Things were going badly for the seals.
“People do not trust NOAA, the government,” Karen informed me on the conference call with Walter. “They say NOAA has allowed too many fish to be taken from our waters. The government brought the mongoose to the islands and let them take over our fields. They allowed giant fishery corporations to move into our waters. No one has been honest with us.” She sighed in frustration. “We don’t know who to believe anymore.”
“No one is speaking up for the seals,” Walter added. Indeed even state politicians were echoing the sentiments of their fishermen constituents.
According to Karen and Walter, those favoring the translocation were noticeably absent from the town hall meetings. NOAA’s radical idea of shuttling seals around the islands had provoked images of scientists playing God. Local sentiments were clear: fishing grounds were too sacred for such interference.
There was one group, however, whose small voice struggled to be heard. Although nearly two years had passed, the children of Molokai never forgot the friendly seal pup who once swam with them. They had grown up learning about the importance of conservation and how each of them left a footprint on the earth. Such concerns had inspired beach cleanups and a ban on plastic bags and disposable water bottles. The children were writing letters of support for the seals to anyone who would listen.
“We need KP2 to come home now,” Walter finally urged. This time there was no demand to bring the seal to live in a fishpond on Molokai. The issue of conserving Hawaii’s designated state mammal was bigger than that. KP2 needed to go where his public impact would be the greatest.
In the past, I would have repeated that there was no place for KP2 to live in Hawaii. I had gradually come to terms with and accepted that his eye condition prevented his release back into the wild. I knew that a special facility was needed to care for him. This time, however, I had good news for the people of Molokai. We had found a home for KP2. In another twist of fate, Nuka‘au, the seal that once shared a pool next to KP2 at the Waikiki Aquarium, had passed away. He had lived to be thirty-one years old, the equivalent of ninety years for a human. With his peaceful departure, KP2 unexpectedly had a Hawaiian home waiting for him on Oahu.
“Your seal is finally returning,” I happily replied.
• • •
FROM AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE, we suddenly had only one month left with KP2. My team began a mad scramble to finish everything we had planned to do with him in addition to our preparation for the seal’s big return to the islands. After all our struggles, I could not believe that our time with the endangered seal was nearly over.
It had been a long two years in which we helped KP2 transition from wild pup to maturing adult. As I added up the milestones and the many scientific accomplishments, I knew that all could be attributed to one key element: hilina‘i (trust). Starting with Beau, my team had developed complete trust in KP2, and in turn KP2 completely trusted us. This once wild seal had learned to sit still for weighing after only one day of training and had overcome his fear of needles in less than two weeks under our care. We had learned not to put any behavioral obstacles in his way. KP2 had demonstrated his remarkable intelligence and along the way taught us about the biology of his growth, metabolism, thermal preferences, and the energetic cost of catching a fish. No other monk seal had contributed so much for his species.
All of KP2’s data were destined to enter ecological models of the Hawaiian environment to predict the habitat needs of his wild cohort. Marine reserves could now be designed based not on what humans outlined on a map but on the unique biology of this warm-water seal. Managers would now know what water temperatures and what water depths were best for the seals’ survival. They could accurately predict how many fish were needed each month to support the seasonal fluctuations in growth, molting, and reproduction of monk seals. Because no such data existed for his sister species, KP2’s research would also provide insight into the habitat requirements and biological limitations of the highly endangered Mediterranean monk seal. With help from my team, KP2 had more than proven that it was possible to aid wild populations through research on an individual under human care, on an animal once considered an expendable castoff to be euthanized.
• • •
THERE WERE SO MANY LANDMARK ACHIEVEMENTS, but I still wanted more before KP2 left. Recognizing that I might never have another chance like this again, I asked for the unspeakable. I wanted one last data point from KP2.
Over the years I had learned never to verbalize this wish to Beau and Traci. There is a superstition among research trainers: never say that you are collecting your last data point. If you do, something inevitably goes wrong. I should have heeded that advice.
As I rode my bike along the coast to the lab, I considered the final data session I wanted to conduct with KP2. Traci and Beau were waiting with him so that we could discuss research priorities; there simply were not enough days left to do everything that I’d planned. I had to smile. That was always the case in science. Answering one question always sparked new queries.
I pedaled faster up a grade and then glided down the decline like a diving seal. Traffic was light and I waved at a passing cyclist on the other side of the road who had also taken advantage of the spectacular autumn sunshine. The day was perfect.
But before the other cyclist disappeared behind me, a black BMW suddenly swerved across the traffic and came to a halt in my direct path. “Why doesn’t he move?!” was the last clear thought I had that day. Reflexes and thousands of miles on bikes presented two disagreeable choices that had to be decided in a microsecond: hit the car broadside or brake for the best. I chose the latter.
The desperate move propelled me over my handlebars. I felt the hard crunch of my helmet on asphalt. Just from the sound, I knew that I was in the worst accident of my life. Instinctively, I did not move. There would be no getting up from this one.
Faces came and went. I remember a young kid with a cell phone—the driver of the car? A middle-aged man with brown hair seemed to take charge. A gray-haired woman hovered nearby. Sometime later—one minute, ten minutes, a half hour, I couldn’t tell—a heavyset man in a khaki uniform asked questions. I wonder if there were sirens. At the time it seemed to me that sirens were usually associated with scenes like this. I never heard any before I blacked out.
• • •
I SUPPOSE IT IS INEVITABLE when you are strapped to a backboard in an ambulance being rushed to the hospital that you review the events of your life.
All I could think of as I faded in and out of consciousness was, Is this how it is all going to end? Am I just going to blink one last time and everything that I’ve tried to do will just vanish?
Staring at the ambulance roof, I felt no fear. I let the people around me do what they needed to do and just considered my life. I was pleased that I had no regrets, except one. What would happen to the animals? It was the one unfinished part of my story.
My mind drifted to the ocean. More than anything I wanted KP2 to have a happy home and a quality life that lived up to his message. I wanted Hawaiian monk seals to survive long into the future and their oceans to always be clear and blue. Most of all I hoped that humans would learn to respect and cherish all animals as partners on this earth. My wish, as EMTs wheeled my broken body into the ER, wasn’t to remember my world as it once was—it was a wish for a brighter future.
Several hours and innumerable X-rays and CAT scans passed before my amnesia subsided. My memory was finally jolted by a gentle pat on the hand by a Dominican nun making the rounds through the Catholic-run hospital. “Ach, look at you. Tsk, tsk,” she fretted in an Irish brogue. “And no way to call for help.”
I was still strapped down with my arms at my sides. The kindly nun placed a nurse station call button into my immobile hand and abruptly left. I hadn’t seen a Dominican nun since my childhood. Had it not been for the ca
ll button, I would have sworn she’d been an apparition. I wondered if she meant “call for help” in the literal or spiritual sense. From her perspective, I’m sure she thought I was in need of both.
Weeks went by while my bones healed and my head cleared. Over several months orthopedists and physical therapists would make the pieces work together once more. A fractured radius and index finger from my left arm’s attempt to stop my fall ripped up one side of my body. On the other side, where I landed on my right shoulder and head, a torn rotator cuff and a concussion kept me aching and dizzy. Muscle spasms throughout my torso made breathing difficult. As the days ticked by, I finally gave in to the injuries and admitted that the door had closed on our monk seal research. Our work with KP2 was done; the last data point would never be taken.
• • •
FROM SANTA CRUZ TO HAWAII, the view outside the airplane window never changes. For five hours in a commercial jet or eight hours in a U.S. Coast Guard C-130 lumbering across the Pacific there is little more to see than clouds and open blue-gray water. And just as you might begin to lose faith in the pilot’s ability to find the tiny midoceanic target, the Hawaiian archipelago appears through the tropical island haze.
It is a heart-pounding, breathtaking view. My heart raced at once again seeing the four distinct volcanic peaks of Maui, the Big island, Lanai, and Molokai. As the pilots banked the plane in our approach to Oahu, we skirted along the northern dorsal fin shore of the dolphin-shaped Molokai. KP2’s old Hawaiian home filled the landscape, giving me a sudden appreciation of the oceanic journey he undertook when he was less than one year old.
As we flew below the clouds, the island of Molokai stretched the height and breadth of my horizon. The enormity of KP2’s journey at such a young age could only be appreciated at this altitude. I wished he could have had a window seat. Instead he was sleeping in an animal crate tethered with cargo straps to the metal floor of the C-130.
Beau, Traci, and Dr. Casper fussed over the seal in preparation for landing. With my cycling injuries still healing, I decided to let the others do the heavy work. I had already said my “Aloha” to KP2.
• • •
THE WEEK BEFORE, I had quietly entered KP2’s sealarium after the others had left for the day. In the absence of people, the lab was wonderfully peaceful. Junior and the other cockatoos were quietly tucked in sleep on their perches. The sea otters floated quietly with their mittened front paws folded in skyward prayer. Puka and Primo had drifted to the bottom of their pool to rest with full bellies.
In the sealarium, KP2 was not quite yet ready to sleep and was busily head butting his toys around the pool. He stopped when I walked in, then slowly swam over to inspect the noise. I wondered if he could sense the trauma that my body had gone through. I had little doubt that the dolphins could do so; if they could see through aluminum bars surely they could detect broken bones in humans. Seals were not known to possess such highly developed sonar capabilities. Regardless, KP2 curbed his enthusiastic greeting that late afternoon.
Instead of flopping onto the deck, he sank down in the water and brought up a rubber dog toy on his nose, depositing it at my feet.
“You never were afraid to share, were you?” I asked him, laughing and shaking my head. “You teach them, Ho‘ailona,” I told the seal as he floated nearby. “Teach them all to share the oceans. Teach them about hilina‘i—trust—and to have the courage to trust one another. That is the only way we will all survive.” Like Beau, I had no delusions about what the seal understood. But as always he seemed to enjoy the company and the sound of a human voice.
I took the liberty of petting the big seal from head to toe as he sidled up lengthwise to the side of the pool. It would likely be my last opportunity to do so. KP2 was one of only two animals in my lifetime who knew how to read me. I was going to miss the animal connection and the marine mustiness of his silvery back as much as I still missed the softness and the smell of Austin’s sun-warmed fur. But this time there would be no tears. Scientists don’t cry.
As I stroked his warm, slick back, I noticed that there was a lot more of KP2 to love since his arrival two years earlier. It seemed amazing that this two-hundred-pound seal had refused to eat when he’d first arrived at my lab. Every inch of him was handsome. He would always be easy to recognize even in a herd of monk seals. KP2 still had the longest whiskers of any seal I had ever met, and never lost the white angel’s kiss patch on his left hip.
After he rolled over I gave the seal a good belly scratch. It was a proper ending to our time together, with KP2 closing his big, dark eyes in doglike contentment.
“One more thing,” I warned the seal as I stood up to leave. “Never, ever let the others know that I used to talk to you!”
• • •
THE CELEBRATION FOR KP2 began even before the C-130 skidded to a halt on the tarmac at the U.S. Coast Guard air station on Oahu. A crowd of greeters had gathered from across the islands to meet the plane and its precious cargo. They were members of KP2’s ‘ohana from all walks of his incredible life. On the tarmac David Schofield waited with representatives from NMFS, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Waikiki Aquarium, and the Hawaiian Monk Seal Recovery Team. In honor of his journey and his long-awaited return, KP2 would receive a welcome blessing from the elders of Molokai when he was placed on exhibit at the aquarium. For now, a flower lei was draped on his transport cage as a local priest announced with a Hawaiian chant that their island son had finally returned safely to his family.
As a police-escorted caravan whisked him away to his new aquarium home, KP2 took his first breath of Hawaiian air in two years. Likewise, Beau, Traci, and I inhaled deeply with relief, taking in the fragrant tropical air. Our journey was over. We had attempted the absurd and could rest easy—at least for the moment—in the satisfaction of having achieved the impossible for this one abandoned, endangered seal. Now it was all up to the people of Hawaii to embrace Ho‘ailona’s message.
• • •
KULEANA IS A HAWAIIAN WORD that has no direct translation into English. It describes the sense of ancestral-based responsibility that often comes with a unique undertaking or experience. It is destiny with a DNA underpinning coupled with a realization that you are doing what you were meant to do in this life, the harmonization of talent and trajectory. I believe that KP2 as well as Beau, Traci, and I were blessed with kuleana. It began with the gift of being able to read others—for kuleana is best achieved not by looking inward so much as being able to look outward—it grew with the confidence of traveling a clear path.
In my experience, the happiest individuals are those who have discovered their kuleana. Such individuals weather hardships, challenges, and sacrifices not as obstacles or excuses for failure but as a natural part of life’s adventure. The entire odyssey called life is a joy.
For all the difficulties, Beau, Traci, and I love our work and our lives. We recognize the privilege of being in the company of animals every day. In this regard I could never hate the local fishermen. In their own way they loved the oceans and were following their passion, just as we were.
There was a difference, however. Kuleana demands responsibility and respect for your environment. Survival of the fittest, then, could never be interpreted as a license for the most intelligent species to destroy another.
• • •
ABUSED AND ABANDONED, harassed and shuttled between homes, slotted for euthanasia on several occasions, KP2 never lost his enthusiasm for life, his fascination with humans, or ultimately his kuleana. I found a lesson in that. If more people were able to read the world around them, they would instinctively know happiness. The solutions for the preservation of the oceans, and the conservation of monk seals and the remaining animals of the world, would come naturally.
• • •
KP2’S ODYSSEY TAUGHT me that when embarking on any path we erase footprints behind us in order to m
ove forward. The days of diving for fish and finding a mate in the wild waters of the Hawaiian Islands were now relegated to KP2’s sighted past. Similarly, in trying to save the world’s animals, I had lost the link to my own biological future. KP2’s and my lineages were destined to go extinct.
Yet both the seal and I were privileged to be living in the present. We had each managed to cross the boundaries that separated humans from animals, and so helped to edge each other’s species away from the extinction precipice. That was enough for any one life.
For some, the birth of ideas and the nurturing of inspiration serve as equally important paths to immortality. That was KP2’s and my shared destiny, our shared kuleana.
Epilogue
In the time it took for us to care for KP2 and for me to write this book, the Hawaiian monk seal population declined another notch. When KP2 arrived in California, his wild family hovered at just 1,100 members. By the time he returned to Hawaii, the numbers had declined to 1,060 seals, maintaining a trajectory for extinction within fifty years.
There have been new threats and new advancements for monk seals as scientists, federal agents, fishermen, conservation groups, and the public wrestle with the next urgent steps. My theory of traveling water ripples between Hawaii and distant land masses became a stark reality with the 2011 earthquake-generated tsunami that swelled across the Pacific Ocean from Japan, washing over the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and destroying parts of the Santa Cruz Harbor. Shockingly, a wave of debris including lumber, appliances, and plastics from the Japanese earthquake is scheduled to hit the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and the monk seals’ prime habitat beginning in March 2012. Scientists are preparing for the cleanup.
Traci, Beau, and I are awaiting the arrival of new monk seals at the lab to fill our heated pools and our days with their antics and biology. In a move reminiscent of Morgan the sea otter, we’ve agreed to try to rehabilitate one of the wild pup-killing monk seal males that would otherwise have to be euthanized to save the population. We still don’t have enough money, but with KP2-like determination, we continue to turn over every funding rock to support our research ideas. In the meantime, we are exploring the science of “farmer” seals and staying one step ahead of the university accountants.
The Odyssey of KP2 Page 22