Rockets sent Israelis fleeing from the beach. A rare seal brought them back.
Yulia, the endangered seal, seemed unphased by the rockets from Gaza, let alone those going the other way.
About six feet tall and twenty years old, Yulia hoisted herself onto a sandy beach in Jaffa, an ancient city immediately south of Tel Aviv, last Friday. It was the fourth of five days of fighting between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants in Gaza.
She promptly fell into a deep sleep.
Yulia was the definition of an incongruous face. Two days earlier, air raid sirens on the same shoreline had sent swimmers and sunbathers into municipal shelters. Now, for the first time since 2010, an endangered Mediterranean monk seal — one of an estimated 700 in the world — had landed on an Israeli shore.
“A miracle,” said Ruthy Yahel, a marine ecologist with the Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority who helped watch over Yulia this week. “It knows no borders, no borders, no wars between countries.”
Yulia stayed on the beach for days, unconsciously sleeping through the announcement of a ceasefire. She was unresponsive when crowds began to gather on weekends to watch her sleep. She seemed unfazed when a local boy christened her Yulia, and the name started making headlines in the Israeli news media.
Instead, she focused on moulting, with her coat gradually changing hue from brown to gray. Occasionally she rolled in the sand. But mostly she slept.
As her fame spread, Israel’s wildlife authority cordoned off the beach to prevent onlookers from disturbing her. Kan, the national broadcaster, trained a camera provide a live stream online at her sleeping place. She inspired memes on social media, with users a joke that she could defeat the embattled Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an election.
In the space of a weekend, Israel’s national conversation partially turned from war to seals — one of the frequent examples of emotional whiplashes that define daily life in Israel, where a decades-old conflict with the Palestinians, coupled with deepening internal gorges, ensure a turbulent existence. Domestic unrest one week, deadly conflict the next – closely followed by the appearance of rare marine fauna.
“We’re all looking for a little common sense given all the craziness going on,” said Avi Blyer, 47, an animator who came to see the seal on Wednesday morning.
“She’s an ambassador of common sense,” Mr. Blyer added. “She represents something else.”
For conservation experts, Yulia’s arrival also marks a minor victory after a decades-long effort to revive a nearly extinct species.
At the end of the 19th century, the Mediterranean monk seal population numbered thousands, experts say, but in the 20th century it fell to several hundred after hunters killed too many and human activity damaged the seals’ habitats. Over the past two decades, conservation teams, mainly in Greece and Turkey, have expanded coastal nature reserves, increasing seal numbers.
“It’s something we really should be celebrating,” said Ms. Yahel, the marine ecologist
Like many travelers, Yulia stopped in Turkey before heading to Israel.
After Mia Elser, an Israeli seal expert, sent photos of Yulia to colleagues in Turkey, the Turks noticed 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 it was a seal they had been tracking since the mid-2000s and had seen regularly in caves near Mersin in southern Turkey – most recently in March. The seal was so trusted by Turkish marine experts that for many years it was known to them as Tugra (pronounced TUR-rah) – after the Turkish spelling of the calligraphic signature.
It’s a mystery why the seal swam more than 320 miles to Jaffa, but one theory is that the growing seal population has increased competition for food, driving them further away.
Yulia appears bolder than most of her ilk, the Turkish experts said — generally less afraid of human contact and more willing to swim long distances. In 2019 she was spotted in Lebanon.
“She’s a really easy-going 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.”
At one point last week, Yulia seemed so indifferent that Ms. Elser, the Israeli seal expert, feared she might be dead. To check that she was still breathing, Mrs. Elser crept slowly toward her in the darkness, watching carefully for signs of life. Suddenly the seal’s nose twitched and she opened one eye.
“It was the only time one of us got really close to her,” said Ms. Elser, a researcher with the Delphis Association, an Israeli nonprofit dedicated to protecting marine mammals.
For Israelis, news of the seal was a brief balm after a series of ongoing crises — from a deep social divide over the government’s proposed changes to the judiciary, to last week’s war and an uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. . At a local level, it has momentarily diverted attention from the ethnic tensions in Jaffa, once a predominantly Arab city where the remaining Arab residents often find themselves rewarded by increasing gentrification.
News of Yulia’s moves dominated social media groups in the neighborhood for the past few days, said Deborah Danan, a Jaffa resident who leads one of those groups.
“It’s nice to be able to talk about where the seals are on the beach – rather than where the closest shelter is, or whether there’s a protest,” Ms Danan said.
But on Wednesday, visitors were faced with a disappointingly empty beach. Yulia had disappeared into the sea and it was not clear if she would return.
On Thursday, Yulia made a few failed attempts to land on a more northerly beach, but each time seemed daunted by the presence of dogs.
“I hope for this country that she comes back,” Ms. Danan said. “This country needs a distraction.”
Myra Noveck and Hiba Yazbek reported from Jerusalem.