12-22-21 Wednesday (part 2) Marilyn's Rabbit Island Update

 Here's Rabbit Island update in Marilyn's own words.

Hi All,

I viewed Rabbit Island from Makai Pier from about 10:40 am to 1:15 pm. It was mostly overcast and windy with fairly high waves.

There were 9 HMS seen on RI today.  I took 790 photos before my camera battery gave out.

I'm going to break up the report into groups of seals and submit the photos for each group with its report.

About 50 feet Makapuu side of the 1BS were three HMS in the lower dunes.

Seal 1: Subadult Female: subadult to adult size, two tags, yellowish female belly.

Seal 2: Subadult Male: subadult to adult size, two tags, yellowish male belly.

Seal 3: Adult Male: adult size, dark male belly, not sure about tags.

Here's the info on Seal 4 who was located up in a dune between 1BS and 2BS. 

Juvenile Female: juvenile size, light female belly and NO tags.

NOAA, she appears to have a wound on her chest by her RFF. It almost looks like a 2-3 inch flap of fur and skin is loose. She also may have some scars on both sides of her posterior area. When I first saw those I thought of female R608, but I think this seal is too small to be her. She later moved down to the shore line.

Near the 3BS were 3 HMS, initially all up in the dunes, but all moved down to the beach later.

Seal 5: Juvenile to subadult size, very light (I think male) belly, no tags that I could determine.

Seal 6: Adult male, old coat, brown male belly; no tags were seen. When the seal first moved down from the dunes, I thought it had some sort of scar on its nose, but I did not see it in later photos.

Seal 7: Subadult male, two tags, yellowish male belly and scar on the right side about 1/3 forward of the rear flippers. I'm reasonably sure this is RK24 Wawamalu/Bruno. He moved down to Seal 5 and spent some time on the shoreline before moving up into the dunes again.

About 10:50 am, I found a seal hauling out between 3BS and SRI. I soon realized

there was already a seal on the beach that I had not seen earlier, though I'm guessing it had been there.

Seal 8: as soon as she started hauling out, I saw a nb on the lower left side which told me this was RK37 Huia: subadult size, two tags, lighter female belly.

Seal 9: juvenile size, very light male belly, No tags. When RK37 hauled out she went towards the juvenile male (JM), but then headed up into the dunes. The JM followed her up into the dunes and moved right next to her. But that did not last long and he moved back down onto the beach.

Seals 1 - 3

Seal 4

Seals 5 - 7 (seal 7 RK24)

Seals 8 - 9

Seal 8 - RK37

Seal 9