Following the Monk Seal#1

Monk Seals have been on my mind for some years now 🙂

I started collaborating with Dr Luigi Bundone back in 2018 -and composed Monk Seal’s Home, a song which has been bringing Mediterranean monk seal habitats in schools, museums and cultural centers across 3 continents since then. This song was inspired by stories that Luigi shared about his field research, and the reading of scientific articles and materials about these beautiful animals.

In 2022 I had the extraordinary privilege of seeing an Hawaiian Monk Seal on the shores of Ka’ena point, in Oahu Hawai’i, thanks to the welcoming community of Hoa ‘Aina o Makaha and the volunteers of Friends of Italy Hawai’i.

Even more importantly, during my residency in Oahu I got to hear fresh, exciting seal stories from the children I met in different schools! These accounts of coexistence and neighboring between young humans and seals were the strongest push to keep the project going – imagining that one day, kids around the shores of the Mediterranean may have similar stories to share, if conservation efforts are successful.

So THIS YEAR, thanks to the support of Creature Conserve, I finally had the opportunity to be trained in Mediterranean monk seal photo-identification, and to then join Luigi in the field in Kefalonia, within the project Mediterranean monk seal photo-identification in the Ionian Sea, Greece (Central Ionian and Corfu)! This project is carried out by Archipelagos – Environment and development, an NGO lead by Aliki Panou, a pioneer on the study and conservation of the Mediterranean monk seal.

It has been a fantastic journey so far and I am excited to start sharing stories and content about it 🙂

A huge THANK YOU to Creature Conserve for this amazing opportunity, and to my CC Mentor Franco Zacha and the Mentorship Program community for the continuous support and inspiration!

phase 1

The first phase of “Following the monk seal” has been dedicated to getting me trained in Mediterranean monk seal’s photo-ID, and to the analysis of pictures taken inside the marine caves, where these animals take shelter and rear their pups.

The training took place in Venice in August, which brought a whole set of additional reflections that seemed to have little to do with monk seals or conservation…

The town was incandescent with summer heat and teaming with tourists. I moved across it with my cello in my usual awe but noticed the hardship of managing my movement in the crowds. The same happens in Rome when I travel across Trastevere to reach San Cosimato, where I usually busk… but its a topic dear to many other places I lived and visited in the past years. Tourism has become such a priority for institutions private citizens and policies, that spaces are metamorphosizing to accommodate needs and wishes which have nothing to do with residents. And that is forcibly changing the ecology of cities… I’ll write more about this in another post, but I want to mention that that’s also what makes my busking job in Rome so special -that I get to do it in a square that is resisting these pressures, thanks to an association of local citizens, Trastevere Attiva, to the local market, the local shops and a playground that brings together families and children from the area, creating a safer space for everyone to enjoy. Anyway, San Cosimato deserves a post on its own which will be coming!

Back to Venice, my training was a deep dive into photo-ID for a few days: I learnt how to discriminate pups, juvenile and adult individuals, when and how to identify males and females, and their patterns of usage of the caves while observing hundreds and hundreds of pictures with Luigi on the computer, looking for shots with seals in them. “UN FAGIOLINOOO” (“a little bean!”) became my signature exclamation when pups appeared on the screen -although I learnt they are quite big fagiolini indeed… up to a meter in length!

I learnt that the white patches on the pups’ bellies, as well as scratches on the back of the adults are a great way to identify individuals -but with my limited experience I easily mistook a drying patch of fur, or a leaf of Posidonia for a scratch! This needs improvement 🙂

It was fun to observe Luigi at work and learn how to support him in his photo-ID analysis in the coming months: I’ll be extracting information from the pictures and contributing in some small way to the buildup of these data sets… in time they’ll tell us more and more about how these animals live and behave, and give us more chances of supporting effective conservation practices to protect them.

If you are curious about how the data analysis took place, imagine a room full of buzzing fans (it was so hot!) with two humans staring at 2 screens pointing and discussing over shadows sands and pebbles, getting angry at storms that moved the camera and pointed it in the wrong direction, laughing at some hilarious seals expressions and postures (sometimes it really feels like they are posing) and occasionally screaming Fagiolinoooo when a pup appeared (that would have been me) … and music -always music going! Luigi shared amazing albums from all over the world during my stay, his love for music really is inspiring.

I feel this side of research, the relational side, the learning, the context is rarely in our minds when we think of scientists -but I find it so important! It also helps realizing how things are done, makes them more accessible, even if just in our possibility to imagine them 🙂

Speaking of music, at the end of my stay in Venice there was also a wonderful opportunity to share some of my songs in the setting of Sant’Elena, with a group of Luigi’s friends: it was very sweet to have this moment of sharing, and it gave us a nice nudge to start planning for the next months, looking for indoor venues to bring the new music back to Venice and involve a larger audience.

New music is indeed the aim of “Following the monk seal”: that “Monk Seal’s Home” may grow into a suite of pieces, dedicated to these fascinating animals and our relationships with them!

So stay tuned for updates on the following phases of the project which will appear here and on my Instagram page 🙂

Next up: phase2

Next up will be the field notes from the research days in Kefalonia!!

For a week I got in the boots of the research assistant, accompanying Luigi in his surveys, meeting the project co-ordinator Aliki Panou and learning loads about Mediterranean monk seal conservation in Greece… and seeing Mediterranean monk seals for the first time 🙂