March 31, 2019 (part 2) News from Kauai from our Pal Val

Aloha Blog Lady,

First and foremost I wanna give a big shout out to the Blog Contributors.  As you know we had a Unknown  (at least to us) large male seal here on Kauai this morning. I sent out  a message out asking for helping with IDing this seal. Within minutes, I not only knew the ID, I was basically given this seals entire life history---right down to his dehooking and name!!  The amount of information that your blog contributors know is amazing and frankly damn impressive!  It's so fun to be able to share this sort of information with one another. We grow as  seal advocates when we share.

Anyhow, our mystery seal was RW22 Male-2008, son of RK28. I have attached the photo of him that was taken this morning by J.H.  BTW, he was looking for chicks--high speed cruiser mode!!! 

I also found 3 seals in a survey I took late this afternoon. All seals were documented and Kauai Seal Hotline was informed of findings. I found our newly weaned PK1,he weaned on Saturday and will be 8 weeks old tomorrow!!! 

He continues to explore the shallow waters in search of sea cucumbers and coral.   His uncle, RK58 continues to molt and looks to be 85-90% complete.  The final seal is R313, an adult female. Don't know much about her, most likely a Ni`ihau seal. She's one of my favorites.

So there ya  have it....a very successful Seal Sunday!!!

Thank you Pal Val !!  All I can say is the people I have met the last 11+ years of doing this gig remains to be some of the most wonderful and amazing friendships ever.  We have been successful in sharing what we find and passing on what we know; all for this amazing species we all look out for.

One over sized weaner PK1 (8 weeks old on 4/1)

 R313 female looking pretty plump

 RK58 molting (PK1's uncle)

 Oahu's RW22 Kolohe in full cruise mode on Kauai - looking for the girls 

March 30, 2019 Monk Seal Dailies

Today's dailies are brought to you by Marilyn and Team Billand.  Good to have Team Billand reporting in after a couple of days of R&R.  ;-) 

As a side note I need to make a correction/addition to yesterday's dailies.  I had a brain fart being a little distracted, but I forgot to mention Team T&D (Tammy and Dave) also came across K80 yesterday as well. K80 is last years daughter born to Honey Girl. How could I forget to mention this little cutie!

Okay back to today's sightings. Marilyn was at the pier this afternoon viewing Rabbit Island for about 2 hours. She spotted two seals near each other and a short distance to the right of the 1BS near the waterline.
Marilyn wasn't able to get an ID on either of them but could see they were both males.
UM#1 - adult size, male belly, 2 tags and dark mottled ventral.
UM#2 - sub-adult size, lighter male belly and 2 tags.
Marilyn thought there might have been an applied bleach on the left shoulder of the UM#2 but could not be sure. If there was an applied bleach it would be R1KT.

Team Billand was out at Lagoon 4 this morning and spotted a seal just on shore.  The security folks put up signs around the seal to keep folks back. Team Billand was able to ID RH92 who is looking nice and plump.  Team Billand could see her right side facial scars, tags and flipper scars. Seal was called into the hotline, Team Billand waited for an hour for someone to show up, but no one did. They were unable to stay and were off to other locations.

Team Billand didn't get to the westside beaches until after 11am. They found RW02 PvKauai resting alone, tag showing.  He was their only find at that time.
When they returned after 2 pm they found Kawena RH36 and a U/U. As hard as they tried they were unable to ID the UU. Between a bad angle, glare and uncooperating critter they are reporting Kawena's companion as an unknown/unidentified. Kawena on the other hand was very kind enough to show her tags and RW02 remained alone on lower rocks shallow area.

A bit further west Team Billand spotted K88 on the rocks alone, his tags showing and he is looking quite green. 
There were two seals to the right, in between the rocks.  It took a while to get IDs because they were so wll hidden. Finally RL42 showed her tags (not her face).
R3CU was a "poopie" mess, but thank goodness his tags were still visible. RL42 moved and then he would move, but neither one went very far.

RK80 from yesterday's Team T&D 

Rabbit Island unidentified Boyz

 RH92

RW02 PvKauai

 UU and Kawena

 UU 

 Kawena RH36

R3CU

 RL42 and R3CU

March 29, 2019 Monk Seal Dailies

Today's dailies are brought to you by Team T&D (Tammy and Dave).

I would like to take this opportunity to thank them not only for being faithful posse pals, but for ALL the debri they have hauled off the beaches.  This husband and wife team work really well together as well as individually and I thank them for all they do.  (not to mention delicious cookies and lilikoi cheese cakes).

Team T&D had a really big find today .... and by really big I mean a very plump Sadie RB12.   Based on her size Sadie will be giving birth this year, probably sometime early summer.  It will be interesting to see exactly how big she gets.  

Sadie has always given birth on Rabbit Island where she was born about 12 years ago. Interestly Sadie would give birth, wean her pup and maybe be around to molt, but for years she would disappear for months on end. It was always a mystery as to where she went, sometimes we worried, but every year like clockwork she returned to give birth.  This year she has changed it up in that she has been hanging around on Oahu's windward, northern shores.  It has been a real treat to see her other than through a scope, and I KNOW this would be one of those moments when DB would be beside himself.    OH DB if you watching over the seals,  PLEASE PLEASE guide Sadie back to Rabbit Island when it's time. DO NOT let her pull a Rocky on us, just saying.

 

March 28, 2019 Monk Seal Dailies

Todays dailies are brought to you by Lesley and Melody. Lesley's Ka'ena update is part 2 of the dailies.  

Melody headed out this morning to the westside and at her first stop there weren't any seals, BUT she decided to wait for about 20 minutes and low and behold a critter came swimming in. A head popped looking around to see if there were any other critters, did a little vocalizing and just when Melody thought he might haul out, the critter took off. 
So Melody left and took off to the next stop she spotted a critter and it took her a bit to get an ID. But after studying the photos and a little help from one of the volunteers she ID'd RIP RR70. 

Next there were 2 seals already hauled out, one high up on the rocks and another she happen to spot just as it was coming in and making its way through the lower tide pools, The small female on the high rocks was ID'd as sweet little Kawena RH36. The other critter who his day in the tide pool was Kekoa Alii RK72. They pretty much ignored each other and snoozed away the day in the hot sun.

Last stop for Melody, she found one seal and was told this was one of PvKauai RW02 favorite spots. She had a hard time getting an ID since he wasn't forthcoming with showing his tags. But after taking a closer look at some scar and finally a quick peek at his tag she was able to ID RW02. 
There was some tree trimming going on at the park and RW02 seemed to be checking out the trucks and the workers.  Once the workers were made aware of the seal they were very respectful of his space.