MonkSealMania.blogspot.com: 02/28/2021 Sunday Monk Seal Dailies

Sunday, February 28, 2021

02/28/2021 Sunday Monk Seal Dailies

Todays dailies are brought to you by Team T&D, Team R&B, Melody and Marilyn. Marilyn's Rabbit Island update is part two of the dailies.

Team T&D sent news from their Saturday sightings. They saw 10 seals, a long hot hike on soft sand and climbing over rocky areas was WELL WORTH IT! One of the sightings was RK74 and they just saw the day before at La'au. A very cool experience was seeing both R1KT and RG22 and having seen them before on Oahu.

Team R&B began their morning with Kaale RH32 foraging in the

outfall for a good chunk of time. At one point he had a stick fish and was ripping and tossing it about. Very cool to watch! After three hours of foraging and watching over him, Kaale left the site and headed towards tracks. They followed him and of course he arrived right in front of the fishermen (again). They called the hotline and were told there was a team on site. Thats when they spotted the volunteers. They eventually put up signs and ropes.

Team R&B headed to KoOlina and got to watch over R1KM on shore at Lagoon 2. There was a zone set up for her and Team R&B just missed the volunteer. There were some tourist standing by, when one of the guys walk up to the front of the seal and splash water to make the seal move and the other folks took photos.

Team R&B couldn't help themselves and yelled out Sir, Please don't do that! The guy stopped and walked over to ask questions. They answered his questions and made sure he understood the Hawaiian monk seals are protected by both State and Federal Laws. Once Team R&B finished talking with him they could focus on R1KM, she is looking nice and plump. Her natural bleach was showing on the left side making it easy to ID. She has three cookie scars on her chest area, scar on her right for flipper, and her bright red tags.

At another west side location they found five seals on the rocks. It was extremely windy making standing still a challenge. RW02 PvKauai was in the shallows playing hippo. R3CX Nalu was with Kala RH76 to the right of the rocks. R3CU was at mid rocks resting and Kekoa RK72 wasn't too far away.

Team R&B went and did a recheck at tracks. They found a second seal RN14 Kalani with his bosom

buddy Ka'ale RH32 on shore. The fishermen were all still there and more people out and about in the water with their boogie boards. The volunteers were gone, and ropes were down. There were a couple of signs there and the tide was rising fast, even the seals were moving up higher.

Melody got a text that a seal hauled out at Iroquois and she thought of Rocky. Melody made the ride since she hadn't seen her in a while. When she arrived there was a family way too close. Melody was able to ID Rocky RH58 by her natural bleach on left fore flipper. Melody did her best to educate the family and since the beach was really crowded she called it into the hotline. Gratefully a volunteer responded even though it was late in the afternoon. Good to hear our old gal Rocky is back in the neighborhood.

R1KT