Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Walter de Gruyter for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Mammalia 73 (2009): 60-62, doi:10.1515/MAMM.2009.008.
Description:
The Archipelago of the Azores (Portugal) is located between 37º and 41ºN and 25º and
31ºW and crosses the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It is the most isolated archipelago in the
Atlantic, situated 1600 km west of mainland Portugal and 3500 km from the eastern
coast of the United States of America. At present, the only population of seals occurring
in the Portuguese territory is found on Desertas Islands, Archipelago of Madeira, where
a colony of 24 Mediterranean monk seals, Monachus monachus (Hermann, 1779), still
persists (Pires and Neves 2001). Nonetheless, historical accounts reported by Frutuoso
(1983) dating from the early to late 1500's mention sightings of "sea wolves" (the old
Portuguese folk term for the Mediterranean monk seal) at several sites along the
Azorean Island of Santa Maria. Little is known about the occurrence of monk seals in
this area over the past five centuries, but the species certainly did not escape deliberate
killing by the first settlers. While the early monk seal reports by Frutuoso (1983) are the
only ones referring to the presence of colonies of seals in the Azores, more recently
several sightings and strandings of vagrant seals of other species have been noted. Here
we summarize historical knowledge describing colonies of Mediterranean monk seals in
the Azores, review published records of pinnipeds from the 20th century and report new
sightings and strandings of seals in the Azores.
Description:
M.A.S. was supported by an FCT postdoctoral grant
(SFRH/BPD/29841/2006), co-funded by POCI2010 and FSE. C.B. was supported by an
FCT doctoral grant (SFRH/BD/21836/2005). IMAR- DOP/UAç is the R&D Unit #531
and part of the Associated Laboratory #9 (ISR) funded through the pluri-annual and
programmatic funding schemes of FCT-MCTES and DRCT-Azores.
Keywords:
Azores
;
Extralimital records
;
Monachus monachus
;
Pinnipeds
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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