It Takes a Village to Save a critically endangered Monk Seal

X post in Environment.

As the critically endangered marine mammal returns to its ancestral home on now-populated Hawaiian islands, biologists are relying on everyday citizens to help rescue the monk seal from abandoned fishing nets and other deadly threats.







http://www.takepart.com/feature/2015/04/22/endangered-hawaiian-monk-seal-ocean-plastic-pollution-climate-change

April 22, 2015 By Todd Woody

Todd Woody is TakePart's senior editor for environment and wildlife.

KAHUKU, Hawaii—One of the world’s rarest marine mammals is surprisingly easy to find.

I stroll down the beach from the secluded Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu’s North Shore, past a golf course, until I reach a small sandy inlet peppered with seal-size rocks. One of those rocks is a Hawaiian monk seal. The adjacent small boulder is her two-week-old pup. The gray slab-sided seal and her fuzzy jet-black offspring lie motionless, snoozing in the March sun as the surf washes over them. I might have passed by without a glance if not for a mesh fence roping off the beach and two rather determined volunteer conservationists patrolling the perimeter, gently but firmly asking selfie-taking tourists to speak sotto voce and keep their distance.

There’s good reason for the vigilance. I happen to be looking at 0.2 percent of the planet’s entire population of the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal. This particular seal is officially known as R5AY, the designation imprinted on the red tag biologists attached to her flipper more than a decade ago. But most people just call her Honey Girl. This mama is not just any monk seal. The 20-something-year-old pinniped has so far produced nine pups, single-handedly adding nearly a percentage point to a population of 1,100 seals that is declining by about 3 percent a year in most of its habitat.

Video: http://www.takepart.com/video/2015/04/17/monk-seals-beach?cmpid=longtailshare

Video: Honey Girl and her pup.

“She’s kind of a super mom,” says Stacie Robinson, an ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s monk seal research program, as the seals doze. “Every individual counts, and pups are especially precious.”

Honey Girl is more than a successful mother. The life story of this monk seal is a tale of surviving the crises afflicting oceans choking on carbon, plastic, and abandoned fishing nets.



A Hawaiian monk seal hauled out on a large net at Pearl and Hermes Atoll. (Photo: Courtesy NOAA)

FULL story at link.