 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of Likeable Science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Likeable science is all about how science is a vital, dynamic and interesting part of everyone's life. And everyone should enjoy science, be thrilled by science, and embrace science. It should not be shunned, it should not be relegated to an ivory tower. But it really is, it really matters to all of us, it impacts all of us. Here today on Likeable Science I have John Gellman, welcome John. Thank you. John is with the Hawaii Marine Animal Rescue. Response. Response. Sorry. I knew I would love that. He's present in that group and they're a private non-profit who basically, well, Ellis, what'd you do? Yes, as we're a non-profit we're based on Oahu and we're involved in a variety of preservation and recovery activities for both Hawaiian monk seals and sea turtles. We're a private non-profit as I said and we're funded by government grants and private donations. Excellent. Excellent. It's important stuff. The populations of, well, the sea turtles are doing pretty well these days, but the monk seals are pretty, pretty marginal, right? They're hanging around. You were saying about 300. About 300 in the main islands. Yeah. And that's a pretty small number, right? It sure is, especially if we have impacts to their population that take away from new births. Yeah. Before we get into our main topic, I'd just like to sort of tell a little story of one of my little campfire stories that sort of relates to this and speaks the importance of each animal. So I was just reading this in the Galapagos Islands. Some researchers have been following some animals for years at the Finches, Darwin's Finches, that live in the Galapagos. And of course, initially the islands were populated by presumably one pair of Finches of the same species and now there are about 20 species of Finches that live all around the islands. All have speciated out into different environments, taking advantage of different food sources. So about 30 years ago, the scientists found a one male of a large groundfinch species flew about 100 kilometers and landed on another island in the Galapagos where there were no others of his kind. He wandered around for a while and then he found a female of a medium groundfinch species that apparently accepted him. They bred successfully and for the last 30 years basically, the offspring from that pair have been a distinct lineage, they're very distinguishable from any other birds on the island. They're bigger than the other birds. They're not full-sized like him but they're bigger, their beaks are shaped differently. Because he was male and these birds learned their father's call, they all call like he did and therefore they won't call for other species. So the species has bred true for 30 years basically and is running along. It just speaks to the importance of a single animal, in that case started a whole new species basically. That's right. Yeah. There are so few monk seals in the main islands that it's very important for each one to survive. Yeah. Because as you were saying earlier, if one particular female dies early, then you sort of have to, her whole lineage is basically down and they can produce how many pups over a lifetime. It depends on the animal but it could be 10, 12 more. Right. And those start to reproduce and you've got a population going so if you cut female's life span short or early, it's very bad for a small population. Absolutely. Yeah. So tell us how you got into this and what brought you into this field? I actually fell in by accident. I had a career in a completely different industry and was looking for something to do as I got older that I felt made a difference in nature and in the environment. And I started volunteering to help out with monk seals and at that point learned more about it and eventually started our own organization and went out and got grants. And here we are. That's great. That's great. That's wonderful. So these animals have a lot of different causes. I mean they're obviously a little die of natural causes in theory but you were saying at the start of the show that's not very typical here in the main Hawaiian islands, right? Well in the main islands we think that many, these animals can live to be 30 to 35 years. However in the wild it's rare that they live that long. So if we consider animals maybe the 25, 30 year range it would be more typical. And what happens after we find animals that age we just lose track of them and we presume that they do die. The animals that we are aware of that die we do track their causes of death and those are the key threats for the species to recover. And in the main islands they fall into different categories if you want me to elaborate to show that if you kind of take out of the picture those things that humans don't have too much of an impact on like reproductive loss. There are stillborns. There are aborted fetuses. There are animals that are born that don't thrive. We take that out. There are really some several key causes of death and most of them have a very strong human component. There's disease and the disease that's having the biggest impact on monk seals now is toxoplasmosis which is carried by feral cats. So there's a disease component. Explain to the audience how feral cats get this disease. They don't walk up to the monk seals and scratch them. So feral cats and only cats, this is a parasitic disease and the eggs of this parasite actually live and reproduce inside the gut of cats and it doesn't necessarily need to be a feral cat. It could be any cat that eats birds or other animals that carry the parasite. But feral cats particularly because they don't have a kitty litter, they don't have a kitty box, when they defecate in the wild those eggs, those parasitic eggs find their way to the ocean and then they're taken in by ocean creatures that the monk seals eat. So toxoplasmosis is a major concern for us and it's one that we're looking very hard at and there's things that we can do, there's things that everybody can do like keeping their cat indoors and spaying and neutering. Good for other animals on the way too, bird populations. And then there's fishery interactions. These are animals who may get caught on a hook. Sometimes those hooks are ingested inside the animal and that can actually cause death. Other times it may just be on the exterior of the animal and the hook can be removed. There is entanglement. There are animals who get caught in nets. There's animals who get caught in floating debris. And then there's the whole last section which is trauma and that is a serious bodily injury that can happen for a variety of sources but the most prevalent of trauma cases are actually human anthropogenic caused trauma. So this is gunshot wound, things like that where animals are actually killed. Hard to believe but there are people around here who, this sort of gets us to the sort of theme of today's show is sort of busting some of these myths. There are people around here who believe that these monk seals are bad in some sense, right? They're eating all the fish that a fisherman wants to catch. Exactly. But that's fundamentally not really the case. No it's not. They are pretty opportunistic feeders. They are opportunistic feeders but we know from research and from actually observing them in the wild and actually attaching cameras to their backs, we know what their foraging habits are. We know what kind of food they eat and we actually know how much they eat. And they're not generally going after the same kinds of fish that a fisherman is going after. And they're not generally foraging in the same area as fishermen. Now they may traverse the area where a fisherman is to come to or go from the shoreline. And they are opportunistic, as you said, like a dog. So if a dog sees a snack on the ground, they're going to eat it. Same thing for a seal. So if a seal is on the line. Exactly. But generally they're not habituated to seek out fishermen and go after bait. Right. That's not their preferred mode of operation. I suppose a few may learn that as an interesting food source but I know you have to deal with sort of differently, I suspect, but okay. So on there, there are a lot of these seals that are really pretty interesting on attractive animals. Right. And I think don't we have a picture here or two that we could. We can talk about this. Yeah, sure. This is just to review our activity. So yeah, we're involved in a variety of tasks. Everything from operating the hotlines that people call to report a seal to responding in the field to assisting with interventions and escalations and this gives you an example, this picture gives you an example of some of our activity in just the last year. So obviously we're covering, you know, a lot of shoreline over about 300 miles worth and there you next you see the number of sightings that we took through our hotline and the number of times we responded. So there's a lot of activity going on covering not only responses but also looking for animals. When you look at surveys, we're actually looking for animals where they haven't been reported and then there's the escalations and the interventions. What do you mean by escalation there? So this could be anything from responding to a report of an animal that may be hooked and then subsequently tracking that animal until it's in a position where it can be, an intervention can be scheduled and can be carried out successfully and then assisting in the intervention, could be on the beach removing the hook, could be transporting the animal into where they're cared for and maybe an operation is necessary. Turtle interventions could be, you know, removing fish hooks or removing entanglement. So it really spans a variety of different types of escalations. So we're just a really busy organization. Sounds like it, sounds like it. And some of these interventions have to be handled rather carefully because of federal law, right? Right. Yeah, the Hawaiian monk seal is an endangered species. It has, you know, very special rules and regulations about how they can be handled and managed. And so we act in a support role for NOAA and we assist them in these interventions and help them get the job done. Excellent. And that's what actually brings up one of the themes that we're going to come back to repeatedly here is people need to know sort of the rules as a order of dealing with monk seals. And one of the first rules is sort of, you know, you don't walk up to these things on the beach, right? You give them some space. Well, this is a common misunderstanding there. We do want seals to be given the chance to rest. Right. They spend about a third of their time on land. And so they're resting from many hours of foraging. Right. And so we do want them to rest. And there is no, one of the common misconceptions is that there's some kind of a distance regulation. There really isn't. There is a law, so against intentional disturbance and intentional changing of behavior. So if you intentionally disturb the animal and it's disturbed from its sleep, that could be a violation of the law. But we ask people to give it a respectable distance, maybe 50 feet or so, so that they can rest and not be disturbed. Yeah, yeah. That's very sensible. I know with the Honu, it's about a six foot distance because they're, of course, less concerned about people, seemingly. So, but what about in the water? In the water, our guidance is to move away. So we don't want people to play with the animal. We don't want the people to disturb its behavior. So if it's foraging, again, we don't want people to interrupt that foraging activity. And generally, our message is move away. They can be curious and you're in their element. And we just don't want you to have any kind of a negative interaction with the animal. Right. So, I mean, if Monk Seal comes up to you in the water, yes, you can try to move away if you would. But where's the Monk Seal? It's much more at home and move faster in the water than you can, so. Right. Not much you can do then. Okay. Excellent, excellent. So, and we said there are actually two populations, right? There's the main Hawaiian Islands and the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. And what's the population like up there? Right. Up there, there's many more animals. They're much more concentrated into small atolls. And up there, there's about 1,100 animals currently at best guess, and opposed to the 300 in the main Hawaiian Islands. But on the other hand, the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, too, are more vulnerable to rising sea level, which is happening, right? Right. So there's a series of threats that we would consider major threats to the animals here in the main islands. And there's kind of a different set up there. Right. There's more competition. There's less food. There's more competition for that food by other apex predators. So the survival rate of newborns is lower than it is in the main Hawaiian Islands. You also have significant debris. People have always heard of the Pacific Garbage Patch. There is significant entanglement hazards in the Northwest. And as you said, there's habitat impacts from sea level rise and other environmental changes. Yeah, since every inch of the sea level rise cuts off what, five inches to a foot or so of the beach, basically. And those are just flat. A lot of the places where they haul out are just flat little sandbars, basically. Correct. So if you have a small atoll that's maybe only a couple of acres with maybe only two feet of elevation, once you lose, you can easily lose half of that habitat. Right, yeah. And that means that the seals are less spaced. And of course, they keep their own distance from one another. And they have a certain level of sociability and a certain level of non-sociability, right? That's right. So yeah, that could be a whole issue. So we could actually couple the issues now about how people can actually actively help them, right? The idea of not wanting your cat outside, I would say keeping an indoor cat and being respectful. Fishing, you know, responsible fishing practices. You know, if you see, if you're fishing and you see a seal approaching your area, maybe just take a break from fishing or reel your line in until the seal has left the area. Obviously, if you're a net fisherman, you know, using the appropriate equipment and using it according to the regulations, monitoring your equipment so that an animal can't be entangled. Sounds sensible. I think, I mean, we're going to have to take a quick break here. But we're going to be back in a moment. John Yellman of the Hawaii Marine Animal Response. I got to write that time. Now, I'm Ethan Allen, your host on Lakeable Science. You don't think that Kauai? I'll be back in a moment. Aloha, I'm Winston Welch. And every other Monday at 3 p.m., you can join me at Out and About, a show where we explore a variety of topics, organizations, events, and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country, and world. So please join us every other Monday at 3 and we'll see you then. Aloha. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. Hi, welcome back. I'm Ethan Allen, your host of Lakeable Science here on Think Tech, Hawaii. Glad you could join us. With me today on Think Tech Studio is John Gelman, president of the Hawaii Marine Animal Response Group, a non-profit that works with both monk seals and Hawaiian sea turtles to rescue them, to help them when they're in trouble, to protect them, to ensure the recovery of their populations. We were talking before about some of the threats to them and some of the ways that people can be helpful to them. And you would say earlier in our exchanges, sort of a spectrum of people from sort of people who are not liking them, people who are sort of ambivalent about them, people who think they're okay, but basically sort of keep quiet about it, people who actively support them, and then the odd group of people who are almost too enthusiastic about them, right? That's correct, yeah. The bottom line is that these animals face threats and most of these threats can be mitigated or at least reduced if we, the public, has a better understanding of the animal and supports the animal. And so as you said, that can be everything from negative support all the way to overly supportive and we're just looking to try to moderate that, move some folks that are ambivalent or negative to the positive support side and maybe move some people that are maybe overly supportive and sometimes overly emotional about the issue and move them back to the positive support. At the end of the day, what we're looking for is the public to be all members of the public to be supportive of the species, to call the hotline if they see an animal that might be in trouble. For fishermen, if they think they may have hooked a seal to call the hotline, they can report anonymously. There's a variety of things each of us can do to help these animals and we're just asking for everyone to be a supporter. Yeah, and to do that, it's sort of important people know these animals a little better, right? Because I'm sure you guys get calls about the seal pups that are abandoned on the beach all the time, right? When indeed the mother has left the pup there purposely, she's gone out, she's foraging for much needed food and she's going to come back in a few hours, presumably, and take care of her pup just fine. We get people who report what they think is a pup and it's usually an adult as well. Okay, and what are some other of the sort of the myths? One of the big myths is what they eat and how often, how much they eat. So their common foraging activity is to forage in waters that are 60 to 300 feet. So they're not foraging generally in 10 feet of water or five feet of water. So they're out in deeper water than a fisherman is going to be able to fish in. And also they're bottom feeders, they're opportunistic bottom feeders. So they're not going after game fish, they're going after things like octopus and crab and shrimp and lobster and eel that they find in deeper water along the bottom. And they don't eat as much as some people may think they eat. They only eat about 4% of their body weight. So an average adult might eat between 12 and 15 pounds of food a day. So their impact to the fishery ecosystem is minimal. Again, there's so few of these animals and they only eat 12 to 15 pounds each. So their impact to fisheries is really minimal. Yeah, okay, that's informative. Because yeah, people tend to think of them as being competition for the fisherman. But yeah, of course, being opportunistic feeders are going to go after the bottom fish, the slow fish, the things that are more confined to the bottom rather than swimming freely quickly through the ocean, right? Right, they're anatomically designed actually to be bottom feeders. They're not really designed to be hunting at the upper level of the water column like maybe other species like sea lions, which they're completely different anatomically. Whiskers are sort of tacked old, basically? Yes, their whiskers are very sensitive. They're able to sense prey even in dark, pure dark water at night. So they're really evolved to be master hunters. And so then, what else? What are the other myths that cause trouble that get people into trouble? Yeah, I think one of the other myths is again, going back to the desired behaviors. So this notion of being too close to an animal. Again, there is no law or regulation about how close you can be to an animal. There are laws and protections against disturbing the animal intentionally. So one of the common misconceptions is that this, that perhaps occasional or unintentional disturbance may be detrimental to the animal, and generally it isn't. So it's a common misconception that someone who accidentally gets too close is a danger. Now they may be in danger if they get too close and get bit, but there's really very little danger to the animal. Does the biting happen much? Not because there's not too much interaction. But now with a mom and a pup, that is a different story. That's where we really try to limit proximity and any kind of contact because a mother seal is going to protect her pup aggressively if needed. So we really encourage people to stay a distance. Right, same reason why if you're hiking in the mountains and you see a bear, that may be fine, but if you're between a mom and a cub, you are in big trouble, right? Right, yeah. Yeah, and I think another common misconception might be that they are sleeping at night and hunting during the day, or vice versa. And what we really know is that they are opportunistic. Some animals hunt at night, some forage during the day, and some do both. Yeah, okay. I think we had a couple more images here. I'm not quite sure what, but okay. Yeah, so this goes back to our discussion about a leading cause of death. So again, the toxoplasmosis in the green is a big concern. The hooks and the entanglements are also a big concern. And then this human-related trauma is a big deal. And it's something we need to face. And it's something we can really only change through education and support. Yeah, okay. That's sort of a depressing chart, but gotta face facts about it right now, okay? Let's see what's next in our list of photos here, okay? Yeah, this is again going back to what can everybody do to help fight toxoplasmosis. And here the message is keep your cat indoors and support span neutering. And perhaps if you wish to, support stronger measures to control the feral cat problem. Sure, okay. And next. So this is an example of a fish hook that's been ingested. And on the right, an animal that's unfortunately been entangled in a net. So again, we ask fishers to fish responsibly. And if you're gonna use a net, please follow the regulations. Right. Example, another sad example of amthoroprogenic human-caused trauma. This goes to one of our myths. We haven't got here yet, but let's just leave this picture up for a second. This goes to the myth of, or really the misunderstanding about why they're called monk seals. So there's really two general feelings about this, two general thoughts. One is that they have this extra roll of skin and fat around their necks. And some people believe that looks like the cowling of a priest's robe. If you go to the next shot, you'll see that people, common myth is that they're called monks because they're solitary. And while they generally are less gregarious than other marine pinnipeds, they do, you do see them in groups sometimes. So there's a group here of five males hanging out on the beach together. So yes, while they are more solitary than other species, it's not meant to believe that they are always by themselves. And so why do they holler? Is it really to rest and get warm again, basically? I mean, they're on cold water. Yeah, and you do see socialization. You do see them interacting with each other. Really? Yeah. I've not yet seen that. There's only a very few of them on the beach. Okay. And they're reproductive habits. Let's touch on that here because that's of course critical to maintaining and hopefully enlarging the population, right? They don't reproduce very fast. Right, so a lot of these marine species have fairly long gestation periods. With Hawaiian monk seals, the females start to reproduce when they're maybe four, you generally more than four years old. And they have a gestation period that we believe is around 11 months. And so the cycle is they get pregnant, they give birth. They are a little unusual in this world of penipeds in that they do stay with their pup pretty much non-stop during the nursing period. So they give birth to a single pup and they stay with that pup and nurse that pup pretty much exclusively for four to six weeks. And that's the period of time when we're really concerned about human contact. Right. And then at some point, the mom has given up all the calories she can give up and she decides it's time to leave. And she leaves very abruptly. And at that point the pup's on its own. Oh really, okay, I did not know that. So when you do see a small pup on the shore by itself, it really probably is. It's probably the mom probably took off and decided like, you're ready. It's been weaned at that point. Forcibly. Yes, and it's called a catastrophic weaning in fact. And so one of the common misconceptions is that maybe this is an emotional thing for the pup or the mom. And we, as objective people, we need to remember that these animals have been living here for millions of years. This is what they do. This is the way they do it. They're people who have a lot more experience than me have been watching these animals for decades. And they'll tell you that they see this kind of weaning behavior all the time. And after the weaning occurs, there's very little contact between the mother and the pup. Interesting, interesting. So we may want to put emotion with that and think, oh, is that sad? What a concern is the pup scared. And we're really at that point just putting human emotions into something. There may be some odd sense of shifts because yes, the pup is living one way, getting all its food from the mom and suddenly rather abruptly now has to go out and, hey, I don't know. Absolutely. But I mean, birds, when they leave the nest and something, they're flying. It's a big shift for them. People don't tend to think of that as an emotionally traumatic experience for them. I think part of it is because these are very charismatic, attractive animals. Hey, so this is great. There's all kinds of good stuff here. You've talked about how we need to educate the public and all. Before we leave, I want to ask you one completely off the wall question though. I'm asking this on my guests these days. So tell me this, John, if you had your choice of having the superpower of being able to be invisible or to fly, which would you choose and why? Woo, I think fly. Yes, as a former pilot, I love seeing the earth from above and would love to be able to do that under my own power. Cool. Excellent. Hey, well, I got to thank you so much. This was really very informative. You enlightened me. I always learned from my guests here, but I would have maintained some of these myths here myself in my head. And so I've been myth-busted. And I very much appreciate your doing that and wish you great luck with your good worthwhile endeavors. We want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to describe our activity today. Well, thank you. And lo, ha, and I hope you will come back and join us for another episode next week of Likeable Science. You're on Think Tech Hawaii.