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The Caribbean Monk Seal Columbus first recorded a sub-tropical marine animal, the Caribbean monk seal in modern scientific terms in 1493 during his famous voyage to Americas. The monk seal had existed in the tropical waters of the West Indies for thousands of years and was well known to the native islanders. It is the only pinniped ever to have existed in American tropics. Other American pinnipeds, such as sea lions, exist only cooler waters, and other sub-tropical marine mammals, such as manatees and dugongs are not pinnipeds. During the 1600s, monk seals numbers declined due to extensive hunting by Spaniards who had come to the Caribbean. They were targeted particularly by fishers who viewed them as unwanted competitors. The Caribbean seal was already rare by the 1700s, but the species survived into this century. The last recorded Caribbean monk seal in the United States was killed in 1922 off the Key West in Florida. Although the Caribbean monk seal is almost certainly extinct, possible sightings of this species have occurred in the West Indies over the years since 1922. Some of these reports have come from remote island sand it is difficult to determine their veracity. As with the Tasmanian tiger-wolf, organized survey expeditions have not been able to locate evidence of living monk seals. Scientists believe the data of final extinction for this species was around 1960.
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