The Monk Seal Conspiracy

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20. The Stars of Marineland

‘Soldiers frogmarched a Birmingham man out of Greece after arresting him as he fought to save rare seals from slaughter…’

Despite the ensuing press coverage and its almost comical sensationalism, our efforts, sad to say, had little effect. Although the issue was brought before the European Parliament, it was soon conveniently buried.

As for Franz Weber, during press coverage of the expulsion he glibly told the Swiss newspaper Tribune du Matin that he was ‘totally unaware of the reasons which pushed the Greek government to take such a decision’. Claiming that I had never been anything more than a ‘freelance collaborator’, he stated that his Foundation had halted this co-operation, in August, ‘precisely because of these never-ending intrigues which he provoked in the country’. With image-saving becoming the order of the day, he had expediently forgotten his rousing speech at the Athens Hilton press conference and his own news releases which described me as the Foundation’s ‘representative’. He of course did not wish to remind his potential donors that he had publicly denounced the allegations against me as ‘ridiculous’. Nor did he wish to reveal that he himself had encouraged me to make my illegal return to Samos in an effort to halt the continuing construction project at Seitani: ‘Do return to Samos. The Samos projects are scandalous. I will do everything in my power to stop them.’

On the advice of the Greek government and the Swiss Embassy in Athens, the William Tell of the conservation movement had quietly retreated from the eastern Aegean, licking the wounds of his battered pride. For a few more months, the Foundation found it prudent to continue working in the northern Sporades with Athens University, at least until the commotion over the spying affair died down. But unable to find anyone else gullible enough to work for less than nothing, or to sell themselves body and soul to the vision of ‘Franz Weber’s Monk Seal Island’, the Foundation quietly extricated itself from its commitments and cancelled its 1 million franc fund-raising campaign.

All too predictably, perhaps, the Greek government took comfort in the Foundation’s half-hearted image-saving at Alonissos; cynically, it could pretend once again that I alone had endangered the project and that the Sporades Marine Park, finally due to open in 1987 after eleven years of planning, would save the Mediterranean Monk Seal.

After several years of court action, Franz Weber at last felt obliged to pay us partial compensation for the project expenses which had come out of our own pockets. We were undoubtedly naive, perhaps even foolish, not to have insisted on contracts, but if there is no trust in the conservation movement then what use is its very existence? That it now resembles a war zone or a rat race is a glaring testament to its lack of soul, its lack of deeper awareness, its philosophy as mechanistic as the Realism which it seldom ever realizes is actually responsible for killing the Earth.

A large, pale-coloured male seal photographed at the Desertas Islands, Madeira, in 1976

Just before Christmas 1982 we released our final report, an expose of all that had happened since 1979, detailing for the first time all the evidence we possessed on the Conspiracy. Perhaps predictably, it was greeted with stony and embarrassed silence, although behind the scenes there were frantic exchanges of letters, telexes and telephone calls. We presented the report personally to the Greek Embassy in Berne and to Jean-Pierre Ribaut, head of the Environment section of the Council of Europe. The Greek consul greeted me affably, saying, ‘You are very well known in my country.’ He told me that he had no idea why we had encountered so many problems with military intelligence. I suggested to him, outlining the contentions of our report, that within the Greek Ministry of Defence and the two intelligence services there exists a top-secret directive which automatically vetoes the establishment of reserve areas in the eastern Aegean. The consul thought pensively for a moment and then declared, ‘Yes, it may well be so.’

To our astonishment, Jean-Pierre Ribaut solemnly confirmed our findings, albeit with the circumspection of a professional diplomat. It was as though he had known about the secret veto since the refusal of my entry to Greece in 1980, as though, for all of these years, only Rita and I had been kept in the dark. The same was true of IUCN and WWF. I had telephoned Gland while I was writing the report, and was told with a remarkable and perhaps blundering candour that the veto had been confirmed long ago. Apparently it had been ‘communicated through IUCN’s top-level contacts’ that Greece was indeed unwilling to establish sanctuaries in the eastern Aegean because of ‘objections from a national security point of view’.

But why had we not been told before? Quite simply because we couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret, and the last thing the Greek government or the conservation organizations wanted was to bear the brunt of a public outcry and to be held responsible for the looming extinction of the monk seal. So to this very day, the Monk Seal Conspiracy has still remained shrouded in secrecy, even though it is now obvious that the EEC too is aware of its existence.

This is clear from a cruel and bizarre plan that was launched by the EEC in 1984, and embraced by IUCN/WWF. As if to lend credibility to the plan, a few months later the World Conservation Centre at Gland suddenly classified the monk seal as one of the twelve most endangered animals in the world. But instead of mounting an international campaign to press the Greek government to establish sanctuaries for the species, this plan involves catching monk seals in North Africa and exporting them for captive breeding to a commercial dolphinarium called ‘Marineland’ on the Côte d’Azur. Another section of the plan calls for seals to be captured in Greece and lodged in the dismal concrete pools of the Rhodes Aquarium. One paragraph states that ‘collection should be taken in Greek waters from poor, dwindling populations…’ Did this mean that the seals would be captured at Seitani and other eastern Aegean whelping sites, which through the incompetence of the conservation movement have become impossible to protect?

Intrigued by this new and bizarre turn of events, I decided to attend the Council of Europe’s Monk Seal Conference in Strasbourg in September 1986. This was the third international conference on the species since 1978 and, during those eight years, despite the ritual calls for ‘action, not words’, the monk seal population had plummeted from 500 to 350 individuals. By creating a ‘group of experts’ to draft recommendations for the protection of the seal, the Council of Europe hoped to precipitate government action under the terms of the Berne Convention, an agreement between member states on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. Unfortunately there was little evidence in Strasbourg that the experts possessed either the determination or the stamina to win this race against time. For a start, the military factor was entirely ignored, no doubt for the sake of propriety and image-consciousness. Indeed, the eastern Aegean was hardly even mentioned during the proceedings, as though the monk seal’s most important habitat had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Similarly conspicuous by its absence was the Greek government delegation, which failed to show up at the last moment.

The chairs for both Greenpeace and IUCN also remained vacant, illustrating quite lucidly the level of concern felt by the conservation movement for the plight of the monk seal. Although I was attending the meeting on behalf of Greenpeace Switzerland, I felt unable to give an account of Greenpeace monk seal policy since I have never been able to ascertain whether one actually exists or not. The EEC delegate waffled on interminably but no one became any wiser as to EEC strategy. Sadly, the official merely confirmed suspicions that when it comes to action, the constipation of the EEC bureaucracy is glaringly revealed by the chronic flatulence of its empty words and gaseous promises.

And so perhaps quite predictably, the final recommendations of the Strasbourg conference resembled little more than a rehash of previous ones, again calling for reserve areas, educational programmes and compensation of fishermen for seal-damaged nets. There was only one glaring difference: the network of eastern Aegean sanctuaries, recommended by a consensus of scientific opinion for more than a decade, was entirely and conveniently forgotten. No mention was made of the 17 or more eastern Aegean reserves rejected since 1976. No mention was made of Seitani which, to this very day, has still not been awarded its Presidential Decree, first promised ‘in the weeks to come’ in February 1982. Indeed, judging by this conspicuous silence, Seitani, even though it is listed by the EEC as an important seal and bird refuge, has been written off by military realities. As for the watered-down proposals that remained, no detailed action plan was outlined, no timetables discussed, no proposals for direct action embraced, and no delegates appointed to co-ordinate specific tasks.

On the Ionian islands of Greece, however, it seemed as though Science was having a field day, and had indeed gone quite out of its mind. In a project led by Britain’s Sea Mammal Research Unit, with financial assistance from the EEC and, incredibly, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the last remaining monk seals, their behaviour and habitat, were being reduced to precise algebraic formulae. After 18 months of onsite research, generously financed by charity and the taxpayer, this was to culminate in an abstruse and rambling treatise of 70 pages, vainly disguised as conservation. I readily confess to my chronic maths-blindness. To the initiated, however, scintillating theories may well lurk within its mathematical equations, offering some new hope of survival for the monk seal:

Suppose seals visit a cave and leave tracks at random times and at an average rate , and that the tracks are washed away at random times at an average rate . Then it can be easily shown that the probability that researchers visiting the cave find a track depends on the number of days since the last visit, say d, and is given by

Thus the probability increase from 0 when d = 0 to an asymptotic value of /+. Thus the expected number of tracks found during V visits over a period of T days is

and the expected proportion of visits on which tracks are found is

What dominated the proceedings, however, was the controversial captive breeding plan at Antibes Marineland, orchestrated by the young French scientist Didier Marchessaux and the director of the Port Cros National Park, Dr André Manche. Both were eager for the plan to receive the blessings of the international scientific community, and under a prevailing glut of sophistry, no one seemed prepared to ascribe its nascent credibility to general bureaucratic apathy and Greece’s secret refusal to establish sanctuaries in the eastern Aegean. Nevertheless, several delegates privately admitted that the project, which has the full backing of the French government and the EEC, could threaten to become ‘a major ecological scandal’. Criticism was more muted in public. I myself advocated a vote on the captive breeding project, but even the most outspoken opponents of the plan were unwilling to take this step for fear of offending the diplomatic propriety which governs such occasions.

Privately, several delegates complained that the appointment of chair of the ‘group of experts’ had been rigged beforehand in favour of Dr Manche. And indeed, Manche seemed to be driving the Marineland juggernaut for all he was worth. To the embarrassment of some delegates, he repeatedly and passionately defended the capture plan: ‘If we don’t get the seals it will be the end of this species. Let’s take advantage of the facilities at Antibes. Negative results could give us more valuable results than positive ones.’

Echoing other dissenting views, Petra Deimer, the official West German government delegate and director of the Society for the Protection of Sea Mammals in Hamburg, voiced concern that the captive seals could become little more than ‘circus animals and scientific curiosities’ et Marineland. Some delegates were also worried about the role of Mike Riddle who manages the dolphinarium. It was also revealed that two other controversial figures would be involved in caring for the seals at Marineland: David Taylor and Andrew Greenwood, who are vets for many of the world’s dolphinariums and amusement parks. Taylor is also president of the European Association of Aquatic Mammals (EAAM), whose members include some of the most notorious international dolphin dealers.

Didier Marchessaux was officially representing the EAAM at the meeting. In exchange for its 2 million French franc investment, he told me with remarkable candour, ‘Marineland will benefit from the publicity of being the only establishment in the world to possess monk seals.’ Little more than a glorified amusement park, Marineland may be bent on attaining the admittedly dubious credibility of a fully-fledged zoo. After all, even respected scientists have now started calling Mike Riddle the ‘curator’ of Marineland. But despite these glaring euphemisms and pretensions, Marchessaux also admits that ‘a part of the monk seal enclosure might be open to the public.’ This in itself reveals that Marineland sees almost no distinction between its quest for prestige and its sordid commercial exploitation of marine mammals. After all the unsavoury revelations concerning dolphinariums in the last few years, one would naturally assume that an establishment of Marineland’s calibre would be considered eminently unsuitable for the delicate task of monk seal captive breeding. But once again, the entire plan in its present form may simply be proceeding by default, in other words because of the reluctance of conservationists to challenge the scheme openly and energetically by advocating viable alternatives.

According to Marchessaux, the concrete pools for the seals would be completed by December 1986. For the initial pilot project, at least three monk seals were to be caught, followed by another dozen individuals. Delegates were assured that the seals will be ‘scientifically captured under controlled conditions’. How comforting for the monk seal – which is only dying because no one is prepared to give the creatures a refuge in their own country and their own sea! Furthermore, fears that seals could be killed during capture even haunted the decorous delegates at Strasbourg, although their main concern was of a public backlash against the image of conservation.

It was perhaps for this reason that in 1985 the French Ministry of Environment stipulated that the capture be kept secret. The seals would be caught in nets and injected with a tranquillizer. In a specially designed ‘straitjacket’ they would then be transported to the nearest airport to be flown to Marineland or Rhodes. In all likelihood, ‘capture expertise’ will originate from members of the EAAM, who certainly have the most experience – and mortalities – to their credit in the capture of marine mammals for travelling circuses and amusement parks. It is not unusual for dolphins to suffer a 40 per cent mortality rate during capture, not including those maimed during the operation which subsequently die in captivity.

Capture accidents, disease and self-starvation may claim many lives even before the seals ‘settle down’ at Marineland and Rhodes. If scientists then interpret the mortality of seals and newborn pups as ‘tantalizing near-successes’, and produce sufficient political pressure to continue with the programme, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the two centres may consume 10 per cent of the remaining world population of monk seals even before their breeding programme shows the faintest signs of genuine viability. Even then, without sanctuaries, would the seals eventually be destined, like many other endangered species, to become simply permanent residents of our city zoos?

Ironically, the entire scheme actually contravenes the terms of the Berne Convention, under whose very auspices the conference was convened. The Convention explicitly prohibits ‘all forms of deliberate capture and keeping’ of monk seals, so once again a strictly protected species will be captured through one of the convenient ‘scientific research’ loopholes in our already tattered international conservation laws.

According to the unabashed optimism of a French Ministry of Environment press report, following birth, some of the seal pups will be transported to an enclosed bay in the Port Cros National Park, ‘far away from every disturbance’. It is however unclear whether the disturbance referred to is of the general kind experienced in the Mediterranean, or of the amusement-park variety experienced at Marineland. According to a map supplied with the report, the monk seal enclosure is bordered by roads on two sides, and on the others by an ‘Aqua-Splash’, a car park, a children’s playground and a research laboratory.

In stark contradiction to available scientific data, delegates were also led to believe that the monk seal is as psychologically robust as any other species of pinniped, perhaps conjuring up in some minds the frolicsome characters of seals in amusement parks as they balance brightly coloured balls on their noses. No mention was made of the monk seal’s profound psychological fear, engendered by decades of human persecution, a fear which needs time and tranquillity to heal. Decreased nasality, after all, is a symptom of its decline, not a cause, and the last thing the monk seal needs now is to be subjected to the brutal vanities of science in the form of artificial insemination and genetic research.

The psychological factor was however ignored. Manche made one fleeting allusion to it, but only to justify the project: ‘In the wild seals are frightened, and so at the end of the day we will need captive breeding.’ Delegates were subsequently led to believe that the shy animals will be able to give birth in their new concrete habitat – though even dolphins rarely breed under such conditions, and despite the fact that monk seals have never been known to breed successfully in captivity. In addition to this, out of the 34 monk seals known to have been captured for various zoos and aquariums since 1957, the vast majority have survived no longer than a few weeks. Nevertheless, delegates were assured that the offspring of the captive seals would later be reunited with their natural habitat. More ominously, Marchessaux once again outlined the scientific experiments which are to be performed on the seals, including ‘reproduction physiology, behaviour, nutrition physiology and genetics’.

This aspect of the Marineland controversy is shrouded in such tenacious ambiguity that it immediately invites suspicion. If IUCN genuinely believes that the monk seal is ‘unsaveable’, then obtaining the species’ vital statistics for the dusty archives of posterity might be some consolation to Science if captive breeding fails.

During the conference, Marchessaux announced that ‘eminent European scientists’ had been approached to join an international committee to oversee the project. Such sophistry is perhaps intended to disarm criticism of the project by inspiring awe and reverence whenever the holy name of Science is invoked. For more astute observers, however, many valid questions remain unanswered. What brand of scientist will be invited to participate? And can the scientists be trusted to police their own activities? Ironically, this is the same argument which rages through the bitter controversy over vivisection, and it can hardly be sheer coincidence that one document handed out at Strasbourg even states that the seals could ‘provide information of considerable medical and scientific value’. We can only hope that such self-professed conservation scientists as Professor René Guy Busnel will not be invited to participate, nor any of his comrades-in-arms. In the course of his long and distinguished career, the dear professor, who is a member of the League for the Conservation of the Monk Seal, has killed many dolphins in his Paris laboratories while conducting experiments on ‘dolphin sonar’ for the benefit of NATO and the United States Navy. In 1980 he was at the forefront on a dolphin catch in Taiwan where at least 60 of the animals died during or as a result of capture.

As I sat in the conference room at Strasbourg, listening to the bizarre proceedings of the ‘group of experts’, I knew that I had finally solved the Monk Seal Conspiracy even to my own carping doubts. I knew too that I had already paid the price of my battle with the secret police, with bureaucracy and officialdom – I had discredited myself into oblivion. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could say any more which would make the slightest difference.

I saw myself in thirty years time, an old man at the cenotaph of the Unseen War, that great black wall to a million species lost, a wall symbolizing all the impenetrable borders and divisions of the world. Would I shuffle along its dark granite face, searching, with failing sight, for the seal’s name inscribed there? ‘Monk Seal, brood of the lovely child of Ocean…’

* * *   T H E   E N D   * * *

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