January 25, 2017 — HONOLULU — The population of Hawaiian monk seals — one of the world’s most critically endangered marine mammals — has been increasing 3 percent a year for the past three years, federal wildlife officials said Tuesday.
There are now about 1,400 of the seals in the wild, said Charles Littnan, lead scientist of the Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“This is phenomenal, hopeful news for the population,” Littnan told reporters. “Yet we have a long way to go to recovery.”
The population has experienced increases in the past, including the mid-2000s, but Littnan characterized those as minor blips.
Hawaiian monk seals declined in numbers for years, most recently as juveniles struggled to compete for food with large fish and sharks in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a mostly uninhabited stretch of tiny atolls that includes Midway.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Virginian-Pilot