Endangered seal seems
to be settling into new spotHawaii researchers see the monk seal
in Kahoolawe waters
An endangered Hawaiian monk seal that was twice removed from Kealakekua Bay last month because he was "nipping and groping" swimmers may be settling in with his own kind off Kahoolawe.
Sam Whitcraft, with the Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission's ocean resources program, reported that the seal known as M34 was spotted Wednesday afternoon in nearshore waters between Kuheia and Ahupu.
"He was in the water interacting with two other seals -- one of which we identified (by the scar on its back) as the seal born on Kahoolawe in the spring of 2001," Whitcraft wrote in an e-mail to marine biologists.
Wildlife officials removed M34 from Kealakekua Bay to waters off the Big Island's South Point on Oct. 20, but he was back at Kealakekua Bay within days.
On Oct. 28 the seal was taken by boat to Kahoolawe in hopes that the island's small population of seals and lack of humans might prove a suitable new home, said Jeff Walters, a biologist with the state Division of Aquatic Resources.
There are an estimated 1,200-1,400 Hawaiian monk seals, most of them in the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Despite the overall decline in the animal's numbers, more than 50 seals have been identified in recent years as living around the main islands.
