04/06/2021 Happy 20th Monk Seal Ohana Day!

 

Here is the story of how it all began, and I am so grateful it did.  The opportunity to be a part of something meaningful and to have a true ohana of monk seal friends just makes it all the better.

THANK YOU MARIILYN FOR SHARING, AND THANK YOU DB !

On Good Friday 2001 which fell on April 6, 2001, DB was at Sandy Beach to see if there was any reason to do some video of bodyboarders which was his passion at the time.  While he was watching the beach, suddenly he saw a Hawaiian Monk Seal (HMS) haul out at Sandy Beach.  In all of his years spent on Hawaiian beaches, he had never seen a HMS before. He called me at work and asked me what he should do.  I searched around and found a Hawaiian Monk Seal phone line. He called it and a short time later, a woman named Margaret Dupree, a NOAA employee called him back. She later joined DB at Sandy Beach. Margaret was an attorney and not a biologist. That's how it all started. The seal was an adult female that DB named LuSeal. I joined him at SB later that day and was amazed to see a HMS, my first although I had been in Hawaii since 1968. Over the next few weeks LuSeal hauled out at Sandy Beach frequently. 

We found out then that there was no volunteer group and really no one to call.  Several weeks into this venture, NOAA sent an officer from OLE (Office of Law Enforcement) on a Sunday to tell us volunteers what we could and could not do. There was a group of about 15 of us listening to him talk, when we saw LuSeal cruising the shore and getting ready to haul out. We had already started setting up a "perimeter" whenever she hauled out. We weren't quite sure what to do when she hauled out when an official was there, but he told us to do what we normally did. Then he left to go get his wife, because this was the first time he had seen a Hawaiian Monk Seal on an Oahu beach. Little did we know at that time that Hawaiian Monk Seals would become DB's passion and that he would manage to accrue a whole posse of folks to help track the HMS on Oahu. I'm forever thankful for this fortuitous circumstance because it introduced me to an amazing critter and has led to a wide circle of friends whom I greatly value.

Marilyn