An Update from Dr. Charles

Aloha Monk Seal Volunteers-We have been following the blog (as we always do) and reading some of the frustrated comments a few volunteers have posted about the hooked female at Kaena Point. I thought I would write on behalf of our NOAA programs to fill you in a bit about the the decision-making process and share a few comments of my own. It is going to be a bit repetitive of the update that Dana sent out this morning and I apologize in advance for redundancy.
First off, there was obviously some communication break down along the chain that we will work hard to avoid in the future. In the correspondence I saw, there was no indication that a response was a certainty should the seal be found. Dera worked hard to temper expectations about a response but I think that didn’t translate to the volunteers at-large. We will make sure our intentions are more clearly expressed in the future to try to save some frustration, but we also want to emphasize that each one of these situations is unique and dynamic. That means that we rarely stick with our plan A. As new pieces of information come in we modify accordingly. We do not change plans just to vex the volunteers, I promise.
So the specifics of why we currently are not responding to this Nihoa female… First and foremost, when we assess whether or not we are going to catch a seal we weigh the risk vs. the benefit. The vets, scientists and managers all agree that the hook is not life threatening, though no doubt is causing some discomfort. It is important to remove it, but before responding we must consider various external factors. We are very reluctant to capture a seal in a rocky habitat unless it is absolutely necessary. In 2007, we lost a young female seal that hit her head on a rock while we were capturing her. We have since modified our protocols to reduce the likelihood of repeating that scenario. There are some sandy spots at Kaena, but adult seals can move around a lot when we try to catch them, so there are not any “optimal” locations with acceptable risk levels for capturing her at the point. Aside from rocks, we also consider heat, animal condition, other external threats (sticks etc), and proximity to water or other seals in our capture assessment.

If we are going to be handling this seal, we would also like to maximize what we learn from her. Tracy believes that based on her age and body condition she may have weaned a pup recently. If that is the case, she may begin molting very soon. We would like to observe her a little more to see if she starts showing signs of molt. If she does, we will consider waiting for the molt to finish before we capture her to remove the hook and simultaneously biomedically sample her and, potentially, instrument her. We rarely get an opportunity to study the movements and biology of our adult female seals, so this will be a very important animal to study if we can.

Lastly, we are hesitant to handle this seal at Kaena Point because we don’t want to discourage her use of the area. She has been described as being very skittish around people, which is great. Hopefully she will become a little less sensitive to the level of disturbance at KP and it will become a permanent spot for her. At this point, handling her could displace her from KP permanently.

Our current plans to not capture her at KP may change if the hook shows signs of infection, her condition (which currently is good) deteriorates, or some other issue develops. This is where the NOAA-ese of “continuing to monitor the situation” comes into play. We need to continue getting reports from volunteers and other members of the community so that we can track the situation and adapt our thinking on our Nihoa female. Rest assured, we have had many discussions about this seal and continue to take it very seriously.

We do value the hard work many of you folks put in to searching out, photographing, and protecting these seals. We couldn’t do our jobs without you… well at least not effectively. We also understand how sometimes it can be frustrating to not have all the information you would like, but before you lobby criticisms at us, I would ask you to take a moment to think about what it is our program is doing. HMSRTO focus is on the seals of Oahu and you have over 100 volunteers to call on for support. Our programs have to work on Oahu seals and the 1100 other seals between the Island of Hawaii and Kure Atoll in the NWHI. Today, we are trying to prioritize between seals with hooks on Oahu and Kauai (this just in, false alarm). We are trying to help our staff at Kure who are undermanned and under resourced dealing with a couple of aggressive males that are attacking and injuring pups. We are trying to protect pups from shark predation at French Frigate Shoals. We are just returning from two weeks of fieldwork to instrument and track seals on Molokai and Kauai so that we can better understand how monk seals make a living in the MHI in an effort to better manage the recovery of the population. We are also working hard on all of the bureaucratic aspects of our activities (permitting, budgets, logistics, etc) that are a necessary and very time-consuming part of the job. All of this with a greatly diminished staff compared to our normal staffing levels. I don’t say this because I want sympathy or a pat on the back for our hard work or imply that our mission is of greater importance to the one you dedicate yourselves to. I say it because our staff is busting their posterior ends every day (in ways that may not be apparent to you) and it can be upsetting when there an appearance of someone questioning their work ethic or dedication to the species. So, while I understand your frustration I ask that you temper your commentaries about our program a bit as we are hard at work fighting a larger battle that doesn’t always allow us to respond to Oahu situations as quickly as we all would like.

Thanks again everyone for all you do. If you have any questions please post them here and I will check back a few times over the next couple of days. Otherwise you can email me at charles.littnan(at)noaa.gov.

CL

Charles Littnan
Lead Scientist, Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program
NOAA Fisheries