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High-tech transmitters giving up secret lives of Hawaiian seals

Press Watch, Honolulu Advertiser, April 11, 2010

Navy pays for devices that also gauge how sonar affects species

Up to 15 monk seals in Hawai’i will be doing their part over the coming year to help scientists understand them better.

The critically endangered animals will wear small transmitters that reveal their movements, including how deep they dive, when they haul out on land and how far they roam.

Accumulating normal habits of the seals also will be used to gauge the effect Navy training exercises, including use of sonar, may have on the animals.

The Navy is footing the bill for the $4,500-each transmitters, NOAA scientists’ travel and veterinary costs associated with the project. The project is slated to last several years.

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Monachus Guardian in Spanish

Thanks to the support of the Government of the Balearic Islands, Spain, the June 2009 issue of The Monachus Guardian has now been published in Spanish. (Publication of the November 2009 issue will follow shortly.)

If you have Spanish-language friends or colleagues who you think might be interested in the publication, please let them know.

The Spanish translation can be accessed at: http://www.monachus-guardian.org/spanish.

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KP2 under study at University of California

Press Watch, UC Santa Cruz Press Release, March 18, 2010
Head trainer Beau Richter has Hō'ailona lie on a platform scale so researchers can weigh him. Photo by Terrie Williams.

A young Hawaiian monk seal that was removed from the wild last year for treatment and rehabilitation is providing researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a rare opportunity to study the physiology of this critically endangered species.

Ultimately, the information from these studies can be used to help monk seals in the wild, according to Terrie Williams, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, who is overseeing the research in coordination with the NOAA Fisheries Service’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, and other researchers.

“No one has ever had the opportunity to conduct these kinds of basic physiological studies with a tropical seal,” she said. “The monk seal population is in trouble, and we hope that these studies will help us to better understand their habitat requirements.”

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Nefeli by satellite

Three weeks after her release into the protected waters of the National Marine Park of Alonnisos, Northern Sporades, Greek NGO MOm has released information on the young monk seal’s movements and dives. Data recorded by the attached satellite transmitter indicates that the orphaned seal, rescued on the Ionian island of Kefalonia on 14 October 2009, has so far remained within the borders of the NMPANS, venturing from her release at the core zone island of Piperi as far as Gioura and Kyra Panaya. Nefeli’s maximum dive depth so far, reports MOm, has reached 100 meters. The organisation expects to continue monitoring Nefeli by satellite for 5 months, until the transmitter is shed naturally in her first moult.

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Fewer Hawaiian monk seal pups

Press Watch, Honolulu Advertiser, February 1, 2010

Population down to about 1,100 in Isles, with annual decline of 4% each year

Photo courtesy NOAA Fisheries/NMFS MMPA/ESA

The 2009 Hawaiian monk seal breeding season produced the fewest pups in at least 10 years as the highly endangered marine mammal species continued its slide toward possible extinction.

NOAA Fisheries biologists counted 119 seal pups born in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands last year, compared with 138 in 2008.

Charles Littnan, lead scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program, said the numbers are discouraging, even though monk seal sightings are becoming more frequent in the main Hawaiian Islands, where 15 births were recorded.

“We’re still seeing a pretty steady decline. Every location (in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands) was down this year,” he said.

There are an estimated 1,100 monk seals in the Islands. With the population declining at a rate of 4 percent annually, biologists predict their numbers will dip below 1,000 in the next three to four years, making the Hawaiian monk seal one of the world’s rarest species. […]

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