MonkSealMania.blogspot.com: 12/31/2018 Monk Seal Dailies:

Monday, December 31, 2018

12/31/2018 Monk Seal Dailies:

Todays dailies are brought to you by Team Billand and yours truly. In yesterdays' news I received an email from photographer Tracie who spotted RK88 at Ka'ena Point yesterday. She had emailed NOAA but she got the government shutdown response.

Team Billand first find of the day was the beautiful Ms. Pohaku R028. She was sleeping on shore on one of the beaches where a couple of surf schools were holding class. Seems it was a big day for kayaking and fishing. Team Billand called the hotline to inform.

Around 11:30 this morning they found RN14 Kalani on his own today. He was on the rocks and his tags were not visible but Team Billand was able to ID him. Volunteer was on site and Team Billand updated them.

Then not too long after leaving RN14 Team Billand made another stop and found his buddies, all four of them. Ka'ale RH32 and RW22 Kolohe were snoozing on the lower rocks. Then to the right RW02 PvKauai and RIP RR70. PvKauai was in a water hole, head in the water, butt in the air, but finally after 40 minutes he turned and galumphed out of the hole.

RIP was to his left and also galumphed to his water hole.

Team Billand last find of the day was early afternoon. When they got to the site and see a sign and volunteer Melina there. Seal was on shore high up, it was Benny RE74, alert and aware of the folks in the water. Hopefully the new year celebrations will not bother any of the seals.

Today I made my way over to Makai Pier to check out Rabbit Island. Weather conditions had finally cleared with some cloud cover, and somewhat windy. When I first arrived about 11:30ish, there was only one critter about 30 feet left of the 3BS. It was a good size animal with a newer coat, facing the shoreline. I had nothing to go on, UNTIL after 30 minutes or so he did a nice big stretch, fanned his tail, I see tags, and a natural bleach on one of the hind flippers, BUT then the fore flippers came up and stretch and there it was that beautiful white tipped fore flipper. Kea RN46, if you hadn't stretched I would have nothing. Unfortunately I was so intent on watching I was unable to get any photos of his showing off his birth marks.

I did several pans of the island and only had RN46 and feeling pretty good I got an ID, one for one. As I panned back to check on Kea, there was another seal who just hauled up. Initially all I could see is a tail with tags, and then finally it decided to galumph up just to the right of Kea and lay on its belly sideways. All I can say it had a newer coat, white around the muzzle and looked to be a subadult, not really big but for sure not a weaner.

About an hour into my visit I was just about ready to call it a day, when I did another pan and well then there were three more on the far left side of the island SRI. The best I can say I had small (weaner size) medium (juvenile/subadult) and large (adult). It it hard to say if they had older coats as they were wet and all three were on their bellies, when they finally turned to the side they only showed me their back side. EXCEPT for large U/U, did flip and showed belly. I can't say since the critter had it's tail curled up, but if I were to guess I would say female with sizable girth. And that is all she wrote.

Pohaku