The Odyssey of KP2

by Terrie M. Williams

  Despite the added workload, my team arrived each morning shivering in the anticipation of being a part of something new and exciting. Traci, Beau, the undergraduate student volunteers, and I viewed KP2 as the last of a dying tribe, a symbol of the human footprint on the seas. There was a childlike wonder when the caretakers met KP2, and a sense of awe at being able to reach out and touch this member of an endangered species. With the same innocence that had inspired me to seek salvation for the rescued forest animals I brought into church as a young girl, my team hoped to save this one precious ocean creature.

  For that reason, I rabidly defended KP2’s privacy and my team.

  When I reported the lab break-in attempt to the university veterinarian, I asked him, “What is the matter with people?” Dr. Dave Casper was now the lead veterinary caretaker for KP2, a job that included serving as amateur psychoanalyst for the humans working around the seal. He was the same university vet who had warned us about the dangers of altitude changes when transporting seals. I wished that he had warned me about the human element.

  Balding and bespectacled, Dr. Casper had earned his veterinary stripes through a long history of working with the largest marine whales in national aquariums as well as treating the smallest of pets in private practice. He moved easily between the care of the wild and exotic, and the intimate relationships of pet owners with their pets. Few realized that Dr. Casper’s country-doctor shell concealed a highly inquisitive computer geek who loved modern digital veterinary medicine. He was always testing me on some new molecular theory or physiological-environmental interconnection for wild animals. The veterinarian was also an enthusiastic observer of the human animal.

  “Well, what did you expect?” Dr. Casper laughed at my frustration with the journalists. “You’ve got Elvis of the Seals in your hands. Better not screw up!”

  • • •

  BUT I WAS SCREWING UP. Less than a week in and I had a much bigger problem than journalists on my hands. KP2 refused to eat.

  Trying to get calories into him had turned into a war of wills between the seal and his trainers. After months of eating whenever and whatever he wanted in the waters surrounding Molokai, KP2 now turned his nose up at the proverbial California broccoli we offered. We had plump herring, juicy squid, and lovely smelt that all the other animals ate with relish. KP2 sniffed at them all in disgust.

  The young seal displayed his dietary opinions openly on his muzzle and in his cloudy eyes. With every fish offered by Traci and Beau, KP2 screwed up his whiskered upper lip and squinted. Reluctantly, with eyes shut and lips pursed tightly, he would slightly open his mouth if the fish was pressing to get in. Ultimately, he’d obstinately turn his head away, leaving the dead fish dangling in the trainer’s hand.

  Rather than eat, KP2 spent his initial days on the mainland hauled out on his deck in the weak California winter sun with a rumbling empty stomach. He seemed no better off than when he lay abandoned and starving on Kauai.

  Concealing the doubt churning in the pit of my own stomach, I decided we needed to weigh our stubborn seal. Gone were the days when KP2 could be weighed in a Rubbermaid container on a bathroom scale. The young monk seal was now over four feet long and would be left with his head and flippers hanging over any conventional scale. We had to carry in a large metal veterinary platform scale that he could lie on.

  The moment the scale appeared, KP2’s attitude changed. Immediately, the hungry seal perked up. Driven by curiosity and a chance to play, KP2 hopped out of his pool and his funk. He inchwormed his way over to the scale, leaving a skid trail of water on the cement of his enclosure. With little more than a few hand signals from Beau to guide him, KP2 eagerly flopped his wet body onto the metal platform and proceeded to lie still while we recorded his weight.

  His enthusiasm was duly noted in glowing terms in his medical records. “Wow, a voluntary weight on his second day here . . . pretty cool!” was the behavioral note written in his daily chart. I had to admit that I was impressed. The simple act of weighing a wild animal is a remarkable feat. Imagine trying to weigh a wild bobcat or lion. People would need to dance around the animal to position it just right on a scale. Then the animal would have to sit perfectly still while the scale stabilized. Many zoos and aquariums don’t weigh their animals on a daily basis for this reason. Large wild mammals don’t like to lie still, especially in the presence of humans.

  Beau had met this training challenge head-on with many species of animals and knew their tricks. Nowhere was this more impressive than at the University of Hawaii vivarium, where he had watched animal technicians trying to net scurrying owl monkeys for a weigh-in. Monkeys were flying across their enclosures as the technicians tried to snare the evasive animals. When he suggested training the monkeys to weigh themselves, the technicians had laughed. Proving them wrong became a quest. Within several weeks Beau and his team not only had the monkeys standing quietly on the scales for weighing, he had them returning to their cages and locking the doors behind them. The technicians were ecstatic until they found that in the process of learning how the door locks operated, the monkeys now also knew how to reopen their cages and could escape with ease. Worse, there was a real fear that the monkeys could let their friends out. Sometimes a little knowledge was a dangerous thing.

  KP2 figured out the weighing task in one session with nary a word from any of us. He obediently stayed in his pool while the digital scale was set up. Then, when Beau was ready, the seal flopped right onto the scale without hesitation. He had even posed as if a snapshot were being taken while the scale stabilized.

  “That’s one smart seal!” Ashley, one of the student volunteers, remarked.

  “Yes, but if he is so smart, why won’t he eat?” I asked in return. There had to be a reason behind his refusal. The only negative part of KP2’s first weigh-in was his fish drop. Beau had praised the seal for his excellent behavior as he sat on the scale. But when the trainer handed KP2 the equivalent of a “good dog” biscuit—a fatty herring tail that is the candy of fish for marine mammals—the seal let it fall to the ground uneaten, and slunk back to his pool.

  I caught my breath when I recorded his weight. The digital numbers on the scale settled into a final weight of 54.4 kilograms (120 pounds). Although KP2 was only seventeen months old and nearly weighed more than me, he was underweight for a monk seal of his age. Traci was right; he was skinny. His body was beginning to reflect the ravages of his unorthodox early days and his current refusal to eat. A bad mother and a scavenging lifestyle in the shallow waters around Molokai had whittled his body down. Running my hand down his slick back, I could feel the bumps of vertebra along his spine. Hip bones and shoulder bones were starting to protrude, giving him an angular appearance that made his fur drape. Instead of the fine, streamlined, neckless profile of wild seals, KP2 was verging on the “peanut head” look of a starving marine mammal.

  I sighed and watched the sun set in a westward blaze below a horizon that connected me to the monk seal’s island home. Giving up for the day, I walked past KP2’s pools and climbed down the cliff to the beach. I left my running shoes on the cold sand to dip a toe into the sunset-splashed water. I shivered with the initial shock of cold.

  Only water separated the people of Hawaii and me, but more than ever I felt that we were oceans apart.

  10.

  Mele Kalikimaka

  Christmas was coming and Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and mischief, proved that she was not yet ready to give up her hold on KP2. To remind him that he was indeed in a foreign land, she delivered a severe Arctic winter punch—the coldest in Santa Cruz history—from Santa’s backyard. The seal that had frolicked with bikini-clad surfers in Molokai only two months before was now pelted with ice when he ventured into the uncovered outdoor run of his quarantine area. The surrounding Santa Cruz Mountains turned white with snow, and records broke as the weather service reported temperatures dropping te
n degrees below normal. Neither KP2 nor my team knew what to make of the unusual cold.

  The tropical seal didn’t appreciate the sting of the cold on his flippers and face. He shook his head and shivered. He blinked at the freezing rain and finally, in a move reminiscent of his Antarctic seal cousins, attempted to avoid the repulsive chill by slinking from the run area and slipping underwater in his warm-water pool.

  Fortunately, my team had anticipated the onset of winter, if not record-breaking cold, for our Hawaiian visitor. Before KP2’s arrival, Traci, Beau, and I had placed a tall order with Randolph Skrovan, the Long Marine Lab facilities engineer.

  “You say you want eighty-degree salt water and eighty-degree humidified air for a seal?” Randolph had responded incredulously. He’d pondered our unusual request for a heated marine mammal enclosure by running a hand through his brushy hair. All of the other pinnipeds at the lab required cold water; the need for a seal spa was a new concept for him. During the winter, heated ocean water was in short supply at the lab as coastal water temperatures dropped into the low fifties. Anyone foolish enough to go swimming or surfing in Santa Cruz from December to March risked wooden, numbed feet and an ice cream headache. Our request to create a Hawaiian environment in the middle of Santa Cruz winter quickly caused Randolph to develop a brown mat of morning hair. Yet I had faith in him.

  As a graduate student in my lab, Randolph had once repaired a broken outboard motor with a hood cord cut from his jacket in time to keep a dinghy full of researchers from crashing into a larger ship in the middle of the Aleutian Islands. Then, when stranded shoeless on a remote island after his disabled research vessel had crashed into a wall of rocks, he’d fashioned flip-flops out of a plastic float that he found washed up on the beach. While wearing his self-crafted maritime pink flops, he’d scoured the island for berries and water to sustain himself and the group until the U.S. Coast Guard arrived. Randolph was the ultimate survivor now employed as the ultimate engineer for a marine lab riddled with budget cuts. It was only a matter of time before he engineered a creative solution for the tropical seal.

  “You know, there are these dilapidated greenhouses I saw down the road.” Randolph’s speech revved up. “If we scavenge the plastic and some of the metal support beams, we could create a sorta solarium around KP2’s pool. A roof, some siding. Yes, I think that would do it.”

  Traci helped Randolph design the seal’s enclosure and dismantle the abandoned greenhouse. With the scavenged building supplies in hand, they assembled a metal skeleton over KP2’s pool and deck area. Cutting large sheets of plastic from the old greenhouse roof, they formed a circus dome and insulating walls. The siding rolled up to allow for temperature control during the day, and then could be secured to stripping during the night to create a warm microenvironment for the seal.

  Air in the home-crafted, solar energy–powered “sealarium” heated up. By coaxing the lab’s cranky saltwater heaters, Traci managed to bring KP2’s pool up to a sultry 85°F to rival the lapping waters of the Kauai beach where the seal had been born. Because the suddenness and ferocity of the cold snap overwhelmed the sealarium, Traci purchased an infrared heat lamp to provide additional warmth during the freezing nights and cloudy days.

  The heated pool and lamp were welcome sources of pleasure for the little monk seal during the unusual Arctic blast. Harkening back to his island sunbathing habits, KP2 spent his time lounging on the deck of his sealarium beneath the heat lamp as if in a tanning booth. First he’d toast his hind end. Then he’d roll over to warm his belly, only to roll bottom up again while his trainers and I stood in the outside run area in the freezing rain.

  I had to smile, although I knew there would be hell to pay in the end. Eventually, the university accountants would piece together the cause of the sudden skyrocketing electric bill for the lab pool heaters. Until then, I let KP2 enjoy his bit of Hawaii while I lived on the edge, reminding myself, Only those who attempt the absurd . . .

  • • •

  SNUG IN HIS HEATED ENCLOSURE, KP2 was oblivious to the weather and my presence when I silently slipped inside one day, grateful for the warmth. For the first time I had a chance to admire him. He was different from all the other species of seals that I had studied, sleeker in body with a silvery sheen to his pelt. Water shimmered when he swam, leaving me momentarily spellbound. History suggests that corpulent manatees, dugongs, and sea cows were the origin of the mermaid myth. I think not. Watching KP2, I saw grace in his glide and splendor in the way the sun played off his glistening wet back. Surely the sensuous beauty of monk seals would not have been lost on ancient mariners. Had I the power to design a mermaid, I would have started with this beautiful seal.

  I watched as KP2 eased himself onto the deck and surveyed the ground with his cloudy eyes. His enclosure was littered with pieces of old fire hoses, balls, and deflated plastic floats that the trainers provided as toys. Fully expecting him to clear a path through the debris, I was surprised to see KP2 do just the opposite. He headed for the nearest pile of toys and flopped on top of it. The seal had all the room in the world and yet chose to cuddle with junk lying on the ground. He hugged a deflated plastic float to his chest. He rolled on top of the fire hose trying to bury his head. Had it been a fishing net, he would have become hopelessly entangled.

  “What an odd seal,” I remarked to myself. KP2 had still failed to notice me standing in his sealarium. He continued to wrestle with the hosing until he’d created a bed. Then he promptly shut his eyes and fell asleep with his head lolling upside down.

  I found the similarity in KP2’s behavior to that of wild Hawaiian monk seals remarkable. Unlike skittish harbor seals and placid Weddell seals, which tended to avoid beach trash, Hawaiian monk seals were inexplicably attracted to the flotsam and jetsam that washed up on the island shores. Any piece of rope, fishing nets and lines, plastic bags and floats were candidates for playthings and bedding. Walk any beach with miles of white pristine sand on French Frigate Shoals or Laysan Island in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and you’ll find a monk seal draped around the only piece of high-tide garbage in sight. No one knows why. Sadly, oceanic trash from across the globe washes up almost daily on these remote islands.

  “But how did you figure that out?” I asked the snoring seal. Without the benefit of a mother, father, or siblings to teach him, KP2 instinctively climbed on top of the old hoses and deflated floats. With his chest facing the sun and his head hanging awkwardly down, he fell asleep in the same quirky repose of a wild monk seal.

  I named KP2’s sleeping position the “homeless pose” as he snoozed atop his belongings. With the sudden cold spell, the sidewalks of Santa Cruz were inundated with an eclectic subculture from the 1970s peace generation trying to keep warm. Like KP2, the abandoned, the downtrodden, the Vietnam vets, and the perpetual hippies had landed in the coastal town anticipating California sun. Instead they received the chill of their lives. They learned to stave off the cold by bundling cardboard or other collected junk between their bodies and the frozen doorjambs.

  After watching KP2, I began to wonder if Hawaiian monk seals were attracted to garbage for the same thermal reasons. Despite a substantial blubber layer, a pinniped transfers significant amounts of heat through its skin just like a human lying on cold cement. In one study, California sea lions lost over 25 percent of their body heat from the contact of their bellies on the sand. Even in the Antarctic, where retaining heat is at a premium, Weddell seals sleeping on the sea ice lose so much body heat that they create snow angel outlines where they’ve been lying. Over several hours of slumbering in one position, these polar seals eventually melt into a bathtub of slush below their hot bodies. It seemed peculiar that a Hawaiian seal would need to find ways to retain body heat, but I made a mental note to test my homeless-seal theory once KP2 was out of quarantine. For now I just watched him doze peaceably on the bed of his own making.

  • • •
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br />   EACH MORNING THE PLASTIC SIDING on KP2’s sealarium fogged up as steam rose from his heated pool and clashed with the outside December chill. It was as irresistible as a frosted car windshield, so lab staff and volunteers took the opportunity to draw tropical Christmas scenes for the seal. Outlines of palm trees, Christmas trees, snowflakes, and “Alohas” greeted the seal as he arose.

  The decorations did little to prevent KP2’s first mainland holiday season from worsening. He had been pelted with ice and offered little in the way of fish that stimulated his appetite. We had also unknowingly exacerbated his discomfort in our rush to create a quarantined, insulated micro-Hawaii for him. Despite our best efforts, I had overlooked the one thing that he really needed in his enclosure.

  I discovered this while quietly watching his ramblings one day. With his poor eyesight, KP2 devised alternative ways of sensing his surroundings. His head cocked, he listened intently to the sounds of the marine lab using two pinhole ears on either side of his head. Like other phocids, he possessed no external ears, and instead tilted his head from side to side to localize the source of voices or noise. Motion was also important. Although he had difficulty making out details, he could still detect the presence of someone from the shifting shadows of their movements.

  As such, the play of light and the symphony of lab sounds were important sensory cues that kept the visually impaired seal in touch with his environment. We had mistakenly muffled KP2 when we built his heated sealarium. Insulated but isolated, our seal was trapped like the plastic figurines in a Christmas snow globe in which the fake scenery never changes.

  Alone in his enclosure, the monk seal constantly listened for any tiny sound through a knothole in the lower section of the wooden fencing. If he detected something interesting, he would then shift his head to peer through the hole with one eye, straining to be a part of the action on the other side.