Can People and Seals Learn to Coexist?

One spring morning in 2022, beachgoers on Maui’s Kapalua Beach sighted a Hawaiian monk seal with a few feet of fishing line trailing from his mouth. He had swallowed a fishhook — a life-threatening injury. NOAA transported the seal, known as RL72, to the Marine Mammal Center’s hospital, Ke Kai Ola, which means “healing sea,” on the Big Island. Three weeks later, after specialized treatment and surgery, the center’s staff released RL72 on a nearby beach, where he made straight for the ocean and swam home.

Hawaiian monk seals are among the world’s most endangered seals, devastated by negative interactions with human beings. Hunting decimated their population in the mid-1800s. Since then, human activities have exacerbated habitat loss, starvation and food limitation, entanglement in marine debris, and toxoplasmosis, a disease transmitted through cat feces. And the seals still face the threat of intentional killing, in some cases by fishermen who see them as competition. 

In the early 2000s, Hawai’i’s monk seal population hit record lows, dipping perilously close to 1,000. Only about 1,600 individuals remain, and researchers have estimated that 30% are alive now thanks to conservation efforts.

But conservation success brings new challenges: As monk seal populations climb, how can humans and seals live together successfully and avoid the pitfalls of the past?

Since 1975, the Marine Mammal Center, which has locations in California and Hawai’i, has rescued and rehabilitated more than 27,000 marine mammals while promoting conservation and ocean health through research and education. About a decade after the monk seal population dipped to its lowest levels, the center’s employees noticed an uptick in seal pups. It was a good sign, but many weren’t thriving. Their mothers had abandoned them or they suffered from malnutrition. So in 2014, the center founded Ke Kai Ola, the only specialized long-term care hospital for monk seals.

Last year, the center launched a project to co-design its monk seal conservation efforts with the communities where seals and people share space and resources. The approach is increasingly popular, and necessary, among conservation groups, which have found that imposing their goals is less effective than collaborating with affected communities. 

The Marine Mammal Center’s project leans on the Hawaiian concept of pilina, which means “closeness” and “togetherness,” and often refers to the reciprocal relationships between nature and people.

Community collaboration is embedded in the operation of the center, where hundreds of volunteers donate their time, often weekly, to advance its mission. Megan McGinnis was one of them. After years of volunteering, she joined Ke Kai Ola as the animal care manager in 2018 and has since become the hospital’s director. “If you’re going to run a conservation program,” she says, “you’re only going to be as successful as your community has interest in the work that you’re doing.”

So the center’s staff set out to understand the community’s perceptions of monk seal conservation and coexistence efforts. One of their methods? Be open to understanding what they don’t know. 

They’ve identified interested and affected parties and developed strategies for building trusting relationships with them. This winter, they’ve planned coffee chats to pose questions like, “What do you care about when it comes to the ocean?” One of the biggest concerns they’ve heard from locals is about being able to continue subsistence fishing for their families. 

It’s a concern, McGinnis says, that monk seals have, too. But, she goes on, “We can’t just go to people and tell them what they need to do about this.” From coffee chats, the center plans to graduate to conservation summits to establish the community’s priorities and prototype ideas for mutually successful coexistence. 

Since RL72’s release, he’s become a part of the center’s advocacy programs. Staff use his story to teach young people how important it is to use barbless hooks so that wildlife can shake them off. “We have parents come to us and say, ‘My kid will not leave me alone about barbless hooks,’” McGinnis says. “Not only are we saving this individual animal’s life, but then that outreach component can lead to saving other animals’ lives.” As in the concept of pilina, the center’s work comes full circle. 

“Obviously, monk seals are super important to us, right?” McGinnis says. “That’s the lens through which we look at ocean conservation. But everyone who lives in this community is going to have a different way of looking at ocean conservation, so we want to make sure that we’re not just doing what we think we need to do about monk seals. It’s so much bigger than that.”