Big Island Now: Honokōhau Harbor’s new Hawaiian monk seal pup neighbor welcomed, but maybe too much?

Published in Big Island Now: November 27, 2024

People are suckers for cuteness. Especially when it’s a young animal. Just look at the craze that captivated the globe with Moo Deng, a baby endangered pygmy hippo born this summer at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand.

Her cuteness, popularity and increase in visitation, however, led to some bad behavior. She had water poured on her and objects thrown at her. So for her protection, zoo officials were forced to make some changes.

A 5-month-old endangered Hawaiian monk seal pup that makes her home nearly 6,700 miles to the east in waters off the Big Island is at the center of a situation with some parallels to Moo Deng’s, sans internet icon status.

Negative human interactions like crowding and purposeful feeding can alter a young, impressionable seal’s normal foraging behavior and can have lasting consequences to its development and long-term health.

She’s so cute you just want to snap a picture for social media. She’s also just a baby, so what’s wrong with throwing her a fish or two from time to time? People want to see her and she enjoys seeing them.

The monk seal pup tagged number T64/T65 and named Keaka is a frequent visitor to busy Honokōhau Small Boat Harbor in Kona, a sprawling West Hawai‘i harbor and marina that serves hundreds of commercial and recreational vessels.

It’s rocky shores also are popular places from where fishers cast out.

Keaka meeting the people who use and visit the harbor was inevitable, and now her interactions with them are a cause for concern of those who want to protect her. 

Hawaiian monk seals are protected by federal and state laws. Female seals also get an extra measure of care by marine scientists because they are extremely important to building the population of the critically endangered species.

More hands are always better if getting out information and raising awareness is the aim.

So the Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources Divisions of Aquatic Resources and Boating and Ocean Recreation teamed up with The Marine Mammal Center to step up public outeach and education efforts in response to Keaka’s situation.

Their goal is to remind fishers and boaters at Honokōhau Small Boat Harbor, among other things, not to feed their new marine mammal neighbor and watch out for her.

“She likes to interact with people who are taking pictures of her, and we have been getting reports that she’s being fed, either by coming in and eating the scraps that people are dumping off their boats or by some of the akule fishermen who are throwing her fish,” said Tyler Jeschke, a monitoring technician with the Division of Aquatic Resources, about Keaka.

If interactions like those continue, however, they could result in Keaka becoming conditioned to seek out and rely on people for food, negatively affecting her ability to grow and mature as a wild seal — that’s one of the reasons feeding Hawaiian monk seals is illegal.

“Negative human interactions like crowding and purposeful feeding can alter a young, impressionable seal’s normal foraging behavior and can have lasting consequences to its development and long-term health,” said Megan McGinnis, associate director of Hawai‘i Community Conservation at The Marine Mammal Center. “Responding to, caring for and raising awareness to empower our community on how they can protect endangered Hawaiian monk seals — like Keaka — is at the heart of our one health approach.”

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