Tuesday, September 18, 2018

9/18/2018 Monk Seal Dailies: RH32, RL12, RN14, RK72, RO28, RV08, RH58

Today's dailies are brought to you by Team Billand and Melody.  I do believe Lesley's big day involved picking up Kimo from the airport after his sailing trip to San Francisco. Welcome Home Kimo!

Team Billand started their day early this morning at Ka'ale's Kitchen and beyond the jetty.  They arrived a little after 6 am and there was a volunteer already on site.  They spotted a seal at the outfall area and by the jetty. They ID'd our little problem child RH32 Ka'ale. One of the fishermen had tossed a stickfish back into the water and sure enough Ka'ale came in found it and ate it all up.

Team Billand spotted another seal foraging in the outfall, but it didn't stay. The 2nd critter went to the right of the Jetty and Kaale joined in. They were able to ID RL12 Aukai who spent a good amount of time foraging with Kaale. Then they had a bit of a spat and they lost sight of Kaale.
Aukai was visited by two divers, initially it seemed that the divers didn't see the seals.  Then Aukai started following their orange floater. One diver noticed the seal, dropped back and the other diver went to land.  Aukai moved further out when Team Billand had to leave.

A little before 10 am Team Billand found RN14 Kalani at a west side beach on the lower rocks. It looked like he just come up, being wet and green. They ID'd him by small cue ball on right side and visible tag. He is a grown to be a big dude.
While at this site they also found Kekoa Alii RK72, he was mid of the rocks, resting and getting wet. He moved up a bit and his N2 applied bleach was visible.

Later in the afternoon Team Billand went out to a different area on the west side and spent their time looking for seals, coming up empty. Finally they spot a sign there might be a critter so they headed down to the water and that is when they found Pohaku RO28 and Buster RV08 together. The tide was rising but they were having a nice relaxing time together. Buster is looking mighty tough and robust.
Pohaku is looking green and really ready to molt, there "might" be a start of an opening on belly area. Hard to verify since she was quite sandy.

Melody was treated again this morning to be in the company of Rocky RH58. Melody got to the beach about 5 am and stayed with her until about 9:30 am. Seems Rocky had some company today who stuck around wanting to see her head back into the ocean. Melody called and reported to the hotline.
Then this afternoon, Melody got word that Rocky returned, so she called the hotline to update and headed over to the site and put up signs to mark the zone. The Rocky fan club was out by her wanting to check her out. A number of people stayed until after sunset, so it wasn't quite as peaceful as it had been.  Thank you Melody for watching over Mama Rocky.

 Aukai RL12
 Aukai & Kaale
 Kaale & stickfish
 Kalani RN14
 Kekoa 
 Pohaku & Buster 
 Hi Buster !!!!  
Rocky 
 beautiful!
 Green & Sandy

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