Ten Years of Mediterranean Monk Seal Stranding Records in Greece under the Microscope: What Do the Data Suggest?

Simple Summary: Ten years of Mediterranean monk seal stranding data along the Greek coastal areas were analyzed. The spatial distribution of stranding events along with the associated causes of death were modeled and mapped, while the relationship between the possibility of a stranding event and environmental and anthropogenic factors was thoroughly explored. The number of stranding events was found to be higher during the winter period. Moreover, the values of two major teleconnection oscillation indices during the first half of the year as well as the sea surface temperature in the Mediterranean from October to December were positively correlated with the number of stranding events of "unknown" cause. The size of fishing grounds and the number of sightings were associated with a higher probability of "human-related" stranding events. Finally, the central Aegean Sea was found to be a hotspot for "human-related" strandings, while, the eastern Ionian Sea, the southern coasts of the island of Cephalonia, and the gulf between the island of Lefkada and mainland Greece were found to present higher probabilities of monk seal subadult stranding events. This paper presents the results of an analysis of stranding events of the Mediterranean monk seal Monachus monachus over a decade. The analysis involved categorization according to the cause of stranding and seasonality, the identification of hotspot stranding areas and an assessment of possible correlations between stranding events and environmental/climatic patterns using time series analysis. Moreover, Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) were applied to explore the effects of the size of small-scale fishing grounds, the number of species sightings, and the occurrence of reproduction sites on "human-related" strandings. Finally, special focus was put on the central part of the eastern Ionian Sea for the assessment of stranding hotspot areas by means of the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach, based on different kinds of spatial information such as anthropogenic pressures and the location of breeding sites and feeding grounds. Time series analysis results revealed that oscillation indices, during the first half of the year, and sea surface temperature (SST) in the Mediterranean from October to December were positively correlated with monk seal stranding events. GAMs underlined that areas combining extended small-scale fishery grounds and a higher number of sightings were more likely to cause more strandings. Regarding spatial analyses, the central Aegean Sea was highlighted as a hotspot for "human-related strandings", while the MCDA approach emphasized that the southern coasts of Cephalonia and the gulf between Lefkada and mainland Greece were susceptible to subadult strandings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]