According to reporting from Science.org, based on a study published in the journal Oryx, scientists studying Mediterranean monk seals near the Greek islet of Formicula found that the seals have grown so bothered by humans that they started hiding from us in secret underwater chambers that the researchers have dubbed “bubble caves.”
The Mediterranean monk seal is a rare creature to spot. There are fewer than a thousand left in the Mediterranean and northeastern Atlantic. They used to openly lounge on beaches, and then humans started building resorts in their habitats, and the seals were having a hard time living a normal life among the tourists doing body shots. So, now the seals mostly scurried away into remote sea caves to rest, nurse their pups, and just generally avoid being harassed by us.
Researchers from the Tethys Research Institute and the Octopus Foundation were keeping an eye on seal habitats around Formicula when divers found a hidden underwater tunnel branching off from one of the main caves. At the caves, they found a dome-shaped air pocket that was only accessible through submerged passages. A kind of seal panic room.
What Are the Monk Seals Doing in Their Bubble Caves?
Researchers installed remote cameras to try to figure out what they were doing in there. They found that the monk seals were spending a long time in these bubble caves. Over a 140-day stretch of monitoring, they found the seals used the hidden chamber on 119 days while barely using the bigger caves nearby, which are more easily accessible.
The footage they obtained showed the seals just kind of float around peacefully, sometimes sleeping, sometimes engaging in a behavior called “bottling,” where the seals eerily drift vertically in the water. They were just chillin’, enjoying their time away from us. It’s cute, if a little sad. They were trying to escape our destruction and madness, after all, isolating themselves to get away from us.
The researchers say that now that we know the seals retreat to these “bubble caves” to get away from us, maybe we should include these hidden caves in our thinking when we plan protection and conservation efforts, expanding our reach beyond the beaches and the large caves they used to hang out in.
Greece has already started creating restricted access areas to protect animals like monk seals, along with establishing marine protected areas around some seal habitats. The researchers hope that, in time, these efforts to de-human some areas will draw the monk seals out of their bubble caves and back out onto the beaches and caves so they can lazily sunbathe, worry-free, like they used to.
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