The Odyssey of KP2

by Terrie M. Williams

  “Okay, you win,” I told the seal. “I get it. Stop feeling sorry for myself. No one said saving your species would be easy.”

  I never told Beau or Traci about that morning with KP2. I’m sure they would have disapproved of my poor training techniques. But that shared moment with KP2 spurred me on to help the Hawaiian monk seal using every resource within my reach and more. We would find him a new Hawaiian home and I would help him get his environmental message out. I had no choice. I had finally found the one wild animal who could read me.

  • • •

  COVERED IN FRESH SEAL SNOT, I noticed that the beginning of race day was as picturesque as any in Santa Cruz in May. Even to my bleary eyes the blue skies and light breezes over the marine lab looked inviting.

  Hundreds of smiling racers soon arrived with the bustling nervousness of thoroughbred horses awaiting the derby. The driveway outside of KP2’s sealarium buzzed with the adrenaline of competitors. As race time approached, Mehana, the Hawaiian chanter I had hired, appeared in a dark dress, flower lei, and headband of braided beige kukui nuts. She gathered the racers around her. Children and adults in racing gear stood by the blue whale skeleton mascot of the lab, mesmerized by the woman’s chant as she called to the land, the oceans, and the sky. She spoke of the islands, its people and its animals, and a special monk seal blessed as Ho‘ailona.

  Mehana continued to chant as clouds began to build up over the lab. With each wailing verse the sky drew darker and more ominous over us. The winds seemed to respond to her calls, threatening to blow over the balloon arch at the starting line. Then, with a final sweeping outreach of her hands, Mehana released the runners onto the racecourse, and the clouds released their contents upon us.

  Some attributed the unusual late spring rainfall to the tail end of the El Niño weather pattern along the California coast. Although scientifically valid, I considered the capricious timing the handiwork of the mischievous Madame Pele, whose wrath the locals of Oahu had warned me about when I’d first met KP2 at the Waikiki Aquarium.

  With each soaked runner that passed the starting line, I began to wonder if Mehana had awakened the curse of Stolen Child in invoking the spirit of the islands with her early morning chant. Perhaps this was the final revenge. Or maybe it was a reminder from Hawaiians that KP2 was a temporary gift to the mainland. His home was back on the islands.

  As the runners crossed the finish line and visited with KP2 and the dolphins, I vowed to contact Amy Sloan at NMFS to begin the process of returning the seal to his native land. Although I’m not prone to superstition, I did note that the clouds dissipated and the sun broke through the moment I made this commitment. For the rest of the day, KP2 entertained his visitors by surfing in the glow of the California sun. He experienced the first Mother’s Day of his life.

  • • •

  I LEFT THE MARINE LAB feeling a sense of warmth about Mother’s Day that had long escaped me. Irrespective of my scientific training and the untimely loss of Austin, I still harbor the romantic notion that all mothers, including the runaway RK22, are inherently saintly. Maybe it is my inexperience with their job that makes me think this way. It was KP2’s misfortune to have an inept mother. He was never afforded a drop of her milk, but I always wondered if abandonment had been the real motive behind RK22’s actions.

  Life is not all paradise in the world of Hawaiian monk seals. With the marked decline in numbers came a skewing of the sex ratio in five major breeding areas in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The most vulnerable segments of the population, the very young and the female, were the first to disappear. Now, instead of the requisite one male for one female to create a pup, there were at least two males for every female. Beaches had become as competitive as any Saturday night bar, where the entrance of an unattached female invariably instigated a brawl among cruising males.

  The overenthusiastic ardor of Hawaiian monk seal males has had devastating effects on the population. Adult females and immature seals of both sexes are attacked by roving gangs of four to fourteen testosterone-high males, all seeking mates. The resulting melee can last for hours, with the victims either severely injured or killed outright. If injured, the incapacitated female or immature seal is likely finished off by tiger sharks patrolling the waters. These “mobbing” incidents only exacerbate the population problem. By selectively increasing the mortality of females and young animals, male gangs have sent the male-female sex ratio and the Hawaiian monk seal population into a death spiral.

  I began to think that maybe the aberrant sexual behavior of male monk seals was at the root of RK22’s peculiar maternal behavior. Several bullying males had been observed in the area where KP2 was born, with one aggressive male even attacking RK22’s newborn pup. Observers reported that her response had been to attack KP2 and then swim off nonchalantly with the boys, abandoning her pup. That was one interpretation.

  What if RK22 had another intention? What if, after years of harassment from mobbing gangs of male seals, monk seal moms had developed a new survival strategy? In abandoning her pup, KP2’s mom had lured the most aggressive males away from her offspring. In choosing a male to mate with rather than waiting for more aggressive attackers or a murdering group, she could guarantee that there would be another pup in the future and prevent her own injury or death. In a world turned upside down by violence, the case could be made that RK22 had made the supreme motherly sacrifice for the future of the species.

  On this Mother’s Day, I liked to think that was the way it happened.

  19.

  The Hand of Man

  My resolve to return KP2 to the islands was stalled by equally forceful conflicting opinions developing across the Pacific Ocean and on the opposite coast of North America. In Hawaii the celebration of the seal’s second birthday on May 1 brought out island emotions on his Facebook page. Traci had constructed a sandbox for the seal as a birthday present. Her intention had been to cheer him up by reminding him of the beaches in Hawaii. KP2 immediately took to the sand, rolling in it and burrowing his head to the bottom. The pictures delighted people when they saw the “sugarcoated” seal. More than a hundred Hau‘oli la hanau (Happy Birthday) messages arrived, mixed with pleas for him to come back home to Hawaii. The sandbox, originally intended as a present, highlighted the seal’s wild island origins. Across the miles I could feel the groundswell of pressure growing from the islands as locals, who’d originally been promised by NMFS officials that their native son would return within a year, began to wonder if they had been duped.

  In response, Amy Sloan and Jennifer Skidmore from NMFS began to make inquiries as to what it would take to move KP2 back to the islands. They had much more than a small vested interest in the transfer. Two years earlier they had put their reputations on the line to move KP2 to my mainland lab. The ultimate proof of their idea that you could bring an endangered species to the scientist rather than just bring the scientist to the endangered species required that KP2 safely return to Hawaii.

  Amy began a series of conference calls involving veterinarians who were needed to ensure KP2’s health, aquarium facilities that could serve as a potential new home for the returning seal, assorted Hawaiian Monk Seal Recovery Team members, and NMFS officials. Almost immediately plans for the seal’s return hit a roadblock.

  “It’s good that you weren’t there.” Amy was talking as quietly as possible and fighting back tears when she called me after one of her conversations. Her conference calls had uncovered the disappointing truth.

  “You mean to tell me that nothing has happened?” I asked incredulously. I had expected that at least some plans and construction would have taken place in preparation for housing the orphaned seal when he returned to Hawaii. “We’ve had KP2 for fifteen months and nothing has been resolved in the islands? He was supposed to leave after a year. How can the folks there not understand? Where is he to go?” I asked too many questions that I knew had no
answers.

  “You know that things move slowly in Hawaii . . .” Amy tried to rationalize the fact that nothing had changed since KP2 had made his transoceanic flight. Pools at the only two aquariums able to house monk seals in Hawaii, the Waikiki Aquarium and Sea Life Park on Oahu, were still full to capacity. No other facility or pool was forthcoming, nor apparently had anyone really looked into alternatives.

  Jennifer was listening on the line. Her job at NMFS was to find homes for the injured, sick, stranded, and otherwise nonreleasable marine mammals. I waited for her to weigh in on our conversation. Jennifer finally noted, with stark frankness, “In cases like this where there is no place for the animal . . . well, they are euthanized.”

  My head began to spin. How could this be happening? I knew that Jennifer wasn’t proposing killing KP2; she was merely reporting the gravity of the situation.

  “That is insane!” I protested. I saw the faces of Beau, Traci, and all the student volunteers. What have I done, I thought. These people believed in me and the dream of changing their world. They had complete trust in our ability to save a species, beginning with this one seal. I had promised them it would happen if they had the courage to take the risk. Every day I saw the hope in their eyes and the faith in their actions. I could never tell them what I had just been told by Jennifer.

  I also saw my computer screen filled with birthday greetings for the seal and the wishes from the children of Molokai who’d once befriended him. I recalled all his aunties and uncles who had nursed the tiny newborn pup two years earlier. Mostly I saw a young, comical, high-spirited seal whose only crime was loving people too much. It just couldn’t end like this. I was heartsick.

  “I’m sorry. I have to go . . . teach,” I muttered, making up an excuse to end the call. I needed to think. KP2 and I were running out of time.

  “Don’t worry. We’re going to fight this!” Amy said quickly before I hung up.

  Hopping onto my road bike, I pedaled furiously along the coast to clear my head. How had things gone so wrong? I chastised myself for letting my emotions about KP2 and the plight of Hawaiian monk seals get the better of me.

  The situation in Hawaii had become more explosive in the months since KP2 had left. On the heels of the monk seal shootings, Lieutenant Governor James “Duke” Aiona signed Senate Bill 2441, making it a felony under Hawaii law to harass, harm, or kill any endangered or threatened species. Punishment for injuring a monk seal now included a fine of up to $50,000 and five years in prison. While this should have been good news for the seals, some fishermen were incensed. “What if a monk seal that is stealing fish from my lines inadvertently becomes entangled?” they demanded. “What then?”

  A simultaneous rejoinder by a local fishermen’s group declared that monk seals were not afforded the status of ‘aumakua. Rather, the marine mammals were nothing more than an “invasive species” to the Hawaiian Islands. The seals had come from the Caribbean and were no more native than the Norwegian rats that had jumped from ships or the mongoose that had been introduced by the government to kill the invading rats.

  • • •

  DESPITE MY ANGER, I had to admit that, as incredible as it sounded, there was some evolutionary truth to the fishermen’s claim that monk seals were an invasive species to the islands. It all depended in how far back in history you looked.

  The birth of the monk seal lineage, the Monochinae, occurred eleven to fourteen million years ago along the rugged coastline of Turkey and Greece when the body of water was called the Tethys Sea. These ancestral monk seals, later named the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus), far predated human civilization. They arrived in the shadow of the age of mastodons as the massive land mammals were sinking into extinction. At the time, the oceans were much warmer than today and were filled with a bounty of food that the seals thrived on.

  The monk seals were not alone. Enormous marine competitors also vied for the riches of the sea to satisfy ravenous appetites. Giant, toothy predators had been lurking in the oceans for over four hundred million years before the comparatively diminutive seals dipped a flipper into the water. These competitors were of a size and ferocity far beyond anything that has ever been witnessed by modern man.

  One threat was the megalodon, aptly named “big tooth” by the Greeks. An enormous shark fifty-two feet long with a gaping jaw that could easily swallow adult monk seals whole, the megalodon ruled the early seas for twenty-seven million years. Rows of teeth exceeding seven inches in length guaranteed the shark’s position at the top of the food chain.

  Equally dangerous were the ancestors of the snakelike, jagged-toothed basilosaurus. As the first giant whale, basilosaurus swam the Tethys Sea forty-five to thirty-six million years ago; it was the embodiment of “sea monster.” Averaging sixty feet in length, this whale has been surpassed in size only by the blue whale, and was the largest animal living at that time. The metabolic demands of the lithe and fast basilosaurus pummeled the smaller animals of the seas. Fossilized remains of these whales have shown evidence of preying not only on fish, but on every other ocean neighbor, including small sharks, sea cows (the extinct herbivorous relative of dugongs and manatees), marine turtles, and other whale and dolphin species. Although predating the arrival of the Monochinae by twenty million years, the killer whale–like relatives of basilosaurus retained the habit of cruising the shallow waters of the Tethys Sea, making the sluggish, rotund monk seal a tasty target.

  The ancestors of KP2 had one advantage over their oceanic competitors, however. Unlike the gigantic sharks and whales, the seals retained their ability to return to land. Lumbering awkwardly on stubby front flippers, the seals wormed their way onto the rocky shorelines and hid in coastal caves. It was here that they were eventually discovered by a new, cunning predator: man.

  As the earth’s oceans grew, so did the range of the monk seal. Over the course of several million years, the seals spread throughout the entire Mediterranean Basin and eastern North Atlantic. Fossil and DNA evidence suggest that this seal lineage maintained its peculiar, un-seallike affinity for warm waters and eventually split into two sister taxa, the Caribbean (Monachus tropicalis) and Hawaiian (Monachus schauinslandi) monk seals.

  The seals’ incredible transglobal journey took place in two steps. First, they traveled east from the Mediterranean Sea to Caribbean waters via the North Equatorial Current. In a second excursion, the seals swam from the Caribbean to the Hawaiian Islands through the ancient Central American Seaway that once connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. When the seaway closed 3.5 million years ago, Hawaiian monk seals residing in the Pacific Ocean were effectively isolated from their sister lines left on the Atlantic side of the world.

  It is difficult to say exactly how and when monk seals arrived in Hawaii. Naysayers have suggested that it was impossible for the animals to swim such great distances to the remote midoceanic islands. Yet humans clearly managed this feat when early Polynesians traveled thousands of miles in dugout canoes from as far away as the Marquesas Islands. The first human footprint in the soft sands of Hawaii is believed to have occurred between AD 300 and 800, when intrepid Polynesians finally landed in the islands. Molecular, genetic, and anatomical fossil evidence suggests that monk seals were there to greet the humans, having arrived four to eleven million years before man ever paddled into the blue waters. Another millennium in posthuman settlement would pass before Kamehameha the Great, the first king of Hawaii, would unify the islands into the Hawaiian Island group and give the silver-and-white native seals their name.

  Based on this history, the protesting fishermen were right. Hawaiian monk seals could be considered invasive. Their ancestors had traveled across the globe and two oceans to reach the islands. However, the historical and scientific evidence also shows that it was man who had invaded the seal’s tropical playground, when humans eventually navigated their way to paradise millions of years later.


  • • •

  REGARDLESS OF WHO ARRIVED FIRST, Hawaiian monk seals, like their Mediterranean and Caribbean sisters, experienced a rocky relationship with the men of the sea. It had been that way since the beginning of history.

  Ancient monk seals bore witness to the evolution of fishing and the exploitation of the oceans by humans. Along the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, man represented competitor and predator to the warm-water seals. Along with mussels, fish, and dolphins, monk seals were dismembered, defleshed, and consumed by Neanderthals living in sea caves along the southeast side of Gibraltar Rock. Hunters from later civilizations, particularly the Roman Empire, hunted the monk seal for clothing and medicines. Today we might laugh at some of the seal “cures.” Renowned for their ability to sleep soundly, monk seals were believed to possess the ability to cure insomnia, which could be accomplished by placing the right flipper of a monk seal beneath your pillow.

  Monk seals dispersing into the West Indies were exploited for meat, skin, and the oil in their blubber. Discovered during Christopher Columbus’s second voyage in 1494, the Caribbean monk seal became a source of fresh meat for starving crewmen making transoceanic voyages. Three hundred years later European colonization brought further pressure on the tropical seals as their blubber was processed into cooking and lamp oils, lubricants, and coatings for the bottoms of boats. Processing plants skinned the seal carcasses and turned the exotic seal pelts into everyday household items ranging from trunk linings and articles of clothing to leather straps and bags.

  Such unrelenting exploitation could not be sustained by the population, and the catlike smile of the Caribbean monk seal faded into extinction sometime during the 1950s. For decades scientists searched unsuccessfully for the seal. On June 6, 2008, one month after KP2’s rocky birth, Monachus tropicalis was declared officially extinct.