“Okay, guys,” I instructed Beau and Christina. “Every five minutes, write down the breathing rate of KP2. Call us on the radio if there is a problem.” The seal’s companions dutifully took up their positions in the Adirondack chairs and settled in for the final stretch of the ride north.
Inexplicably, Cal Highway had chosen the Thanksgiving holiday rush to repair two of the three lanes of the Grapevine connection. Bright orange road construction signs and traffic cones forced the traffic to slow down on the treacherous stretch of road. We were squeezed with holiday travelers into one long brake light that snaked over the pass. Our truck crawled uphill in a low-gear hum. After nearly an hour, our headlights peaked over the top of the ridge with no complaint from the vehicle nor the passengers traveling in the back. Just as we started to tip downward, the highway lanes opened up, causing vehicles to begin careening down the mountainside.
Traci had just begun to pick up speed when there was a sudden bang in the back of the truck. Chairs crashed and bodies shifted quickly, causing the truck to sway.
“Ow, wow!”
I tried to grab the walkie-talkie while Traci steered.
“What’s going on back there?” she yelled.
“Earchhhh!” Beau replied. We could hear Christina groaning in the background.
“What? Repeat!” Traci cursed the radio.
Silence.
Caught on the downhill curves, our truck quickly accelerated. We were trapped in the fast lane as big rigs blocked the middle and slow lanes in a last-ditch attempt to make their holiday deliveries. There was no choice. We had to let gravity take over. Whatever emergency was happening in the back of the truck would have to wait until we pulled out of the Grapevine. I sweated the downhill miles, convinced that KP2 was in respiratory failure and that I had made a horrible mistake taking the little seal out of Hawaii.
Through the back wall of the truck there was another round of yelping, then moaning. Traci and I navigated into the Central Valley, trying not to let our imaginations run away with the speed of our descent. We had just reached the bottom of the hill when Beau’s voice finally crackled over the walkie-talkie, “Nuclear attack!”
Before I could respond, Traci burst out laughing.
“Gas explosion,” she explained.
“You’re not kidding!” Beau shouted. “We were bombed. Repeatedly!”
“Must have been the altitude change,” Traci yelled over the static of the walkie-talkie. “Suck it up! It will clear out in a few miles.”
“Consider yourselves lucky,” I added. “You’ve already learned something new about Hawaiian monk seals.” Like little old men on airplanes, changes in altitude and pressure made monk seals fart.
• • •
IT WAS O-THREE-HUNDRED, in military terms, by the time our little yellow truck finally rolled into Long Marine Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. With considerably less fanfare than his early morning send-off, the team carried KP2 and his cage under the cover of darkness into the holding pool area. At long last, KP2’s cage door was opened. Then we waited, and waited some more. KP2 continued to sleep with his head smashed in the far corner of the cage, oblivious to his freedom.
Like a child hauled over too many time zones, the little seal was in no mood to move. Twenty-one hours of travel had taken the spring out of him. Encouragement from the handful of student volunteers who had waited all night for his arrival finally sparked his curiosity. The seal inchwormed his way out of the cage; in sluglike movements he circumnavigated his new pool. Following a low snort, he dunked his head into the water, and then fell in with an awkward splash.
• • •
WITHOUT EVER TAKING a single swimming stroke, KP2 had traveled more miles across the Pacific Ocean in one day than his wild family would ever undertake in a lifetime. He deserved the lazy entrance, if less than graceful, into his outdoor pool.
As we looked on, one of the volunteers asked, “What’s his name?”
I hesitated. The seal was entering a new phase of his life, and it was time to begin using his grown-up name. During the blessing ceremony the week before, KP2 had been given an official Hawaiian name chosen by the elders of Molokai. He was christened Ho‘ailona. “It means a special seal with a special purpose,” Walter Ritte had explained at the time.
“Ho‘ailona,” I replied to the student. “His name is Ho‘ailona: a sign from the ocean.” And so with that early-morning introduction, a special Hawaiian monk seal with a special purpose arrived at college in Santa Cruz. Almost immediately he proceeded to turn my world upside down.
9.
Sealebrity
While many biologists study the smallest cells, molecules, flies, and mice, I chose instead to focus on the biology of the biggest animals on earth. Seals, dolphins, whales, lions, sea otters, elephants, and other large mammals that weigh between thirty and thirty thousand pounds are my research subjects. This range of body sizes is specific, for it comprises the group of animals most vulnerable to human perturbation. Long life spans that could exceed two hundred years in the case of some whales, low reproductive rates with many species giving birth to only one offspring per year, and enormous environmental resource needs make big mammals exceptionally susceptible to the effects of pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction.
Big mammal science is timely, exciting, and challenging. It is also the most difficult to conduct, particularly with endangered species, which are nearly impossible to study. KP2, the nearly blind problem child of NMFS, the surplus male of a dying species, was now the most important addition to my physiology program.
My lab is a zoological school, a place of wild aspirations. It is an institution where young students can live their dream—if only in college—of saving the world’s animals. Santa Cruz, a Northern California town still clinging to seventies-era idealism, is the perfect environment. Locals, including those running the university campus, are radical enough to believe that such ambitions are not only possible but necessary.
Together, the members of my lab strive to discover the unique vulnerabilities and capabilities that make a dolphin a dolphin, an otter an otter, a seal a seal. The underlying logic is simple: humans have to know what they are saving before they are able to save it. Thus, the animals and humans of my lab work side by side, day after day, in the singular goal of trying to understand and preserve wild species. Science paves our road to conservation.
With KP2 in residence, however, it would not take long for us to discover just how difficult saving an endangered species could be.
• • •
EVEN WITHOUT AN official announcement or press release, word leaked out that a celebrity seal pup was hidden behind the wooden fencing at the University of California’s Long Marine Lab. A wave of curiosity seekers descended, all demanding a piece of the exotic visitor from Hawaii who had made the front page of the Wall Street Journal and enjoyed a YouTube following. Overnight, reporters from television stations and newspapers from across the states began choking my phone line with requests, a situation that quickly devolved from amusing to appalling.
Pinniped paparazzi, journalists jockeying for an exclusive interview and pictures of KP2, arrived with the grace of a rogue tsunami. They caught my lab unaware and wholly unprepared. I was especially naive, having lived the blessedly isolated life of a wildlife biologist. Except for Nobel laureates and icons such as Jane Goodall, scientists are not usual fodder for paparazzi.
Ignoring reporters’ calls only escalated their intensity. Refusals ended in a demand to know “What are you hiding?” and the threat of “crash” visits. This was not how I envisioned saving animals.
The media frenzy continued into the dark of the night several days after KP2’s arrival when an intruder attempted to climb over the marine lab’s security fence and force his way into the marine mammal compound. One of the student vol
unteers discovered splintered wood and a broken door handle on the ground the next morning where the person had hoisted himself up.
I grumbled while toeing the debris on the gravel. “What did they want? Pictures? To steal KP2? To hurt him?” I did not understand what motivated some people to do the crazy things they did to animals. Scientists were so often cast in a negative light when it came to the furred and finned. In my experience, biologists were often the ones left picking up the pieces when someone harmed an animal.
One such incident had happened when I was working in Kaneohe. During the middle of the night a group broke into the U.S. Navy’s Dolphin Systems compound. In the morning the trainers and I discovered one of the bottlenose dolphins acting skittish and floating in its pen. On closer examination we found several open wounds along its body. Thinking that the animal had inadvertently swum into a sharp object, one marine mammal trainer dove into the pen but could not even find a stick that would have poked the dolphin or created such clean wounds.
Further investigation around the compound ultimately uncovered a drunken episode. Apparently after a party, several men had swum around the point that separated the military base from the dolphin holding area. Stumbling onto the wooden pier, one of the inebriated men had tried to pet the dolphin. When his advances were refused by the suspicious animal, he had taken a knife and stabbed it. Fortunately, the wounds were superficial—a dull blade is no match for tough dolphin blubber—and we were able to quickly heal the dolphin physically if not psychologically. The young man did not fare as well. Before completely recovering from his hangover, he was arrested for destruction of government property, which in this case was a federal offense involving prison time.
• • •
STANDING ON A LADDER and peering over the edge of the fence, I could see that there was no damage to KP2’s enclosure. The chain-link and wooden fencing around his cement deck and run was intact and the water of the small inground pool was clear. “I don’t think they made it past the top,” I shouted down to Traci. “It looks like whoever it was fell backwards.” Taking in the ten-foot drop to the ground, I added, “I hope it hurt!”
“Nothing was moved inside of KP2’s pool. No one made it in,” Traci concurred, shaking her head. “I only wish I had seen them.”
I wished she had seen them, too. I relished the thought of any intruder who had the misfortune of encountering Traci during her watch. She had the maternal instincts of a wild tiger when it came to protecting the animals in her care. Because she was female, there was the mistaken notion that she was a pushover. In reality, Traci had an athletic, and at times pugnacious, kickboxer edge when challenged. While Beau was the laid-back island boy, my female trainer packed a mean punch.
“Let’s clean the place up,” she directed her circle of volunteer helpers.
No sooner had I finished dealing with the damage from the nighttime break-in than the intrusion became personal. The light on my office phone blinked angrily for attention. A series of messages from my campus bosses and the NMFS Office of Protected Resources all demanded the same thing: respond to a persistent journalism student who wanted private access to KP2.
The previous day the same student and I had clashed on the telephone. She had not taken my refusal well, the identical refusal tendered to all callers. “Who are you?” she demanded. She immediately called the UCSC administration and my NMFS permit officers.
“Your permit is being FOIA’d,” Amy Sloan from NMFS informed me. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the journalism student had contacted the government agency for access to my records and the young seal. She sought out the public relations office for my university, wanting information about who was in charge of KP2. Now my job and marine mammal research permits—the lifeline of my work and fifteen years of applications—were in jeopardy. Fear of lawsuits by the school and the government upped the pressure on me to relent. The resulting problems were enormous, and I resented the time taken away from my science. Still I refused.
“I’m sorry. This should not have happened,” Amy apologized over the phone. She began to regret having helped to instigate the move of KP2 to my lab. “Maybe Jennifer and I should not have gotten you involved.”
“Never think that!” I countered emphatically. “I knew the risk. Besides, if things get too legal I’ll go to Africa and work on lions . . .”
While Amy dealt with the FOIA request, I maintained my hard-line stance at the lab. Backed against the wall, I did as any wild fox might. I flatly refused to budge. I snarled a curt “No!” to all journalists. FOIA be damned.
My unwavering refusal to grant interviews to the journalism student and the rest of the media was driven by my worst fear for KP2: disease. With each request from a stranger to enter into KP2’s enclosure, images from Molokai’s history flashed before my eyes. To me, all strangers carried an invisible threat to the young seal.
A family of microscopic organisms with disproportionately large names, the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis, was the source of Hansen’s disease that had devastated Hawaii. The bacteria had been unwittingly carried by strangers to the islands, Chinese laborers who had arrived to work in the sugarcane fields during the early to mid-1800s. Even a proud warrior culture like the native Hawaiians’ had no defense against the microbial invasion. Contact with the bacteria was disastrous, resulting in the epidemic that swept through the islands by 1863. With no cure available, the only control was complete isolation of those fallen ill with the disease; hence the development of the quarantine colony on Kalaupapa Peninsula.
In part, this vulnerability to invasive diseases was the hidden price for living in tropical paradise in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Residents of Hawaii reside approximately 1,860 miles from any other continent, and have the distinction of being the most geographically isolated community on earth. With this distinction comes a naive immune system unfamiliar, and therefore exceptionally vulnerable, to diseases carried by outsiders.
Airplanes and the constant influx of tourists have altered the situation for modern Hawaiians. Not so for KP2 and the monk seals. Like their historical human counterparts, seals isolated in the outer Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and in the surrounding waters remain immuno-naive.
As the first Hawaiian monk seal pup to breathe mainland air, KP2 was now encountering an invisible soup of viruses and bacteria unlike any in Hawaii. They, too, came with mysterious scientific names: Lyssavirus (rabies), Flavivirus (West Nile virus), and a member of the Paramyxovirinae (phocine distemper virus). There was no predicting KP2’s susceptibility to these diseases, which seemed easily tolerated by the local harbor seals and elephant seals. There was no predicting the ability of humans to inadvertently carry the microorganisms on their hands, their clothes, or their breath. As a result, KP2 had to be treated like any newborn, and safeguarded until his immune system had time to slowly respond to the jungle of mainland microorganisms.
KP2’s health also had to be guaranteed without flaw before he could be exposed to the other animals of Long Marine Lab, or they exposed to him. His lab neighbors included bottlenose dolphins, sea lions, sea otters, and seals involved in a wide variety of research projects. Scientists at the lab were trying to decipher the effects of oceanic noise on marine mammals as well as employ the animals as models for endangered killer whales, Steller sea lions, and marine otters. Soon all of these valuable, specially trained lab occupants would be sharing the same seawater and salty air with KP2; their health was paramount.
Like the turn-of-the-century Hawaiians of Molokai, KP2 was placed in strict quarantine to safeguard him and the animals around him. By federal mandate, he had to remain in isolation for sixty days. If he showed no signs of illness during that period and passed a final veterinary examination, then he could be released into the main pools. Until that time only a handful of caretakers were allowed to contact him. I was the gatekeeper, and I banned
all journalists.
• • •
QUARANTINE LIFE FOR KP2 was not all that different from his days at the Kewalo Research Facility or the Waikiki Aquarium. We provided him with a personal warm pool with a skylight roof and sunning deck complete with daily cleaning service supervised by Traci and Beau. Meals were delivered on demand with a wide selection of fresh seafood. For his first two months in California the endangered seal resided in a private sanctuary with all the amenities of the Four Seasons resort up the coast.
“The only thing missing is a mint on the pillow,” I noted to Beau.
“Oh, don’t worry. We offer him a good-night herring each evening.” Beau was looking ragged. The excitement of having an exotic seal had been distilled down to the reality of taking care of him. Traci, too, had spent weeks creating the heated enclosure before KP2’s arrival and then driven across the state with the seal. My team was exhausted before we even got started with the science.
An animal in quarantine created a whole new level of complexity for animal care in our small facility. The law required us to maintain the sterility of a hospital in the middle of the chaos of an active research station. At times individual missions chafed.
With a single food preparation kitchen for the dolphins, seals, sea otters, and sea lions as well as common walkways and limited staff, quarantine meant creative scheduling. Personnel working with KP2 or his food had to change clothes and take showers before they could move between quarantine and nonquarantine animal areas. Shoes and boots had to be dipped in plastic dishpans filled with disinfectant solution when entering or leaving KP2’s enclosure. Hands were washed incessantly to the point of rawness. Ultracleanliness was critical.
Around the lab it quickly became apparent who was working with me and KP2. Our hands were red and chapped from too many washings. Clothes were discolored and tattered from the ravages of bleach used to clean his pool and deck. Our shoes were stained and warped from too many disinfectant dippings.
The Odyssey of KP2 Page 8