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William M. Johnson "Hi! Aloha! I’m Kim and I’ll be your greeter tonight!" gushes a beaming, incandescent Hawaiian shirt at Kahului arrivals. Before anyone can stutter a word, we’re festooned with flower and seashell necklaces and bundled into a Courtesy Bus. We head off into the night towards ritzy Kihei, a manicured little enclave for the rich and not-so-famous. Here, scattered along several miles of coral sands are the resort complexes and condos that, for five long, arduous conference days (and several more to recover from the stress, obviously) would be our home away from home. Taxis rarely venture down here, so don’t bother to ask, but there’s a rental outfit a couple of miles down the street that does a nice little line in Mustang convertibles. Like glamorous Monaco two years earlier, it’s clear that the convenors, the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) had done their homework. You could tell that no one in the SMM hierarchy had been sitting around darting world atlases with their eyes blindfolded. Choice of venue is probably a science in its own right. Just imagine the mind-boggling variables involved in judging a host candidate’s ability to entice the genuine marine mammalogist while discouraging riffraff — yes, including those who happen to believe that dolphins are on an extraterrestrial mission from the planet Zorg.
The Outrigger, like so many SMM resorts before it, graciously provided every conference amenity one could hope for — including championship golf courses, tennis courts, mosaic-tiled swimming pools, frothing Jacuzzis, grass-skirted hula-hula girls, and other essential services for the jet-lagged nature manager too numerous to recite here. It was, in fact, just what the doctor ordered… or rather, what about 2000 doctors ordered given the hordes of marine mammal biologists and nature managers that were suddenly thronging the corridors by Monday morning. Crowds come jostling their way along the open galleries. Chalk and blackboard professors in beige slacks. Bearded explorer-types from anywhere between Amazonia to Zaliv Shelikhova. Students as fresh-faced as the day they were first exuded, plastic-like, from the laboratory moulds cast by the professors and mentors. Well, even Dolly the sheep wasn’t that unique. Shiny-eyed postgrads linger about the commercial booths that are busy touting satellite tags, radio transmitters, critter-cams and other erotic high-tech hardware. Can you imagine the whale biopsies with these suckers? Oh baby… Silicon tracking carbon. Instruments that are mere extensions of human perception, peering into the depths of an alien briny world. Locking onto sea beings that just 400 years ago were not marine mammals at all, but mermaids and sirens and monsters. It must be a measure of human progress that such intricate, interwoven lives can now be reduced to arcane strings of words and numbers, binary codes on a computer screen. We will probe, cogitate and analyse, and then declare to all the world that we knew you. "Welcome to Paradise," our local cable channel announces. Indeed, just look around. There’s nothing quite like America to renew one’s faith in ecology. Specially-customised 4-wheel-drive trucks with tyres that look like they’ve been ripped off a farm tractor growl by on their way to the Mall. Tourists crank up their air-conditioners to Arctic mode, probably not even realising that they’ve just endured 2 days of airline hell and spent several thousand dollars to escape the same freezing temperatures back home. Obese people in search of the silver slimming bullet drive their cars for 20 miles to do their group aerobics, and then stop off at a McDonald’s drive-in on the way home. There’s even a drive-in cemetery where you can park right next to your beloved’s tombstone ("Caution: egress from vehicle may be required for wreath-laying access"). Down in Kihei, the manicured pathways with multiple anti-litigation signs warning of steep drops, poisonous plants, steps, slippery surfaces, illegal dog excrement and low-flying birds seem to convey the impression that nature is too dangerous, too crude, too unrefined to be permitted beyond civilisation’s perimeter fencing. After a few days of this subliminal conditioning, it becomes clear enough to any dullard that the environmental crisis has already been quite adequately solved to everyone’s satisfaction, thank you very much. Inadvertently, so does the Conference itself, which can’t exactly claim a gold star from teacher for promoting conservation issues (N.B. the words ‘animal welfare’ are not spoken in polite company here). The other problem for Europeans who have grown up on imported American television is that we all kind of assume that Hollywood is just make believe. We didn’t expect to step off the plane and find ourselves on a film set. We didn’t realise that surfers on Maui actually do talk like Keanu Reeves on a bad day. We didn’t realise that cool undercover cops actually do drive around in red Camaros with racing stripes. We didn’t even realise that six-door, dazzling-white, stretch limos actually existed beyond Paramount Studios until one disgorged about thirty Japanese marine mammalogists at the foyer of the Outrigger. In the conference chamber, meanwhile, some proud throwback to Cartesian cellar science is spouting about her team’s success in repeatedly rounding up Stellar sea lions from fast inflatables and bringing them back to "The Mother Ship". Can you imagine the scene? The sea lion is strapped onto the examination table under the fuzzy glare of Operating Room lights, surrounded by latex-gloved researchers in surgical masks, prod and probe already in hand. My god, and you thought all those people with alien abduction stories were nuts… But now, some other conference highlights: Are Hawaiian monk seals moving back to the ‘downtown islands’? Historically, status reports have consistently overlooked the presence of monk seals on the main, human-inhabited, Hawaiian islands (Hawaii, Oahu, Maui, Kauai etc.), some even going so far as to suggest that the species never inhabited these places. But with some high-profile harassment, accident and seal-tourist culture clashes breaking the news, it seems that the government may finally have to bite the bullet and admit that there is a significant Monachus schauinslandi population that needs protecting in populated Hawaii’s backyard. In fact, credible rumours doing the rounds on Maui suggest that there may be at least 70 monk seals around the ‘downtown islands’ (i.e. excluding their traditional habitat in the northwestern Hawaiian islands — Nihoa, Kure, French Frigate Shoals, Pearl & Hermes etc.). NMFS, perhaps unfairly, has been accused of ducking the issue in the past. Conspiracy theorists who have grown up on American TV have tended to attribute the blind eye syndrome to the fact that an admission of the seal’s existence here would trigger a legal obligation to protect the animals, even on prime touristic sites. While admitting that tourists will not be evicted from Waikiki Beach anytime soon, NMFS has announced a monk seal survey around the main islands (see Monk Seals in the Main Hawaiian Islands and High levels of human interaction with a Hawaiian monk seal on the island of Maui, this issue). Midway blues: After having largely deserted the Atoll through the military occupation years, the Hawaiian monk seal’s recolonisation of Midway has been an outstanding conservation success story, even if — as veteran researcher Bill Gilmartin cheerfully admitted during his presentation — science actually had very little to do with it. Threats to the new arrivals, however, appear to be on the increase, and have become a source of tension between monk seal researchers, the Fish and Wildlife Service and Midway’s new corporate overlords, Midway Phoenix Corp. (see The Old Woman Who Swallowed the Fly). According to Gilmartin, tourists are wandering onto prohibited access beaches, and incidents of harassment are on the rise. Midway Phoenix’s intention to crank up visitor numbers (i.e. till receipts) is unlikely to help matters. Off the menu: It may not have been explicitly stated in the abstract, so those monk seal aficionados who crammed into the Pikake Room to hear updates on the mysterious 1997 mass die-off of Mediterranean monk seals in the western Sahara can be forgiven for missing an off-the-cuff remark that crept into Jaume Forcada’s presentation (see Recent Publications). According to the former University of Barcelona researcher (now at NMFS), lowered female reproduction with higher pup mortality has so compromised the Côte des Phoques colony that translocation and captive breeding should no longer be considered. Captive breeding: We learn from NMFS that those responsible for promoting an ambitious, though unapproved, captive breeding plan for the Hawaiian monk seal (news brought to you by your intrepid correspondent in Monaco two years ago) will now be sent to work in far colder climes. The thought of these poor unfortunates being banished to some kind of frozen Siberian wasteland or NMFS gulag is heart-wrenching. Nothing we said, surely? Apparently not. Rumour has it that sensitive captive breeding experiments will now be handled by — wait for it — the world’s premier amusement park, marine circus and purveyor of Bud Lite, SeaWorld of San Antonio, Texas. As readers may remember from our last issue (Off on another adventure) SeaWorld obtained ten female Hawaiian monk seals in April last year. The animals had become an unwanted financial liability to NMFS after a translocation experiment ended up blinding the animals in NMFS’ Kewalo Research Facility in Hawaii. We have it on good authority that up to four males will be dispatched to Seaworld to kickstart the reproductive physiology experiments. NMFS considers it unnecessary to discover the cause of the blindness affecting the study group prior to commencement (or, indeed, to discover whether it is contagious, or transmittable to any pups produced), since any captive bred animals would remain precisely that: captive in perpetuity. Antibes Marineland, eat your heart out. All of which just goes to show that what you learn outside the conference room easily rivals anything you hear inside. As I recline on my sun lounger poolside, I am left to ponder some of the unkind things muttered about this prestigious international gathering. To say that this Maui glamour-feste will inevitably fall into the obscurity it so richly deserves (no pun intended) is to belittle its deeper role in the advancement of human knowledge. It is here where we forge experiments in cutting edge scientific research, it is here among our peers that we are inspired to pluck pinnipeds from the deep and bring them back to The Mother Ship. One misguided soul writes from the Mediterranean: "As a biologist I always ask why they have to have these kinds of meetings in fancy resorts. We can’t afford to go, but maybe they don’t want us to." Although this kind of thing is also not mentioned in polite company, our correspondent is, of course, referring obliquely to those hand-to-mouth conservation projects from the front line. Really, haven’t these people heard of credit cards? Waitperson! Another strawberry daiquiri please…
MAUI ON LESS THAN $500 A DAY
If the 13th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals was seen to be tempting fate with its choice of unlucky numbers, it has to be said that no one appeared to be particularly spooked as they packed their bags and headed off to sub-tropical, palm-bedecked, ukulele-twanging, hip-sashaying Maui.
No doubt in keeping with that policy, the Outrigger Wailea Resort (and several overspill hotels along the beach) were persuaded to slash their room rates, charging a reasonable but riffraff-busting $159.00 per night (plus federal, state and local taxes and tips, obviously) for ocean views (just there, around the corner, in between the palm trees).
Copyright © 2000 William M. Johnson, The Monachus Guardian. All Rights Reserved