NEW LIFE

One of the complete joys of my new Kauai life has been "pup sitting"! Seal pups that is. This picture is one of "my" babies born this spring. They are ADORABLE! Cute, cute, cute. The Hawaiian Monk Seal is on the brink of extinction, with only 40 left on this island and even less on the other main islands, so every new life is precious. I am part of a group that sets up shifts to try and protect the pups when they are born. These seals are one of the most graceful things you will ever see in the water, and one of the most lumbering awkward things you will ever see on land! They are air breathing mammals, and although most of their life is in the water, the moms come ashore to have their pups, just one a year, and are extremely vulnerable while they are nursing as that happens only on the beach and not in the water. They used to have no land predators so it was completely safe, but now there are humans (insert scary music), with their dogs (even scarier music, like jaws). People like to walk their dogs on the beach off leash and we have had seal pups ripped apart by them. And if the mom gets chased off sometimes she doesn't come back and the seal pup gets abandoned. Two years ago there was a pup that was abandoned and it wasn't found in time and died. So we "pup sit" to help keep them alive. This spring there were 3 PUPS born at "my" beach!!!!!!!! The first was born in March and then 2 more in June, so there was steady nursing going on every day for 4 months. It was so amazing to have that as a daily part of my life, watching a wild animal rear it's young. Magic. Teaching them to swim, to feed on something other than milk. The pups go from 25 pounds at birth to 150 pounds in 6 weeks!!!!!! That is some GOOD milk! These seals were completely hunted out of the main Hawaiian islands but a small population survived up in the uninhabited islands north of here, and they are now starting to return to the main islands. Yay! Sadly not everyone wants them to return. It astounds me, but some people actually WANT them to go extinct and still kill them even though there are so few left. Two were shot this spring right here on Kauai. Wow. So when we are out there with the new pups trying to protect them with signs and enclosures and talking with people, some of it gets hostile. Yikes.

Every day after my swim I walk the several miles of wild coastline picking up trash. It washes up from the sea every single day,and sometimes people come to enjoy the beach and leave their trash behind on the sand. I've never understood that. Come to a beautiful place and dump on it? hmmm. I dream of one day not seeing any.... There are days when there is very little that washes up, but I have learned that is only because the waves aren't big. Good grief. On the high surf days there is so much I can't pick it all up. How does it all get there? It's that "all water leads to the ocean" thing again. Every scrap thrown by the roadside, everything in a river, all the stuff washed off in our homes, it all gets carried down into the ocean. Even inland, the rivers carry it to the sea eventually. There is a place in the Pacific Ocean that is all garbage collected by currents that is estimated between the size of Texas and the size of the continental U.S.! Wrap your mind around that for a moment. If you want to know more, google "great Pacific garbage patch". Lovely name. So why do I pick up trash when there is so much in the ocean and I am only one person? I'd like to make a difference to help, no matter how small, I have a dream of beaches with no trash, but also because I have seen my beloved Monk Seals try to eat this stuff and it is pure poison to them. It's horrifying to watch them get a piece of trash and start to put it in their mouth. I'm the frantic parent: DON'T PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH! But of course I can't run up and grab it out of their jaws. They are wild animals!

Plastic is one of those lovely human inventions that Nature doesn't recognize or know how to deal with. There have been dead sea creatures that have had autopsies to see why they died and their stomachs are full of plastic that they can't digest. Wow. Here is the thing about plastic: it NEVER goes away. Every bit of plastic ever made is still on this earth! WHAT????? Yes. It gets smaller and smaller, but never becomes part of the earth or water again. It remains something foreign. Since Nature is amazing at coming up with ways to deal with all the stuff we dump on her, I'm hoping she will invent something that eats plastic! Might be something scary though. Like cockroaches, but with giant jaws to chew.(more scary music...this blog needs a music video!) So what can we do in the meantime while we hope for some plastic eating scary creature to evolve? LOOK at every single thing you use and throw away that is plastic, and see how you can use less and throw less. If you haven't done this before it will astound you. EVERYTHING is plastic now! I read an article by an archaeologist that said when scientists are digging thousands of years from now they will find a layer in the earth that is only plastic and declare "we found evidence of the Plastic People"! Funny, but not. Even this computer I am typing on is covered in the stuff! The plastic we throw away never all makes it to the landfill to become a layer in the earth for some scientist to find centuries from now. Here in the islands the landfill is less than a mile from the water anyway, and plastic floats! Any big wind or rain and off it goes on an adventure, looking for an innocent Monk Seal or turtle or seabird (scary music again). And if you have ever watched a garbage truck you know that stuff blows out of it all the time, and then finds a roadside drain to go down. Even if you live thousands of miles away, your plastic may have been washed into the great Pacific garbage patch through some river to the sea. Humbling to think about. And even if you never get to see a baby monk seal, they thank you for doing your part to change this plastic onslaught in the sea, and you may have helped bring back a species from extinction.

Thanks for listening.