The Seal Alliance Run From Monaco

The Mediterranean monk seal was hunted to a few hundred animals in the last century. Since 2013 the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation has backed a marine protected area around Gyaros, in Greece, with partners Tethys, WWF Greece and MOm: radar, video surveillance and coastguard coordination watch over a colony that stood at 87 seals with about nine births a year at its last published count, and outreach to fishermen and tourism operators reached more than 900,000 people. In 2019 the Foundation launched the Monk Seal Alliance, a coalition of donors that funds projects across the Mediterranean and Atlantic range, and in 2025-2026 it co-leads SEAL GREECE with Greece's national environment agency to get management plans and enforcement into protected areas. A 2022 fundraising evening raised EUR 340,000 and brought total monk seal funding to nearly EUR 1.6 million since 2013; the species has since been downlisted to vulnerable, with around 1,000 animals left.