plan for saving the species. Time was running out for the monk seal and we were now obliged to cut through red tape wherever we found it. Financial aid would be obtained from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which had already expressed an interest in supporting a monk seal protection project in Greece. In the meantime I would be representing Greenpeace and would be liaising my activities with Professor Keith Ronald, dean of the College of Biological Science at Canada’s Guelph University. As one of the foremost authorities on the species, Ronald was co-ordinating international efforts to save the monk seal under the auspices of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. He had also been co-convenor of the First International Conference on the Mediterranean Monk Seal, held on the eastern Aegean island of Rhodes in May earlier that year. Sponsored by the Greek Ministries of Co-ordination, Agriculture, Culture and Sciences, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the University of Guelph and IUCN, it had produced a valuable mood of optimism and international co-operation. Sixty-one participants from 22 countries had taken part in the conference, and had adopted a detailed plan of action. But, Allan warned in his mordant and heavy Canadian drawl, I shouldn’t actually be misled into equating this plan with action. Conference resolutions were often like hot air balloons with slow leaks. On the other hand, we did not want to lose the impetus provided by the conference. Now that things were finally moving, we didn’t want to miss the train.
Loaded down with piles of scientific papers, I then made my way to Switzerland to meet Rita Emch. We had come to know each other quite well during the summer months on Samos, and Susi, regaining some of her legendary enthusiasm, had been willing us on to accept the monk seal assignment, hoping that she too would be able to return to Samos the following year. Even then, Rita had willingly agreed to take part in the project. Her knowledge of Samos and her fluent Greek would be invaluable. For several years she had been living off her quite substantial savings, having given up the drudgery of a nine-to-five existence. After a long overland trip to India, she had decided to settle on Samos, the gateway to the East, learning the Greek language and discovering an empathy with the soul of the island and its people. At that time, Samos had become the home for a small yet vigorous international community, scattered among its many villages. In many ways we shared a common philosophy of life in that we were all exiles from Reality. By making Samos our home, I suppose we were endeavouring to extricate ourselves from the cynical morass of 20th-century civilization, searching for another way, an elusive alternative, a kinder vision of the future to embrace. Money of course was always a nagging headache. Many of us returned to our city homes to work at some meaningless job for a few months, hoarding our savings so that we could again return to Samos.
People of many different nationalities living in harmony on an island; this perhaps was the ideal of a planetary microcosm where, for the individual at least, political borders and animosities are no more than illusions. There was an English couple managing a farm, and two Americans who had transformed their house into an art and photographic studio; an American photojournalist still nursing his bitter and horrific memories of the Vietnam war, living in a tiny kalivi with his exuberant Irish girlfriend. There were young Greeks disillusioned with the Athens rat race who had come out to Samos to open a shop selling traditional handicrafts. And there were many others from around the world, even those visiting for just a few weeks or months in the spring or summer, perhaps renting an old house or making a home in some abandoned kalivi.
So towards the end of 1978 Rita and I returned to Samos, driving down to the Italian port of Brindisi and taking one of the ferries bound for Corfu, Igoumenitsa and Patras. We watched the coloured lights of the town fade away and become extinguished by darkness. After the pilot launch left us we faced a more open sea, a sea raging, crashing against the hull, swelling along the portholes and along the decks. The mast’s wires whined in the gusts and the night was limpid with stars. Heaving and rolling, the ship shuddered on, tossed about in the waves. Rita, pale as a ghost, retired to her cabin to nurse her reeling head and churning stomach. In the bar, cups and plates were sliding from the tables and crashing onto the floor. There were Greek men, migrant workers on their way home, singing raucously, drunkenly, until they turned green with seasickness or fell asleep over the tables.
I sipped at a large tumbler of brandy, knowing that it was the best remedy against seasickness. Settling myself down in a quiet corner, I tried to concentrate on working through the monk seal papers, taking detailed notes to prepare myself for writing the project plan. Little did I realize what battles and treachery we would be letting ourselves in for.
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