The Monk Seal Conspiracy

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7. The Vendetta

Now at this time, Professor Keith Ronald, IUCN/WWF’s international monk seal co-ordinator, was formulating his ambitious plans to establish ‘International Marine Parks’. Designed to protect the migration of seals, they would stretch between four eastern Aegean islands and the Turkish coast. To lend the plan credibility, Dr Fikret Berkes, a Turkish-Canadian professor of environmental studies at Brock University in Ontario, was trying to prove that seals did indeed migrate between the two countries. Yet within a few months, the entire scheme would fall foul of suspicious military minds in Athens, with vague rumours linking it to a CIA-inspired plot to help Turkey snatch territorial rights in the eastern Aegean.

On 10 April we received a telex from Professor Ronald which can hardly have soothed the suspicions of an ever-watchful YPEA and KYP: ‘Arrive Samos 24th and 25th with helicopter, can you join me for two-day survey and discussion?’ As fate would have it, Ronald’s visit was abruptly postponed, apparently because of an illness in his family. We were relieved, but still nursed a bitter grievance towards this proposed extravagance. The telex had once again shown the warped priorities of conservation, and of the environmental mandarins who carry gold credit cards, stay in the most luxurious hotels, fly business class, and rent private jets and helicopters. Trying to heal the bruises to our credibility, I remember the difficulty of explaining to our Greek co-workers why we were obliged to work from sleazy boarding-houses in Athens, some of which were eventually condemned as unsanitary by the government, when jet-setting scientists were staying in five-star hotels. We were still desperately short of money, since the WWF bureaucracy in Switzerland was still cranking along, ‘processing our payment’. We continued to rely heavily on personal funds, surviving on hope, gullibility and empty promises. The cost of Ronald’s proposed survey – which was totally meaningless in practical terms since no self-respecting seal could be expected to stay around under the deafening clatter of a helicopter – would have been exorbitant and could have achieved much more if invested in surveys by fishing caique or in educational programmes.

On 19 April, Rita and I paid a visit to the nomarchis or prefect of the island, in order to apply for a sale permit. We hoped to flesh out our dwindling reserves of cash by selling posters and other Greenpeace merchandise, and also pave the way for concerts, exhibitions and film shows on the islands.

The prefecture was a tall and rambling old building opposite the port of Vathi. On the ground floor there was a vast and windowless hall, dimly lit and dusty, partitioned by grimy wooden panels and eerily reminiscent of Kafka’s law courts. Makeshift plywood shelves reached to the ceiling, stacked with piles upon piles of yellowing papers and, lacking any apparent order, bulging files tied with string or incongruous yellow ribbons. A rickety and creaking wooden staircase led up to the attics of the building. When we reached the top floor we were led into a small waiting-room overlooking the harbour, with a threadbare carpet, a secretary’s desk and a couple of wooden chairs. Eventually we were ushered into the presence of Mr Clemenceau Phillipakis, the nomarchis of Samos, an obese and ruddy-faced man in his sixties. The spacious room seemed glaringly ornate compared with the rest of the building, pompous and almost regal, pervaded with a garish nostalgia for the days of Samos’s independence, with its gilt chandeliers, mahogany desk, great gold-framed portraits of public servants and classical landscapes. Although somewhat pompous himself, Clemenceau Phillipakis was nevertheless most courteous, ordering us Greek coffee and listening intently to our project plans. He had received a letter from the Ministry of Co-ordination approving our work, he declared at last, and therefore we could also expect the full co-operation of the prefecture. He paused for a moment, wheezing, perhaps suffering from some heart ailment or emphysema. Puffing and panting, it apparently took the poor man almost twenty minutes to climb to the attic every day.

We then asked the prefect what the procedure would be for us to obtain a sale permit, and once again Greek bureaucracy raised its ugly head. First of all, he declared with a staid and apologetic air, a work permit would be required, and to obtain a work permit, one must already have employment lined up and also a residence permit. He could see quite well that the project didn’t really fit into any of these neat categories, but rules were rules. Furthermore, all of these permits could only be issued by the chief of police. Our hearts sank immediately but the nomarchis promptly telephoned Kyrios Drumpis at police headquarters to inform him of our requirements and solemnly advised him that the project had been approved by an inter-ministerial committee in Athens.

It was with some trepidation that Rita and I waited outside the police chief’s office. A sleazy twilight, heavy and stale, seemed to pervade the whole building. After a long wait, no doubt inspired by the police chief wishing to exert his authority, we were gruffly summoned into his presence. It became obvious at once that we were not to be treated to one of Mr Drumpis’s more cordial swings of mood. Rita, speaking fluent Greek, respectfully informed him of our permit requirements while the police chief’s face reddened with mounting anger. Suddenly unable to restrain his rage he began barking out an incomprehensible torrent of words and it became quite evident that the permits were out of the question. Rita asked him to slow down because she couldn’t follow what he was saying. At this point his face turned almost purple and he bellowed: ‘You understand Greek perfectly well!’

He was obviously alluding to the episode on 30 January. Because of the incompetence of the night duty officer, he must have known for weeks that we had stumbled upon police complicity in the illegal break-in and ransacking of our houses. Furthermore, he undoubtedly suspected that we had informed the Ministry of Co-ordination of his feeble excuse that the burglars had been children. Realizing how patently ridiculous the explanation had been, the telephone call from Marinos Yeroulanos must have caused him acute embarrassment and he was still seething with indignation at our insolence. He then began raving about how he would expel us from Greece forever. At this point he raised his hand as if to strike Rita across the face, and for one moment I thought we would soon be manacled to the walls of a cell or otherwise disposed of, perhaps at the bottom of some lime pit. But at the last moment, with his hand still in mid-air, he turned his back on us, fuming with exasperation, and no doubt wishing it was us, struck the desk with all his might. To a pale and quivering subordinate next to us, he thundered: ‘Tell them to get out! She’ll never get a visa again!’

We then walked back to the platea with its palm trees and its great lion statue, the green hills across the bay and the fishing boats and great old caiques at the quayside. We sat in a caféneon and drank ouzos to recover from the ordeal, watching the light spring clouds racing over the hunchbacked peaks of Mt Ambelos and army trucks roaring by in convoys. Everything seemed profoundly depressing and yet rich with irony at the same time. Even the dilemma we now found ourselves in seemed wholly paradoxical, with a venomous police chief here, and an apparently powerless nomarchis just up the road. Or was the nomarchis, too, in complicity with YPEA? At any rate, all our influence and credibility seemed far away. Despite our government support in Athens, it was now all too obvious that Drumpis was pursuing a single-minded vendetta against the project and intended to hinder us arbitrarily in every possible way. Discussing our strategy, we eventually decided that I should write a frank letter to Yeroulanos, describing the events in detail, and asking him to intervene once again, perhaps with the superintendent of police in Athens. For the time being, at least, we wouldn’t bother with the permits at all, but just carry on and do what needed to be done. It was what we were here for, after all.

Easter time. The spontaneous showers of rain had disappeared; the days were blue, the spring giving way to summer. Festive decorations in the streets, mischievous boys buying fire-crackers and matches. You would come across them hiding behind a wall, lighting the fuses with an air of conspiracy and a breath-taking suspense broken only by suppressed giggles, watching gleefully as the fizzling cracker was flung out and their intended victim began dancing with shock at the sudden stuttering explosion. The churches ablaze with the watery glare of candlelight, fragrant with incense and blossom. People whitewashing their houses and the borders of the village pathways. People light-hearted and enthusiastic, benevolent and hospitable. People taking their traditional promenade through the evening streets, linked arm in arm. People forgetting their worries and prejudices, time for eating and drinking together, time for conversations and sudden, fleeting and reciprocal understandings with friends and strangers; the mellifluous flow of the night, the wine, the hypnotic music of the band, simple philosophies and a kernel of hidden truth as human beings disarm themselves.

Soldiers danced in the small cafes and tavernas. We went down to Platanakia to the cafe of the blue lamp and sat at a long table under the great platanos trees. There were soldiers there too and military police, their duties and rank forgotten. People sent us over bottles of wine; we toasted each other across the tables and then later returned this traditional compliment. We ate and drank and talked, and watched the band and the people and the entranced virtuosity of the Greek dancers with their impressive feats of twirling towards the ground, their swoops and leaps accompanied by the smashing of plates.

On Easter Sunday we saw them burn the effigy of Judas in Pythagorion and, later that night, walk with candles through the streets of Vathi. White doves flew overhead, over the bell towers and the regimented soldiers. With starry eyes, people appeared with candles, cascading like luminous rivers from the wafting clouds of incense at the steps of the church.

The bearded priests finish their long and dreary incantations. Almost midnight. As the hour strikes, simultaneously the regimented soldiers come to attention and shoulder their rifles. Christ is passing through his resurrection and suddenly the bells toll in earnest as if trying to help an agonizing birth. The dove flock, startled by the bells, spray out from the campanile and soar over the luminous people.

But the peacefulness of the season didn’t last for very long. On 30 April, Rita and I were summoned to the police station in Kokkari, whose chief curtly informed us that he had received complaints against us from twelve different people and that they wanted us to leave the village. He then showed us a ‘petition’ with twelve signatures on a scrap of paper which were all in the same handwriting. When we both laughed at this, he snatched it back with a gleam of amusement and mischief flickering across his eyes. We then told him that we had already decided to leave Kokkari. To save our precious and dwindling resources, we were moving back to Ayios Konstantinos where we had found much cheaper office premises. We then parted on quite amicable terms – he knew as well as we did that the ‘petition’ was absurd. Our Greek friends and neighbours, the mayor, the barber and his wife, Manos and his two sons, knew nothing of it and were genuinely ashamed that we could have become the victims of such tactics. Manos himself was furious, perhaps remembering the day when he had been packed off to Athens, chained in the hold of a ship with other dissidents who had protested against the Junta. More than one voiced the feeling that very little had actually changed in police methods since then. They were only a little more circumspect, more hidden and secretive. After all, the same men were still involved – did we expect them to become champions of democracy overnight? The surveillance reports and criminal records were still stored in the police stations, perhaps for a rainy day, or when a little blackmail became expedient to nudge someone into accepting a particular point of new.

So on May Day we moved back to Ayios, happy to retreat from Kokkari’s burgeoning tourist invasion. Our car loaded up to bursting point, we rattled our way along the crater-ridden coast road, passing cascading waterfalls and corn poppies in cultivated fields, a swaying scarlet sea in the breeze. Farmers cutting hay with scythes, the bee-keepers of Aidonia, the Nightingale Valley, a setting sun in our eyes, farming people coming home from their fields with sunburnt faces, the river emblazoned with azalea and broom.

Greenpeace Aegean Sea’s operations centre was now an old caféneon on the sea-front just a few doors up from Costas and Elpeda. A year before, our caféneon had belonged to an old grey man who would sit at the open window for hours on end, staring out to sea as if mesmerized, with distant fluid eyes. He had been the last of three brothers, all alcoholics, and I remember, when he died in the summer, the old man lay on a table in his open coffin in the middle of the caféneon as friends and relatives passed by, bringing flowers and having one last drink to toast him farewell.

It was good to be back in Ayios, seeing the familiar faces of the village. Nikos, the wiry old man with cataract eyes, half-blind. He’s also the village crier, shouting out news along the streets, and the one who carries bread around to the houses from the bakery. In the afternoon he’s in his house, looking under the bed for the coins he’s dropped, the ones he drops every day when he’s counting the few coppers he’s earned - bruises on his forehead where he bumps himself on the bed’s legs.

The papas blessing a new house. A fowl is sacrificed, the blood dripped over the floor to bring luck – first and last blood spilt.

The postman arrives, blowing his metal trumpet to call the people’ Hondro, the fat village policeman, comes down the street with the rolling slouch of a sheriff in a one-horse town. The tailor and his wife have left their poor lunatic son locked up in the house, hoping that he won’t escape and the children throw stones at him again. And there’s the little old lady from the shop next door, frail, white-haired; her shop has hardly anything left in it any more, almost nothing to buy, the shelves bare apart from a few tins and packets. She shuffles along with tiny steps, eyes bright, distant and serene.

There’s Costas coming back from the dentist with an aching mouth, moaning in pain, ‘Ah Panaghia, Panaghia!’ – blood dribbling from his mouth and staining his white shirt. And there’s Elpeda eating scraps of bread from her apron pocket. Elpeda whitewashing the edges of the cafe floor without even bothering to move the chairs and tables, or upstairs on the balcony washing clothes, shrieking out to us that she’s getting dirty. Elpeda at the telephone exchange, screaming high-pitched and raucous into the receiver, frantically pulling out and putting in the extension plugs and telling everyone the telephone’s come down with a bad stomach.

Elpeda at the telephone exchange in Ayios Konstantinos, May 1979.

By the middle of May, we were preparing a comprehensive report on the use of pesticides on Samos, with particular reference to their possible effects on the monk seal whelping sites around the island. Agricultural run-off could well poison fish and in turn poison the seals. Pesticide concentrations had already been found in the milk of seal mothers, sometimes causing the death of their pups.

Perhaps the greatest threat to wildlife was the widespread use of the highly toxic insecticide Parathion. Officials of the regional administration of the Ministry of Agriculture lamented that Parathion was still widely used and freely available at every retail outlet, despite their attempts to discourage its use.

In Britain, regulations governing the use of Parathion required operators to wear rubber gloves, boots, apron and hood, and a face shield or respirator. Unprotected persons were to be kept out of the sprayed area for at least a day, livestock for a minimum of ten days. The pesticide was not to be applied when plants were flowering because it was fatal to bees; it was not to contaminate ponds or streams because it was fatal to fish. There were strict rules governing the harvesting of Parathion-treated crops, with a minimum of four weeks required between the last application and sending the crops to market. The warnings were almost endless, but none of these restrictions applied on Samos. Even as we were writing the report, several farmers were rushed to hospital with pesticide poisoning, and a child had become seriously ill after ‘stealing’ cherries from a Parathion-sprayed tree. I then made an urgent request to the NCPPE for nationwide statistics on human and wildlife casualties attributed to Parathion. Months and months went by until I finally received a personal letter from our contact in the agency, Penny Marinos, who told me that our query had been ‘sabotaged’. No one in the agency was prepared to release such statistics because they were considered inflammably sensitive. The abuses of multinationals always are. Parathion was manufactured by Bayer Epipha of Athens and Thessalonika, offspring of the giant chemical and pharmaceutical corporation based in Leverkusen, West Germany. In the most bizarre hypocrisy of all, their headed notepaper and advertising material bore a small green leaf, with the words ‘Bayer – for the Protection of the Environment’.

Numerous deaths and accidents had been attributed to Parathion around the world. As an organophosphate, it is one of the most toxic chemicals known. Typical symptoms of Parathion poisoning include convulsions, muscular spasms and blindness. In one case in California, twelve out of thirty orange-pickers became violently ill from residues of Parathion that were already three weeks old, and all but one had to be hospitalized. This was by no means a record for persistence; residues had been found in the peel of oranges six months after treatment with standard doses.

It was already clear that Parathion would pose a grave threat to the prospective monk seal sanctuaries which, as integrated biogenetic reserves, would also be protecting rare and endangered bird species. According to information we had received from other countries, birds were particularly susceptible to Parathion poisoning. In Sweden, 3,000 black-headed gulls had been killed in one incident and in Indiana in the United States, over 65,000 red-winged blackbirds had died during a single aerial spraying.

The overworked employees of the Agriculture Department told us that many of the farmers on Samos were still illiterate and couldn’t understand the warnings given on the Parathion containers. They would rely only on instructions given by word of mouth, usually by retailers who had a vested interest in farmers consuming as much of the product as possible. Coupled with a certain naively and trust in the chemicals, the amounts they applied to their crops were often far in excess of the recommended dosage, and they had been known on many occasions to market the produce only a few days after spraying. None, of course, took any precautions for their own safety, such as wearing rubber aprons and masks. The Agriculture Department sent out field officers in an attempt to educate the farmers on the dangers of pesticides, but they themselves were both dubious and pessimistic about their effectiveness.

We believed that all of this constituted gross negligence on the part of the chemical companies, and that it was their responsibility to ensure that practical safeguards existed. We also believed that the continuing use, manufacture and marketing of Parathion contravened Council of Europe regulations, and we approached Bayer for a letter of intent, stating how long they intended to market their product in Greece, whether a phase-out period would be initiated and by what method the remaining stockpiles would be destroyed. We expected a full-scale battle in the following months, but once again, this was eclipsed and ultimately shelved by more pressing concerns with YPEA.

Even so, it was heartening during our research to find many organic farmers on Samos, most of whom harboured a deep distrust of spraying their food with poisons. Almost invariably, these farmers also possessed a greater empathy with the land and an insight into the intricate ecological balances of Nature.

In the meantime, Susi Newborn had joined us, and was immersing herself in her passion for dolphins. The Greek government was offering a bounty of 600 drachmas for the head of any dolphin the fishermen brought in, including rare species such as the euphrosyne. It all followed a familiar and depressing pattern, with dolphins, once renowned as the friends of fishermen, becoming their bitterest enemy as the sea is polluted and overfished.

We desperately wanted to expose this scandal, but although we had finally received our funds from WWF, we were still in dire financial straits, scarcely able to pay off our debts and keep the monk seal project alive. This was one of IUCN/WWF’s ‘action priority’ projects and yet we were constantly stifled by our miserly budget. The petty and parsimonious bureaucrats of finance in Switzerland seemed to harbour a grudge or prejudice against any project which did not include vast allocations for esoteric research or conferences. We had no funds available to invest in the concerts which we once hoped would make the project financially self-sufficient, and because of Drumpis’s refusal to furnish us with permits, we were not allowed to solicit donations through advertising or sales. Faced with intractable bureaucracies on all sides, it was no wonder that the monk seal was becoming rapidly unsaveable.

At the same time, Greenpeace was still at war with itself. The organization’s self-styled president was publicly denouncing its San Francisco branch for diverting at least $1 million from the ‘legitimate head office’ in Vancouver. How much of this was mere hyperbole we could not gather, but it seemed certain that it heralded a violent storm for the control of Greenpeace internationally, and that the mandarins of the organization were first of all reining in their most recalcitrant and affluent groups.

Despite their financial piety, Greenpeace were ignoring our pleas for funds, our requests for information and support, even though it was supposed to be their own project. Allan Thornton could scarcely find time to reply to letters, and the whole of the London office was consumed by a frantic campaign in the Atlantic, where the Rainbow Warrior was opposing the dumping of radioactive waste. Over the months, we had grown weary of Greenpeace’s empty promises and erratic gestures, and had now started communicating directly with IUCN and WWF since they were at least eager for the project to continue and would probably be prepared to sink more funds into the venture in the future.

Susi had been outraged by the raids on our houses, which seemed to sour for her the image of Samos as an idyllic place to live and work. She was also distressed by the almost constant surveillance of the project by YPEA agents, and disliked the feeling of being shadowed and always having to look over her shoulder. She wrote letters to the Greenpeace Foundation in Vancouver and San Francisco, hoping to drum up support within the hierarchy of the organization, but to no avail. She found it incredible that with this internationally sanctioned project, it was not even feasible for us to visit Turkey more than a few times without the risk of expulsion. But it was a seemingly innocuous and even amusing incident which finally brought the tensions within her to a head a few weeks later. Strolling towards the Greenpeace office one fine early morning, she passed the police station on the waterfront where Hondro was lolling back on his chair, a mirror in one hand and a cut-throat razor in the other, his face full of foam. Unfortunately, Susi hadn’t realized that ‘Hondro’ was merely the villagers’ humorous nickname for the policeman. And so in effect, as she walked by she called out merrily, ‘Kalimera, Fatty.’ With a bellow of outrage, Hondro leapt up and began chasing her down the street, brandishing his razor and threatening to cut her throat.

The unfortunate incident may have been harmless enough, but Susi, with her quite exceptional intuition, had perhaps foreseen the chilling events which would haunt us after she left the island.

Towards the end of May we received a visit from Penny Marinos. The permanent secretary of the NCPPE, Mr Yeroulanos, was eager to have a reliable and first-hand report on our project which would then give him greater leverage in the simmering battles with the police and YPEA. She was also to pay a call on the nomarchis in order to cultivate greater co-operation among local officials. Penny was doubtful about broaching the possibility of establishing biogenetic reserves on Samos at this time, since she felt that the prefect’s approval should be sought through normal channels. But I strenuously disagreed and my views eventually prevailed. I reasoned that these ‘normal channels’ were merely a bureaucratic euphemism for the inane protocols which, in the final analysis, were little more than delaying tactics. She looked at me with fond scepticism as I envisaged the first sanctuary, probably Seitani, to be operating within a year. My unabashed idealism was becoming either legendary or notorious, but in the event we were both startled by the prefect’s reaction to the proposal. Suitably impressed by Penny’s glowing portrayal of the project and its international backing, Clemenceau Phillipakis conferred his solemn approval upon the biogenetic reserves, and agreed that Seitani should be preserved for the ‘common heritage of the island’.

Yeroulanos was obviously hoping that the backing of the prefecture might restrain the police and YPEA from their harassment of the project. But at this time, the police were still not under the jurisdiction of the nomarchia, and they coveted their independence. The Yeroulanos strategy was therefore fully dependent on who possessed the most influence, and in the following months, it would become abundantly clear which side was winning the tug of war.

In the hot and still days of June, the fishermen in Ayios Konstantinos were experiencing considerable trouble with a lone, migrant seal. It was eating into their nets, leaving the typical triangular pattern of holes from teeth and flippers. Fisherman Andreas Charalambos was furious. One of his nets was so badly damaged, he told us irritably, that all he could do was throw it away. The seal was a black individual, he said, between one and a half and two metres in length. The fishermen had seen it sleeping on a nearby beach and had heard it barking in the early hours of the morning. A few days later we found Charalambos mending one of his other nets which also showed signs of seal damage. Grumbling, he threatened to kill the animal unless we did something about it, and to back up his threat he showed us photographs taken four or five years earlier, when a young seal had become trapped in his nets. Upon bringing it ashore, he and his family had clubbed the animal to death.

A young monk seal captured and clubbed to death at Ayios Konstantinos, Samos c. 1973. The wife of fisherman Andreas Charalambos clasps the dead seal round the neck to pose for a tourist’s photograph.

With our chronic shortage of funds, there was little we could do except hope for the best. It was obvious that the seal was only on a seasonal feeding migration, probably from Seitani. If we bought the fishermen new nets, we would be letting ourselves in for a free-for-all as soon as the news spread to other villages. Some fishermen would not be above blackmailing us for nets, and would even tear holes into old ones as proof of their eligibility for compensation.

On 2 July, much to our annoyance, we discovered another flat tyre on the car. We had been suffering a spate of them for two weeks or more and naturally assumed them to be due to the moonscape roads of Samos. Rita took the punctured tyre into Vathi to be mended. A few hours later, when she went to collect it, the mechanic showed her a piece of electric wire which he said had been deliberately inserted into the tyre. ‘See what they are doing to you,’ he warned her cryptically. Perhaps foolishly, in the now hectic pace of the project we allowed the incident to slip from our minds. How could we believe that YPEA would go to such lengths to drive us out of Samos, and for what conceivable reason?

On 6 July, the Council of Europe stepped into the fray, with an official endorsement of our plans to create a network of sanctuaries in the eastern Aegean. Marinos Yeroulanos had evidently been cultivating international support for the plan during his visits to Strasbourg and the EEC in Brussels, hoping that it would lend extra weight to his side in the tug of war. Yet fully aware of the acute political implications of eastern Aegean reserves, Jean-Pierre Ribaut, head of the Environment and Natural Resources Division, wrote to him: ‘We feel happy about the important efforts under way to try to save the monk seal and we would wish to assure you of our support in this difficult and delicate action…’

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