On Friday, April 12, we received a call from Madeira, where we are carrying out a LIFE project with the Mediterranean monk seal. In that archipelago we had only seen them in Madeira and Desertas, but that Friday a seal had appeared in another of…

On December 26, a new maximum was broken in the periodic counts of individuals that we do every week in each breeding cave. There were no fewer than 149 individuals together on the beach inside the Cave 3. Adding the samples counted in the other…

Footage of the action “Protection of caves of interest used by monk seals using photo tramp cameras”. LIFE13NAT/ES/000974 Life Madeira Monk Seal.

Cabo Blanco peninsula is located in the middle of the Western coast of the Sahara desert. The colony is on its west side, in a stretch with cliffs over 10 m high, at the base of which are the marine caves that seals use, facing…

In order to identify the marine habitat used by the monk seal of the population of Madeira, a non-invasive tagging device with Fastloc GPS receivers and a system for receiving information has been developed technically. This non-invasive methodology, without the need to capture, immobilize or…

As every morning, on Monday august 15th we turned on the camera that allow us to monitor from the distance, the daily going of the seals of the reserve “Costa de las Focas” at the inside of the breeding caves. We thought it would be…

21 years went by since the placing of the first camera of video-surveillance on the entrance of cave 1. A pioneer event that allowed discovering the intimacy of the seals inside their cavernous home, where they haul out and breed. A very discreet method that…

Since 20 years ago, Cabo Blanco seals have been monitored continuous and intensely. Throughout this time, the knowledge we have of the colony is higher than of any other Mediterranean monk seal population. We think that for the first time we are looking at a…

Every year thanks to the photoidentification and the monitoring of the inside of the main breeding caves, we are able to detect how many subadults and adults are, as well as how many pups or youngsters survive. Today, “Costa de las Focas” reserve has a…

At the post of May 25th, we told you how were the breeding caves of Cabo Blanco monitored, using surveillance cameras, with which a very precise, continuous and in real time monitoring of the colony is achieved. However this methodology can only be used at…