Throughout the course of the earth’s natural history, climate change has drastically negatively impacted the planet’s ecosystems. The industrial revolution has paved the way for the development of anthropogenic activities, resulting in the emission of copious volumes of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, triggering abnormal increases in temperature.

This increase in temperature has ultimately resulted in an upsurge of droughts, melting of glaciers, causing a rise in sea levels and risks of hazardous flooding events, threatening terrestrial, marine and freshwater biomes and the organisms existing within them, in the process.

Due to the increased levels of human uses occurring in the Mediterranean Sea and the coastal areas surrounding it, according to a study titled Allowable CO2 emissions based on regional and impact-related climate targets by Seneviratne et al. (2016), the Mediterranean Sea has been exceedingly impacted due to climate change and yearly temperatures have increased by 1.4°C since the 1800s, which is a value well above the global climate change trends.

This increase in temperature has threatened the marine biodiversity in the Mediterranean basin by altering the feeding and breeding behaviour and migrations of marine mammals, marine birds and fish stocks.

A marine mammal that is not as well known as cetaceans such as whales, dolphins and harbour porpoises is the critically endangered Mediterranean monk seal, scientifically known as Monachus monachus.

Once well-established throughout the Mediterranean Sea, the Mediterranean monk seal is the only seal to inhabit the Mediterranean basin, currently residing in sporadic locations in Algeria, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, with very limited sightings around the Mediterranean coastal areas.

These seals had to adopt a different breeding strategy

Mediterranean monk seal sightings have been historically recorded in the surrounding Maltese waters, however, nowadays are near to none.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (2012), the Mediterranean monk seal is on the verge of extinction, currently amounting to approximately 700 individuals, with only 450 mature Monachus monachus in the Mediterranean basin. It is thus classified as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The latter classification is mainly due to habitat loss, which directly affects their foraging behaviours, disease, marine pollution, maritime traffic and climate change.

The seal currently resides in sporadic locations in Algeria, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus.

In the past, Mediterranean monk seals mainly bred in open waters, however, due to increased human disturbances, these seals had to adopt a different breeding strategy. Studies carried out by the University of Exeter and the Society for the Protection of Turtles, utilising camera traps in Cyprus, showed that the Mediterranean monk seal has smartly resorted to marine cave systems to raise its pups. However, according to the Monk Seal Conservation Programme (2014), approximately 40 per cent of the Monachus monachus pups do not survive, due to the flooding of caves caused by rises in sea levels (average of 15cm sea level rise in the past 100 years), spring tides and storm events.

Climate change has also played a role in the collapse of several food webs due to thermal stratifications resulting in the decrease of nutrient transfer to the water’s surface, hindering the growth of primary producers, such as phytoplankton (Gittings et al., 2018). This, ultimately, had a domino effect, negatively impacting top predators such as the Mediterranean monk seal.

Sea surface temperature predictions in the Mediterranean basin, as forecast by the Mediterranean Experts on Climate and Environmental Change (MedECC), showed that the sea surface temperature is set to increase further in the Aegean and Ionian seas, which are the current known locations of the Monachus monachus populations.

The effects of climate change are not only felt by the human population but also by all the biodiversity inhabiting the planet’s biosphere, hence the management of climate change impacts should follow an ‘ecosystem-based approach’ methodology. This approach allows policymakers and managers to ensure that holistic management is carried out to ensure the survivability of endangered species and their surrounding environment.

Education and awareness on the impact of climate change are also key in tackling this problem. This type of awareness should be directed towards all age groups.

Further research on the Mediterranean monk seal on a regional aspect should also be carried out to identify any further threats to the critically endangered population. Monitoring studies could help identify the breeding grounds of these species and environmental rangers and wardens could be stationed near these sites to ensure that the Monachus monachus populations can be further safeguarded.

Matthew Laspina, an MCAST and University of Malta graduate, is reading for an MSc in international marine science at the Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh, Scotland.