YOUNG MONK SEAL

Aloha! The weather has been really nice on Kauai. We have been enjoying temps in the mid 80's with light trades. On Friday we went snorkeling at Anini but that shouldn't surprise anyone! We had a very interesting snorkel. We saw our usual friends along with a pretty good sized ulua. This fish was close to 3 feet long and I would guess somewhere near 20 pounds. It was behaving in a very protective manner so I would guess it must have had a nest with eggs close by. On our way back in we noticed that a young monk seal was sunning himself on the beach directly in front of our chairs. Kind of funny that with the entire beach to pick from he choose about the only spot were there were chairs! By the time we got to shore the NOAA volunters had already taped the area off and had signs posted to warn people to leave the seal alone. NOAA estimates there are only about 1200 monk seals left so they are very protective of them especially in light of what happened earlier this month. We had an idiot or maybe a group of idiots shoot two of them. One of them was shot at the beach just down from our house...the one you can see from the overlook. The other was shot near Poipu I think. The authorities won't say for sure which beachs but the video the news put out was taken at that overlook. A person would have to be pretty sick to hurt one of these guys...all they do is just lay on the beach. They're not afraid of humans so they don't even try to get away. Today Jackie and I stayed close to home with the one exception being our trip to McDonalds for dinner. We needed to go to the store anyway so we decided to do our shopping in Kapa'a as thats where the nearest McDonalds is located!