05/18/2020 Monday Stay-At-Home (56) Monk Seal Dailies

Aloha Good People

I would like to express my opinion on a topic that tends to generate some strong feelings. I'll call it the name game.  
I was told that a group of charter school children recently worked with a practitioner and very thoughtfully came up with names for all four pups on Oahu.   In all honesty I do love the fact that children and community get involved in creating nicknames for the seals.  It provides them with a connection and hopefully they will continue their connection and help protect them.  
I and many others learned the valuable lesson of working with the school kids and how they were able to get the adults to do things that other adults or officials could not.  

My initial thought on this was, why was one school allowed to name all the seals? Wouldn't it have been beneficial to get other schools in the areas the seals were born to get involved?  To the best of my recollection there are different practitioners in different parts of the island that could be consulted.
Did anyone reach out to the community of people who may have seen the pups when they were or shortly after they were born, or maybe their observations as to character of the pup?   Who makes these decisions? and did I miss the memo?

Having said that..... there is no official NAME of seals, there are nicknames and everyone has the right to call a seal whatever nickname they want. I know it helps when a seal is easily recognized such as Rocky, Pohaku, Honey Girl, Benny... and the long list before them.  But back then when nicknames were given there was a handful of people out and about and it became very easy to follow who was who.

Through the years I have been on both sides of the name game and mind you I personally have never named a seal. In the end the only official reference that carries any weight, meaning or importance is the seals Tag Number or in the case of a pup the code for the island it was born and the number relating to where that pup fell in the line up.  

I am not going to tell anyone what they can or can't call a seal, and I will and often reference the seal as it is told to me.  I hope people understand this in the intention in which it is meant. We are all in this together and bottom line the ONLY thing that matters are the seals.

Now back to our regular scheduled posting:
Melody was able to spend some quality time with Kaiwi RK96 and PO2 "Nohea". 
Holokai RG40 was in the area and the few folks watching over this group suspect Holokai is coming of age and just waiting for his opportunity to approach Kaiwi.  Poor Momma, 6 weeks of feeding the kid and now she has a male suitor.  
Speaking of 6 weeks, there is a very good chance the pup will wean very soon, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, only Kaiwi knows.

 Holokai RG40

 Kaiwi and PO2

 what a porker

 Kaiwi looks tired