The Odyssey of KP2

by Terrie M. Williams

  To date, the Caribbean monk seal remains the only known seal species to have been forced into extinction by the hand of man. The two remaining sister lineages, the Mediterranean monk seal and the Hawaiian monk seal, are teetering on extinction’s edge for the same reason. The former, with only four hundred individuals residing in the waters of the Mediterranean and Black seas, is classified as the most endangered pinniped in the world. The third and last sister comprises eleven hundred individuals clinging to the islands of Hawaii. Of the three monk seal lineages that once cruised the warm oceans of the world, the Hawaiian sister, KP2’s remnant family, represents the greatest hope for survival.

  • • •

  STORIES IN THE FORM of spoken word, theater, and art revealed the oceanic soul of man and his relationship with the animals of the sea long before the discovery of DNA and the age of science and books. This tradition, too, told of a tumultuous relationship between seals and man. At a time when the borders of Turkey were in dispute, neighboring Greece was a sea empire whose culture was infused with images and stories of oceanic gods, fishermen, dolphins, fish, and other sea creatures. According to Greek mythology Poseidon was the ruler of the seas and all its watery creatures. He was both a creator and destroyer, using the animals of the seas to suit his whims. Greek art is filled with romantic images of Poseidon with trident in hand and hair flowing as he drives a chariot of hippocamps (sea monsters that were half horse and half fish) up from the depths.

  While responsible for creating the most beautiful animal on earth—the horse—Poseidon in some ancient accounts is also credited with a few animal “mistakes,” not the least of which were the hippopotamus and the seal. To take care of these oddities, Poseidon’s son Proteus became the herder of seals. If modern DNA analyses are correct, the members of Proteus’s flock could only have been the Mediterranean monk seal, the earliest ancestors of KP2.

  Proteus was the prophetic “Old Man of the Sea” who spent his days tending Poseidon’s oceanic flock. The description of his daily habits in Homer’s Odyssey foretold what we now know about the diving activities of modern monk seals, their propensity for hiding in caves, and their distinctive oceanic odor:

  When the sun in its course has reached midsky,

  the sage old sea-god leaves his ocean . . .

  Once ashore, he lies down to sleep under the arching caves,

  and around him is a throng of seals . . .

  They too have come up through the gray waters,

  and they too lie down to sleep,

  smelling rankly of the deep brine below.

  Interestingly, Greek mythology refers to the necessity of a seal herder—that monk seal numbers were once so great that a shepherd was needed to control them. Today, a modern Proteus has risen from the same seas, not to control their great numbers but to protect the remnants of the ancient Mediterranean monk seal race. Like the mythical Proteus, today’s guardians are intimately familiar with the habits of the marine mammals and the waters in which they reside. In an inspiring change of heart, the newest Proteus is a group of Turkish fishermen who have come together to rescue one of their wiliest competitors.

  Their efforts to protect Mediterranean monk seals originated in 1991 on the landlocked campus of Middle East Technical University more than one hundred miles from the Black Sea and several hundred miles from the Mediterranean Sea. Students from the Underwater Research Society’s Mediterranean Seal Research Group teamed with local fishermen and the World Wildlife Fund to form fishermen’s cooperatives and establish no-fishing zones that would protect the coastal caves where monk seals hid, bred, and nursed their pups. They created an intensive policing program to prevent illegal fishing activities and have been carefully monitoring both the population status of monk seals and fish stocks along the outer Gulf of Izmir in the Aegean Sea and the Cilician Basin in the Mediterranean Sea.

  Today, over twenty-nine conservation groups, spread across countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea and boasting more members than there are monk seals, are working under a difficult extinction deadline for the species. But the cooperative effort seems to be working. In Turkey, fishermen have witnessed a change in the stability of the coastal ecosystem as well as in their own lives. A gradual improvement in fish stocks has occurred in concert with protection of the seals. And with more fish, both human and seal families can be sustained without conflict.

  As if rewarding the groups for their efforts, Poseidon revealed an oceanic secret in January 2011. It rocked the world of monk seals. On an isolated beach, on a lone island off the coast of Greece, a secret colony of Mediterranean monk seals was discovered. Scientists making the unusual discovery refused to reveal the location of the animals for fear of human disturbance. They did, however, share one important finding. They noted that these seals acted differently than any other local monk seal. Instead of hiding in caves, afraid to show themselves to man, as was considered the norm, these secret seals lay about on open beaches, sleeping confidently together as Homer once described the marine mammals during the reign of Proteus. Clearly, monk seals were a different animal when not pressured by human disturbance, and could easily live in the presence of man. More important, if protected, monk seals had the power to improve the coastal ecosystem.

  • • •

  PEDALING BACK TO THE LAB, I began to wonder if there was a Proteus for Hawaiian monk seals. Certainly, the first king of Hawaii, Kamehameha the Great, had recognized the impact of fishing activities on oceanic resources. By regulating temporal and geographic access to designated fishing areas, he established what could be considered the first formal marine protected areas for the island waters in the early 1800s.

  More recently, a Hawaiian Proteus has stepped forward, wearing heavy work boots and a yellow hard hat. He arrived quietly at a government-sponsored meeting in Honolulu in February 2011 to discuss the conservation of monk seals in the main Hawaiian Islands. Dressed in work clothes and carrying a duffel bag, the weathered older man sitting next to me looked like a construction worker who had wandered into the proceedings out of curiosity or by mistake. I was astounded when he took the podium and identified himself as Keith Robinson, “cowboy, farmer, fisherman, environmentalist, and co-owner of the island of Niihau.”

  His family had bought the island from King Kamehameha V for $10,000 in gold; it is now worth over $1 billion. The 69.5-square-mile, low-lying arid island has the shape of a sleeping seal facing northeast, with a single road running down its spine. Despite neighboring cities on Kauai located just seventeen miles away across a wide channel, Niihau is a reclusive paradise inhabited by fewer than 130 individuals. Only relatives and invited guests are allowed, and there are few amenities such as telephones, automobiles, or power lines, earning Niihau the nickname “the Forbidden Isle.” But within this landscape Mr. Robinson and his brother have created an environmental and Hawaiian cultural preserve—with the newest residents consisting of endangered Hawaiian monk seals. Fiercely protective of his land and its plant and animal occupants, Mr. Robinson has allowed few visitors to the island. Monk seals seem to flourish under his feudal care, and where seals were once absent due to human hunting, Niihau now boasts one of the largest populations in the main Hawaiian Islands.

  “I’ve turned away lucrative diving and fishing charters to support the seals,” Mr. Robinson informed the group. “The seals are smelly and attract sharks. I would not reestablish them on other islands due to the sharks—it would be bad for tourists.” Mr. Robinson estimated that there were fifty to two hundred seals at any one time on his beaches. He also warned that they could easily be pushed out if fishermen were allowed into the surrounding waters. He had a proposal for NMFS.

  “Niihau could make up for the resistance by the other islands to the presence of monk seals. I propose creating a sanctuary for the seals on Niihau with the people of Niihau employed to count and protect the seals.”

  With tha
t, Keith Robinson picked up his duffel bag and left the rest of the room in stunned silence. No one spoke except for the woman sitting next to me. “People call him Robinson Crusader,” she whispered. “Rumors say he keeps a machete and Glock pistol in that duffel bag.”

  His quirks notwithstanding, I was fascinated by Keith Robinson’s observations about the influx of sharks with the arrival of seals to his island. It seemed to me that there was a much larger ecological story for monk seals and sharks than simply being outcompeted by the faster scavenger. Food webs and species interactions were likely more interconnected than that.

  Several scientific studies have already demonstrated the importance of nutrient transfer by highly mobile marine animals. Seabirds are known to deposit guano to islands that act as plant fertilizers where they nest. Similarly, whales and seals carry deep-sea micronutrients to the water surface as they come up to breathe and digest their prey. The feces of marine mammals are natural fertilizers that enable phytoplankton, the microscopic drifting plants that live near the water surface, to grow.

  But there is a much more exciting aspect to this nutrient cycle. Phytoplankton provides food for zooplankton, which serves as food for small fish, which in turn become food for middle-sized and big fish. Phytoplankton, with the help of micronutrients found in marine mammal feces, converts sunlight and carbon dioxide to create food for supporting the entire ocean ecosystem.

  Suddenly, I realized that monk seals were not simply fish consumers—they could actually serve as fish farmers! Their feces would provide critical nutrients to seed coastal waters, and nowhere was this more important than in warm waters where nutrients were quickly lost. Maybe that was the reason that fishing grounds improved in the presence of seals in the Mediterranean, and why sharks were attracted to areas where there were seals here in Hawaii. That was where the fish farms resided.

  There was one more piece to this food web that seemed too astonishing if it was true. If the feces of marine mammals fertilized phytoplankton and phytoplankton consumed carbon dioxide in order to grow, then theoretically this nutrient cycle would have an impact on the presence of atmospheric carbon. Such a connection had already been proposed for the great whales. In 2010 scientists reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society that the feces of Southern Ocean sperm whales were responsible for levels of phytoplankton growth that resulted in the consumption of two hundred thousand tons of carbon dioxide each year. Obviously, the whales produced carbon dioxide with each exhalation. However, the effect of their feces on phytoplankton was much greater. As a result, the sperm whales were responsible for a net loss of atmospheric carbon dioxide that was equivalent to the removal of emissions from almost forty thousand passenger cars every year. Simply put, the mere presence of marine mammals could have an impact on global warming.

  Whether science would prove that monk seals serve as fish farmers or a solution for climate change remains to be seen, but the prospect of it sent a shiver of excitement through me. We needed to study this. One thing was already clear: like all large mammals, Hawaiian monk seals were a critical component to the coastal ecosystem. We did not yet have all the answers. But as the only marine mammal in Hawaii to straddle both the oceans and the land, there was little doubt that monk seals had a unique role as the glue that held the islands’ coastal ecosystem together.

  KP2 and his species needed to be viewed in their true biological role. The seals were neither invaders nor gluttons. Rather, they were ancient, honored family members who helped to create and maintain the tropical coastal ecosystem that both man and seal needed to survive.

  • • •

  REENERGIZED FROM all the thoughts swirling around my brain, I realized that I had been thinking too small about KP2. There was a whole ocean of possible homes for the seal in the islands, an ocean that could use his help.

  20.

  Wild Waters

  In the best of all circumstances, I’d like KP2 released in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands,” I announced to Amy and Jennifer, even though I knew it was a long shot. “Or maybe an ocean pen like he had in Kaneohe. Imagine being able to conduct all types of open-water observations as KP2 hunted for fish. We could determine what kind of fish farmers these monk seals really are. It would be exciting!”

  To their credit, the two women never shot down one of my ideas. They didn’t need to. There was a simple test that would determine if release back into the wild was even worth discussing for KP2. First, he had to pass an eye exam.

  The underlying reason for KP2’s journey to the mainland and my lab had been for the care of his eyes. He arrived with both corneas veiled gray and cloudy. For nearly two years my team had medicated, shaded, and documented the cloudiness of his eyes. We discovered that intense sunlight aggravated his condition. On foggy days, his brown irises shone bright and clear and his visual perception seemed more acute. In contrast, bright sunny days caused his eyes to appear milky and the seal relied on other sensory cues to help him orient. The question remained: had our efforts and his continued development been enough to stabilize his eyes and stave off surgery, or would the seal eventually go blind? KP2’s fate hung precariously on the health of his eyes.

  Regardless of the passage of time and all his scientific contributions, possible paths for the seal had changed little since he’d been captured at Kaunakakai Wharf: placement somewhere in Hawaii, captivity on the mainland while awaiting eye surgery, or euthanasia if his eye condition indicated a lifetime of ocular deterioration and misery. In my heart I wanted KP2 to be released in the tropical waters of Hawaii. Even with cloudy eyes he would be able to hear the rustle of palm tree fronds in the trade winds and use his whiskers to hunt for fish. I decided that I would explore every avenue if it meant a chance for him to dive among the corals and again feel the soft, warm sand of an island beach.

  Moreover, I wanted the seal to reexperience the luxury of the warm blue waters that had once been his home. Perhaps it was the swimmer in me that made me think this way. As a lifeguard during my college days, I discovered the lightness and power of water, and have always wondered if marine mammals appreciated it, too. Water caresses your skin as you swim, and buoys you physically and emotionally. I imagine the pure joy of being able to perform acrobatic leaps like a dolphin or high-speed, agile maneuvers like a seal or sea lion. Why else would they race through the water in such energetic bursts, if not for the sheer fun of it? I believe that swimming prowess is the secret behind the dolphin’s smile.

  • • •

  STANDING IN KP2’S humid sealarium with water dripping on me and the ophthalmologist’s instruments, I sweated more in anticipation of the results from the eye exam than from the temperature. This was it. We had brought in the best marine mammal ultrasonographer in the world. The next phase of KP2’s life hung on the results of Cynthia Kendall’s examination.

  “He reminds me of a patient with cerebral palsy that I examined last week,” Cynthia noted as she tried to position a pen-sized ultrasound probe on KP2’s left eyeball. Eschewing any type of sedation, Traci and Beau had worked for months training KP2 to lie quietly for the eye exam. We waited expectantly to hear why the ophthalmic ultrasound specialist likened the young seal to a teenage boy with a neurological disorder. She had tied her auburn hair back and was squinting through thick glasses as she studied the ultrasound screen.

  In the few short hours since I had met Cynthia Kendall, I came to appreciate that she was filled with quirky observations. Trained in engineering, physics, and human health and possessed of a fondness for animals, the wiry woman moved quickly between steely objectiveness and patient empathy. She had already revealed some interesting perspectives: the karma of owning a one-eyed feral cat, her love of all things ocular and therefore disdain for Lasik surgery, her self-nomination to president of the KP2 Fan Club, Sacramento Chapter.

  “My business card even has a picture of KP2 on it,” she said proudly. Noting my confusion
when I looked at the black-and-white image on her card, she added, “That’s his eyeball!” With the long, thin fingers of an artist, she turned the card sideways and I realized that I was looking at an ultrasound of the cataract she had found when KP2 was just a pup in Hawaii. That single image had prompted KP2’s transpacific flight to California and my lab.

  Innocence in the face of the ultrasound eye probe was the connection in Cynthia’s latest observation. Both the seal and the palsied teenage patient had happily met the ultrasonographer with her $60,000 portable ultrasound computer and eye probe. It was all smiles and curiosity until she proceeded to press the probe onto their respective eyeballs. Shock was replaced by resistance, followed quickly by acceptance, with the realization that the odd sensation of the pulsing ultrasonic probe was painless.

  “Hoa, relax,” Traci murmured, placing her hands along either side of the seal’s head to steady him. With the trainer providing calming words of encouragement, KP2 lay quietly on the deck of his sealarium as the most important eye exam of his life was conducted. No human could have been as composed.

  “How big is his eye?” I asked. The bony brow of the monk seal did not have the bulging look of the Weddell seals I had studied in the Antarctic. Those polar seals had enormous eyes.

  “I’d say about thirty-five millimeters in diameter.” Cynthia confirmed my impression as she rocked the probe over the surface of KP2’s cornea. This also added to my suspicion that Hawaiian monk seals might be less adept at diving than Weddell seals were. While the Weddell seal eye was nearly the size of a tennis ball, the monk seal eye was only half that diameter, closer to a Ping-Pong ball. Large eyes contributed to light sensitivity. Anatomically, Weddell seals had two headlights that enabled the diving hunter to locate prey under the extreme low-light conditions deep beneath the Antarctic sea ice. Here they shared the same big-eye feature of other deepwater predators such as the blue whale, with an eye diameter of 150 millimeters, and the giant squid, with the biggest eyes in all the animal kingdom. At 270 millimeters (nearly 11 inches) across, the eye of the colossal squid is bigger than a regulation soccer ball. Monk seal eyes pale by comparison, suggesting adaptation for shallow-water hunting or at least reliance on other, nonvisual sensory cues.