MonkSealMania.blogspot.com: February 3, 2019 Monk Seal Dailies:

Sunday, February 3, 2019

February 3, 2019 Monk Seal Dailies:

Todays dailies are brought to you by Team Billand, Marilyn, posse pal Justin, and Melody.

Marilyn viewed Rabbit Island today for about 2 hours today and viewing conditions were a little better than last weekend.
There were two seals on island up in the morning glory about 60 feet Makapuu side of the 1BS. Marilyn was unable to get a positive ID on either seal.

Unknown Male (UM1) was larger with a less brown coat and one visible tag. He moved down to the beach after an hour or so and approached UM2. UM1 appears to have a scar/skin fold in mid ventral area.
Unknown Male (UM2) was smaller than UM1 and had a browner coat, male belly and is probably a sub-adult. There appeared to be a darker patch on the anterior ventral area. This critter moved onto the sand about 15 minutes before UM1. Marilyn saw two tags and she ruled out R1KT because she did not see the ventral C scar or applied bleach.

An email from posse pal Justin brought a couple of photos of Ka'ena with his new bling O54 tag and satellite transmitter. Justin and company went out to Ka'ena Point and found him in the main pool. There were volunteers on site and Justin was told the sat tag was applied when NOAA checked/removed blue fishing line from his mouth. Thank you Justin for sharing!

Team Billand headed over to White Plains this morning and found Buster V08 already in a zone set up by the lifeguards. One lifeguard made some new arrow boards to direct people around the zone. (How great are these folks) Buster was resting not moving very much and was very sandy.

Team Billand called into the hotline and left after an hour.

Next stop brought them to Pohaku RO28 resting all alone. There were fishermen to the right of her all were very respectful.

Team Billand had checked KoOlina earlier and there were no seals, but tried again and there was Kolohe RW22. He was on the rocks trying to find a comfy position. There were lots of visitors and thankfully there was a volunteer on site. Kolohe has grown into a very handsome male with a nice coat and a beautiful natural bleach by his right fore flipper.

Once they left Kolohe they headed over to the westside haul out and there once again the boys were hanging out. When they arrived they found Kekoa RK72 in shallow water and across from him was RW02 in the the playboy pond. RW02 PvKauai stay in the play boy pond all day snoozing. (bet he wishes he had Benny's magazine).
While observing the other boys they spotted a seal foraging offshore. Finally the foraging seal came in R3CU. Volunteer Melina was on site with Team Billand when R3CU arrived. R3CU met up with Kekoa and had a few words, then both settled in and went to sleep. RW02 remained in the pond.

While the three boys were hauled out, Team Billand spotted three unknowns offshore, fighting with each other. One looks young with a green snout, one is large and the third well who knows.
They were going back and forth, and none of the three boys were involved with the offshore shenanigans. Unfortunately they were not able to get any kind of an ID and the critters were moving further out. Team Billand called it a day.

Melody was joined by Dana today and after the Superbowl festivities they decided to head down to the beach. Well it was a score for them because there in the corner to Cove 8 was Rocky RH58. She was sunning her belly in the glow of the sunset. Melody and Dana checked the area and called security who brought some signs. They set up the SRA and called the hotline. After a bit there were more folks coming out to enjoy the sunset and happy to see Rocky. Dana and Melody stayed and did some outreach while Rocky rested comfortably. I am sure Dana was pretty happy to be out on the beach doing outreach again! Just like the old days!

UM1 and UM2