Media Watch, Thomas Schultze-Westrum, EcoCommunications, August 1, 2010
Seals and coastal fishermen face identical threats, more than just the rapid depletion of fish resources by exploitive trawlers…
“Indiscriminate seal killers” … With this unjust accusation against the coastal fishermen – our allies from the beginning – the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal (MOm) and their associates have demonstrated clearly their incompetence and regardless diffamation [sic], actually the total failure of their strategy. Because, at the time when MOm was founded, already there existed a full collaboration between the cooperative of the fishermen of Alonnisos and the conservation movement on behalf of the seals – see the “Declaration by the Fishermen of Alonnisos” of 1982 below. By this consensus the seals had become valued allies of the fishermen, in their function as guarantors of exclusive fishing rights in the coastal waters of the archipelago.