Media Watch, Good news/bad news for Hawaiian monk seals, Earthsky.org, 3 August 2010
Jeff Walters is the Hawaiian monk seal recovery coordinator for NOAA Fisheries Service. Walters said that in the isolated northwest Hawaiian islands, the number of monk seals is declining by four percent every year. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that a smaller population of seals on the main Hawaiian islands is growing and thriving, he said.
Jeff Walters: Over the past few years, we’ve had twenty or more seals born in the main Hawaiian islands every year.
Even though the main Hawaiian islands have a much larger human population, the seals are doing better there because they don’t have as much competition for food, or as many predators, said Walters. But, he added, when people try to feed or play with the seals, it runs the risk of “taming” them, which hurts the seal’s chances of surviving in the wild.