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. | . | Aloha Monk Seal Watchers and Friends,
Many of you have had the opportunity to view our new Monk Seal rack cards and we would like to thank each of you for your kind response to this small effort to save our seals. I have been asked to give a brief history of why Bob and I went through the process to design and promote these informational cards.
The idea has been with us for this past year having spent significant time among the visitors and seals on our beaches, and performing lectures during our business presentations at local resorts. During our years in business sailing visitors from Hanalei Bay we have established contact with talented graphic artists, printers and publishers. In fact you may not realize but the "Kauai Activities and Attractionsî guidebook located in the airport and outside local shops graciously devoted an entire page about our Hawaiian Monk Seal. The pup born on Mahaleupu beach graced the very first printing of this Kauai Island guide and she in the second printing at this writing. Toni Marie Davis, from the AOA ( Activities Owners Association), Gregg Hoxsie of Maui's Printing Co-Op and Steve Mitchell of Tradewind Graphics, lent their expertise in getting our idea to print and out to the public. A Big Mahalo to all these fine businessmen and women for their Aloha, and free space to promote education about our Hawaiian Monk Seals. The rack card just seemed like a natural fit as we already had experience designing rack cards for our company Captains Sundown's each year. The personal expense, however, almost kept the project from getting off the ground when Governor Ben Cayetano forced the closing of our business last year for about 6 months after decades of operation. But that's another story. We had an earlier project in mind in order to educate the visitor about our endangered seals. The plan was to design a poster which could become a "permanent" fixture in the hotel or timeshare units. This cost saving idea was that a 5"x7" monk seal poster mounted behind the door in the units could get a lot of attention without having to consistently replenish stock. This idea met resistance from the "five-star" resorts who wanted artistic control over the way the poster should look, and final say as to whether or not the information meshed or "fit-in" with the room decor ! I promise I did do my best to explain the Hawaiian Monk Seal is an "endangered" species. My experience in trying to get educational monk seal data from the Dept. of Land and Nat'l Resources or NMFS was tedious. For instance, in original phase of the Monk Seal Watch program, volunteers were offered similar styles of printed material by NMFS to pass out to interested parties. Before long it seemed NMFS just couldn't spare the volume of cards needed to keep up with the demand from our visitors and local community alike. In one monk seal haul out on the East side , for example, I could easily have given-away over 100 informational cards! After multiple phone calls, my requests for more informational data was rejected by Oahu and our own Kilauea Lighthouse Staff---they too have a supply and demand problem, it seemed. Oahu staff finally mailed about one dozen or so monk seal cards upon request but declined to send more as they were reportedly low on stock. So Bob and I having returned to work for a brief time this summer, set to work getting our Monk Seal Rack Card project project to its fruition. To our knowledge, no other business has ever dedicated this kind of advertising to an endangered species before !One, phone call to Steve Mitchell, graphic designer, and he was off and running with every piece of written information I could provide about the Monk Seals. The most time consuming part of the project was finding the right pictures. If you've tried to get a picture of a seal for identification purposes then you realize the end result is not the "cutsey" smiley face photo of a Hawaiian Monk Seal, but rather a picture of protruding abdomen ( for sexing the animal), and a close op of a nasty chest wound, or a bloody face with a fish hook being extracted, not suitable for small children or weak stomachs! So with the help of photographer Peter Burrows, and the cooperation of the Mahalepu pup, the pictures came together! The text was given a simple format as many volunteers helped to refine the data. Telephone numbers, addresses and donation information all had to be double-checked and approved by Aquatics staff Don Heacock and NMFS staff Thea Johanson. All web site info and donation information printed on the rack card was obtained from Dr. Carl Berg, (mahalo for the P.O.Box !). All numbers and addresses are current please use them with confidence. Inspiration for the rack card comes from two important factors in our daily lives. The first, is the ancient Hawaiian tradition known as "Malama Aina". Our understanding of this ancient principle is to "take care" of the Aina. By guarding over the Hawaiian Monk Seal, we are all doing our part to "malama" or protect this species. By educating ourselves and our visitors, we insure the protection of this species for the next generation. There is no better purpose for this project than to share our Aloha with those persons involved with the Monk Seal Watch program. We share our Aloha with you and with those persons who take time out to leave their homes and their families, who are often late for appointments, and sometimes leave work early to respond to the Monk Seal "telephone tree"-- kept alive on Kauai for the past 3 1/2 years. My personal Aloha goes out to my husband for his amazing faith and dedication to our ohana, for my daughter for baby-sitting my toddlers while I volunteer for the Monk Seal Watxh program, and for my sons --for the time spent chopping guava trees for my guard posts. A special Aloha goes out to the Lifeguards for their skills and enduring patience, for the Hotel staff who place that call, for Police Dispatch for trying one more time to get through, and for the visitor who truly believed the seal lay injured and dying, we thank you for placing that emergency call for help! Aloha Pumehana, Stephanie and Captain ìBobî Sundown Butler Vote in the
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