MonkSealMania.blogspot.com: 04/18/2022 Monday's Dailies

Monday, April 18, 2022

04/18/2022 Monday's Dailies

Todays dailies are brought to you by Marilyn, posse pal Amy and Team R&B💕. Marilyn provided a Rabbit Island from yesterday and today. Her observations from yesterday are part two of todays dailies.

Posse pal Amy was out at a popular tourist beach at 9 this morning. She found three signs up, no ropes and a seal. There were people standing at the naupaka greenery. She introduced herself as a Monk Seal Educator and asked the people to step behind the signs for safe viewing, and they were all quick to complain. Because the seal was at the waters edge resting Amy decided to grab two additional signs and post them in the sand closer to the cove side. Amy provided Monk Seal 101 and many people asked if you see turtles at this location.

Amy was able to see applied bleach N29 on the left side, IDing this as Lefty RG28. At 9:38 a second seal entered the cove and there was interaction with RG28 on the beach. The second seal left the cove and RG28 followed it into the water. The seals appeared to head North out of the cove. (Amy sent a video of the two seals interacting, unfortunately it was too large of a file to upload to the blog )

Marilyn viewed Rabbit Island today from 12:15 to 1:30 and there were three seals on island today.

Initially there were two seals near the Lanikai side of LPB:

S/M: subadult size, light brownish male belly and two red tags (possibly)

S/F: subadult size, light female belly and unsure about tags.

About 12:39 Marilyn became aware of a seal hauling out to LPB in apparent "cruiser male" behavior. As he moved up the beach, he would extend way up to look for other seals. He soon galumphed over to the two other seals and about five minute later, all of the seals entered the water and Marilyn did not see them again.

The third seal was A/M adult to subadult size, two red tags, male based on its behavior, although she never got a good look of his ventral side.

Team R&B had a busy day. They started watching the bay for a long time and would see two seals far off. Suddenly one came in then two more. The first seal they ID'd was Nalu R3CX and he appeared to be fine. He galumphed in and stayed the day to the right. They did not see any blood today. They are unsure what he has on his belly near his penis, but looks like a lump.

Then they could see RL20 Kalua swimming around. He landed to the left of the rocks and was there all day.

Then much to their delight while observing Nalu, a third seal showed up suddenly. It was RM31 Kai, he saw Nalu and galumphed over to him, and smelled him. Well Nalu put the kid in his place. The kid got the message and galumphed above Nalu for the day. All was good!

At another west side location they found Kala RH76 snoozing . She was at the waterfront rocks alone.

They spotted another seal by luck. He was in the shallows alone snoozing. They were able to ID R407 Kawika, he was easy to see or ID.

Team R&B got a text from a friend of a seal at one of the busy beaches. When they got to the site "posse pal protector" had put up a zone for RH32 Kaale. They had gotten word from Cianna (NOAA) to call if he was seen because he might have a hook. They looked him over and over and didn't see anything, so they texted Cianna that Kaale was fine.

Next stop (different than posse pal Amy) they found Lefty RG28 snug against the rocks snoozing. Then he suddenly dove off the rocks and swam over to another seal hidden in the rocks. The other seal was L7, the cute Molokai kid. Lefty galumphed from the shallows over the rocks to get to L7. He went in the pond with L7 who wasn't happy about his move. So the L7 moved to the left and Lefty moved over to him again.

Returning to check on R407 at the west side location, he was now with RP84 Pe'ekai. They were rolling about in the shallows. Pe'ekai knows this area well and escaped into a small cave. Poor Kawika R407 lost sight of him and left.

Pe'ekai came right back up and landed on his sand path for a nap. He's such a little guy but he knows how to take care of himself. Smart little buggah.

Last stop they spotted a seal partly submerged in the shallows. It took them awhile to get an ID of this seal. Finally they saw the tag, it was RL42 Leia. She wasn't cooperative and did not move, just laid low.

Rabbit Island