The help-wanted ad might read something like this: “Hearty biologists willing to spend six to seven months in unpopulated Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, to conduct research on the endangered Hawaiian monk seal. Good pay, long hours, potentially hazardous work in isolated
The help-wanted ad might read something like this: “Hearty biologists willing to spend six to seven months in unpopulated Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, to conduct research on the endangered Hawaiian monk seal. Good pay, long hours, potentially hazardous work in isolated area.”
Despite a lack of creature comforts, Dr. Michael Laurs, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Honolulu laboratory, finds year after year that people return to volunteer for the isolated duty.
One of the primary focal points of the NMFS monk seal research program is assessment of population status in the main breeding areas in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
“There are six main breeding sites, and each year we establish field camps at each of those sites and put people there to make a lot of observations about monk seals,” Laurs said.
The researchers spend around half a year there. They record numbers of seals, pups and births, gather information on the health status of the seals, conduct tagging operations, make general biological observations, collect blood and tissue samples, and pick up marine debris from beaches.
“That’s a fairly costly venture when you have six areas, you have two or three people in each area, and they’re there anywhere from five to seven months. It’s not an easy job, in my opinion,” Laurs said.
Still, he said, “People love it. We have a lot that come back wanting to do this, and they do excellent jobs.”
He admitted the $2 million annual allocation for monk seal research program isn’t really enough, but is happy to have it. For several consecutive years, U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye (D-Hawai’i) has secured funding beyond normal NMFS budget requests, in what Laurs called “congressional add-on funding.”
In the NMFS budget bill recently signed into law by President Bush, Inouye secured an additional $825,000 for Hawaiian monk seal research for fiscal year 2002, which began Oct. 1, 2001.
The NMFS is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Inouye “has been very supportive and cooperative,” helping boost the annual research budget from around $300,000 only a few years ago to $2 million today.
Since seals spend 70 percent of their lives in the ocean, recent research has been focusing on what the seals do when they’re in the water. Sensors attached to the backs of some of the seals relay information to satellites about how far the seals travel from land, how deep they dive for food, and ocean temperatures at those various depths, Laurs said.
“We’re looking a great deal at food habits, movement patterns, how deep, how far these animals move when they’re foraging for food,” he said.
Collection of blood and tissue samples allows veterinarians to assess the seals’ health and check for disease.
Another phase of the research seeks to learn more about numbers of animals in the main Hawaiian islands, he said.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
