from Mediterranean seals. The Caribbean monk seal
has not been seen alive since 1952, and there are only
about 500 Mediterranean monk seals left. Hawaiian
seals number about 1,100 and are declining at about 3
percent per year.
Problems for monk seals in the NWHI began when
commercial sealers started harvesting seals for oil and
skins in the early 19
th
century. By 1824 the Hawaiian
seal was believed to be extinct; however, when King
Kamehameha IV visited the NWHI in 1857, he found
about a dozen of the seals — several of which he shot. In
1859 a sailing vessel returned from an even more distant
island with 1,500 skins. For the rest of the 19
th
century
and into the 20
th
, whalers and shipwrecked sailors
along with bird, egg and guano harvesters harassed and
consumed many of the few remaining seals.
Later in the 20
th
century, U.S. military and Coast
Guard activity displaced seals from their prime
habitats. After a reduction of these activities in the
1970s, some subpopulations in the NWHI began to
recover, but the trend again reversed in the 1980s
due to environmental changes, most likely related to
commercial fishing, oceanographic oscillations, climate
change or some combination of the three. By the
1990s every region in the NWHI saw monk seals dying
more rapidly than they were being born. Seal numbers
have continued to decline since fishing was phased out
with the establishment of the Papahānaumokuākea
Marine National Monument in 2006.
Throughout the recorded history of the region until a
few decades ago, nearly the entire population of Hawaiian
monk seals was relegated to the remote NWHI. In the
1970s some seals established themselves on Niihau, at
the north end of the MHI, and began to reproduce. As
Niihau’s population multiplied, seals began to migrate
down the island chain, populating the rest of the MHI.
This expansion of the MHI population was beneficial to
the seals, as some of the specific problems affecting the
NWHI do not extend to the MHI.
Currently, only one in five Hawaiian monk seal
pups born in the NWHI survives to maturity. Some
are snatched by sharks; others starve due to increased
competition with large predatory fish for shrinking food
supplies; still others drown after becoming entangled
in fishing nets and other debris floating in the North
Pacific “garbage patch” that drifts onto beaches and
reefs. “What we’re trying to do right now is to stop the
bleeding,” NOAA branch chief Jeff Walters said. “We’re
not expecting the population to increase. We’re just
trying to make the decline less steep.”
Females in the MHI, on the other hand, give birth
younger, have more pups, nurse their pups longer and
wean fatter, healthier babies. MHI pups grow faster,
and four out of five survive to maturity. Seals need
to come ashore to rest and reproduce, so the MHI’s
1,400 miles of shoreline offers more opportunities
than the 50 miles in the NWHI. Moreover, as rising
sea levels and erosion accelerate the loss of land, some
of the NWHI are subsiding into the sea. There isn’t
much land in the NWHI that sits more than a few feet
above sea level, and some islets used by the seals have
recently disappeared, leaving the MHI as the main
hope for the survival of the species. Studies project
that if conditions remain the same, from 2010 to 2030
the population in the NWHI will drop from 900 seals
to 200, but in the MHI the population may increase
from 200 to 400. Unfortunately, not all MHI residents
are thrilled with the increasing presence of seals.
Kenika Matsuda, for example, doesn’t see any
benefits from it. “The only thing I see is cons. They’re
eating the fish. They chase the fish away. I heard of
them chasing people, too,” he explains. “I think it’s
changing the ecosystem.”
“These animals interfere with our traditional way
of life,” Timothy Oga wrote in a letter to The Garden
Island, a Kauai newspaper. “When we lay our nets,
soon there will be a hole in it. The monk seal makes it
in order to steal our catch.… According to Hawaiian
traditions, if an animal causes damage to your
property, you kill him and eat him. That should be the
fate of the Hawaiian monk seal.”
These types of statements do not represent idle
threats. From 2009 to 2012 at least eight seals were
found dead on Kauai and Molokai with “suspicious”
injuries. Only one of the deaths led to an arrest. For
shooting and killing a pregnant female, the courts
sentenced Charles Vidinha to three months in jail
and a $25 fine. Four of the seals had apparently
been bludgeoned to death during the three months
following the public hearings on NOAA’s seal-
management plan, which proposed to temporarily
move starving juveniles from the NWHI to the MHI,
where they would be more likely to survive. That
proposal was tabled due to public opposition and
logistical concerns. Instead, starting in 2014 NOAA
is bringing some of the at-risk youngsters to a captive
facility in the MHI to fatten them up for six to 12
weeks before taking them back to the NWHI.
Suspicion that seals are reappearing in the MHI
due to government intervention derives in part from a
110
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FALL 2014
WAT E R P L A N E T
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