An Endangered Seal Eases Tensions in Israel
JAFFA, Israel — Yulia the seal did not seem fazed by the rockets from Gaza, let alone the missiles heading in the opposite direction. Nearly two meters long and two decades old, Yulia heaved herself onto a beach in Jaffa, an ancient city south of Tel Aviv, on May 12. It was the fourth of five days of fighting between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants in Gaza. She fell asleep.
Yulia was the definition of an incongruous sight. Two days earlier, air-raid sirens on the same shoreline had sent sunbathers rushing to municipal bomb shelters. Now, an endangered Mediterranean monk seal — one of an estimated 700 in the world — had landed on an Israeli shore for the first known time since 2010.
“A miracle,” said Ruthy Yahel, a marine ecologist at Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority who has helped watch Yulia. “She knows no limits, no borders, no wars between the countries.”
Yulia stayed on the beach for days, sleeping obliviously through the announcement of a cease-fire. She did not react when crowds began to gather to watch her. She appeared unbothered when a local boy christened her Yulia, and the name began to make headlines across the Israeli news media. She focused on molting, her fur gradually changing from brown to gray. Occasionally, she rolled around on the sand. But mainly, she slumbered.
Israel’s nature authority cordoned off the beach to prevent onlookers from disturbing Yulia. Kan, the national broadcaster, provided a livestream. Social media users joked that she might defeat the embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an election.
In the span of a weekend, Israel’s national conversation turned in part from war to seals — providing one of the frequent instances of emotional whiplash that define daily life in Israel, where a decades-old conflict with the Palestinians, coupled with widening internal rifts, make for a turbulent existence. Domestic turmoil one week, deadly conflict the next — followed by the appearance of rare marine fauna.
“We’re all looking for a bit of sanity given all the craziness that’s been going on,” said Avi Blyer, 47, an animator who came to see the seal on the morning of May 17. “She’s an ambassador of sanity.”
For conservation experts, Yulia’s arrival is also a small victory after a decades-long effort to revive a near-extinct species. In the late 1800s, the Mediterranean monk seal population was in the thousands, experts say, but it dwindled to the low hundreds in the 20th century after hunters killed too many and human activity damaged the seals’ habitats. Over the past two decades, conservation teams in Greece and Turkey have expanded coastal reserves, helping to boost seal numbers.
“It’s something we really need to celebrate,” Ms. Yahel, the marine ecologist, said.
After an Israeli seal expert sent photos of Yulia to colleagues in Turkey, the Turks spotted a familiar and distinctive mark on her back — a scar they compare to a “tughra,” or the elaborate calligraphic signature of an Ottoman caliph.
The Turkish team realized the seal was one they had been tracking since the mid-2000s, and that they have regularly spotted in caves near Mersin in southern Turkey — most recently in March. The seal was so familiar to Turkish marine experts that she has for years been known to them as Tugra.
It is a mystery why she swam over 515 kilometers to Jaffa, but one theory is that the growing seal population has created more competition for food. Yulia appears bold, the Turkish experts said — generally less frightened by human contact, and more prepared to swim long distances. In 2019, she was
A rare visitor who ‘knows no limits, no borders, no wars.’
spotted in Lebanon.
“She’s a really particularly easygoing seal,” said Meltem Ok, a Turkish marine scientist who said she has been following Tugra/Yulia since 2005. “She doesn’t really care about human presence.”
For Israelis, news of the seal has provided a brief balm from a sequence of rolling crises — from a deep social rift over the government’s proposed changes to the judiciary, to the recent fighting and an insurgency in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It has briefly distracted from ethnic tensions in Jaffa. News about Yulia’s movements has dominated neighborhood social media groups, said Deborah Danan, a Jaffa resident.
“It’s nice to be able to talk about where the seal is on the beach — rather than where the nearest bomb shelter is,” Ms. Danan said.