Hoailona doesn’t have many relatives, but he does have plenty of friends. He is one of a just 1,100 monk seals in the world today, and with that population declining by 4 percent every year, the species, now deemed critically endangered, could soon become extinct.
Born on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Hoailona was abandoned by his mother as an infant and raised by scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service. He was eventually released into the wild, but that did not appeal to him, and he relocated to a wharf on Molokai, where he lived off handouts from visitors. Concerned for his welfare, UCSC biologist Terrie Williams brought him to California, where he now frolics around a special pool, kept at a Hawaiian-like 78 degrees. It’s the ideal environment for Williams and other scientists to study the little known animal’s habitat requirements. Their findings will be used in conservation efforts to save monk seals in Hawaii.
The trip to California is only temporary though. Once the scientists at UCSC have completed their study, they plan to return Hoailona to Hawaii, where he will live in a local aquarium. By then, the scientists hope to have enough information to save the endangered Hawaiian monk seal from the fate that befell the Caribbean monk seal. The last recorded sighting of that species occurred in Texas in 1932, and the last reliable reports of a colony date from 1952. In 2008 it was officially declared extinct—the only seal to have disappeared because of human interference. In other words, they were hunted to extinction. Williams and her colleagues are trying to spare the Hawaiian monk seal a similar fate. Read more at Santa Cruz Sentinel.
