season peaked in early December. Like other monk seals, this species had four retractable nipples for suckling their young. Newborn pups were probably about in length and weighed and reportedly had a sleek, black lanugo coat when born. It is believed this animal's average lifespan was approximately twenty years. The Caribbean monk seal nasal mite (Halarachne americana), was entirely dependent on the seal, living inside of its nasal cavity, and went extinct with it. Habitat Caribbean monk seals were found in warm temperate, subtropical and tropical waters of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and the western Atlantic Ocean. They probably preferred to haul out at low sandy beaches above high tide on isolated and secluded atolls and islands, but occasionally would visit the mainland coasts and deeper waters offshore. This species may have fed in shallow lagoons and reefs. Relationship with humans The first historical mention of the Caribbean monk seal is recorded in the account of the second voyage of Christopher Columbus. In August 1494, a ship laid anchor off the mostly barren island of Alta Velo, south of Hispaniola, where the party of men aboard killed eight seals that were resting on the beach. The second recorded interaction with Caribbean monk seals was Juan Ponce de León's discovery of the Dry Tortugas Islands. On June 21, 1513, when Ponce de León discovered the islands, he ordered a foraging party to go ashore, where the men killed fourteen of the docile seals. There are several more records throughout the colonial period of seals being discovered and hunted at Guadeloupe, the Alacrane Islands, Bahamas, Pedro Cays, and Cuba. As early as 1688, sugar plantation owners sent out hunting parties to kill hundreds of seals every night in order to obtain oil to lubricate the plantation machinery. A 1707 account describes fisherman slaughtering seals by the hundreds for oil to fuel their lamps. By 1850, so many seals had been killed that there were no longer sufficient numbers for them to be commercially hunted. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientific expeditions to the Caribbean encountered the Caribbean monk seal. In December 1886, the first recorded scientific expedition to research seals, led by H. A. Ward and Professor F. Ferrari Perez as part of the Mexican Geographical and Exploring Survey, ventured to a small collection of reefs and a small cay known as the Triangles (20.95° N 92.23°