The BBC has turned its attention to one of Greece’s most unlikely conservation success stories, featuring the barren Cycladic island of Gyaros – once synonymous with political exile and imprisonment- as one of the Mediterranean’s most important sanctuaries for the endangered Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus).
In a feature story highlighting the island’s remarkable transformation, the broadcaster describes how decades of isolation from human activity unintentionally created ideal conditions for one of the world’s rarest marine mammals. Gyaros, long closed to the public after serving first as a prison island for political detainees and later as a naval firing range, now hosts what scientists believe is one of the largest Mediterranean monk seal colonies anywhere in the species’ range.
The island’s ecological significance first emerged in the early 2000s when researchers photographed a female monk seal nursing her pup on an open beach—an unusually public breeding site for a species that had largely retreated to inaccessible sea caves because of centuries of human disturbance. Subsequent surveys estimated that about 70 adult seals inhabit the waters around Gyaros, making it a cornerstone of efforts to restore the Mediterranean monk seal population.
The BBC notes the irony that an island remembered by generations of Greeks as a place of political exile has become an accidental refuge for wildlife. The absence of permanent human settlement allowed marine habitats, Posidonia seagrass meadows, coral communities and seabird colonies to recover alongside the monk seals, creating one of the Aegean’s richest protected ecosystems.
The international attention comes only months after Greece granted the waters around Gyaros their strongest legal environmental protection, further reinforcing the island’s role as a flagship marine conservation area.
The designation is part of a broader effort by Athens to expand marine protected areas and safeguard biodiversity in the Aegean, including habitats critical to the recovery of the Mediterranean monk seal, whose global population is estimated at fewer than 1,000 animals, with Greek waters supporting the largest remaining population.
