LIHUE — The number of Hawaiian monk seal pups born on Kauai doubled in 2018, with seven new faces springing up around the island and adding to the estimated 50 adult seals that call Kauai home.
Officials with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are calling it a good year for Kauai seals. In comparison, four pups were born on Kauai in 2016 and four in 2017.
“Five of the pups thrived and spent the typical five to six weeks with their mothers and successfully weaned as large healthy independent pups,” said NOAA’s Jamie Thompton. “One of the pups was stillborn to a first time mother, something that is not unusual, and we expect she will successfully pup again in the future.”
All eyes were on the monk seal mother known as “Rocky” at the beginning of the season because she stole the spotlight in 2017 by delivering her 10th pup on Oahu’s crowded Waikiki Beach.
She gave birth to her 11th pup July 16 on a remote Kauai beach, which officials say is a much better situation for raising and weaning a pup, and the public breathed a sigh of relief.
That is, until Rocky swapped pups with another mother-pup pair on the same beach. Eventually that led to Rocky abandoning her pup.
“That pup, RK58, is still being reared at the monk seal hospital Ke Kai Ola, and we expect to release him back on Kauai in the next few months,” Thompton said.
The pup spent the summer with a Molokai pup involved in a similar switch-up scenario and the two were reared together at the hospital.
Statewide, scientists say the 2018 pup season was record-breaking and now it’s estimated there are more than 1,400 monk seals throughout Hawaii, including the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
That’s encouraging for officials and scientists, who say rehabilitating the population to higher numbers could take decades.
NOAA says threats to the endangered seals are entanglements with nets, hooks and marine debris, limited prey in some areas and competition with apex predators, infectious disease like Toxoplasma gondii, and disappearing habitat due to climate change.
Many of the remote low-lying islands of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are less than 6 feet above sea level, NOAA officials say.
On Oct. 23, officials reported one of the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, East Island, is facing total disappearance after a Category 4 hurricane crossed over. Satellite images show the island underwater.
That’s an important nesting area for green sea turtles, another endangered animal that frequents Kauai.
Efforts continue in conservation of both species, and now that the season of monk seal pupping is over officials are continuing with other monitoring and education efforts.
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Jessica Else, environment reporter, can be reached at 245-0452 or at jelse@thegardenisland.com.
