On March 9, our newspaper TGI has reported that the monk seal population on the main Hawaiian Islands is growing, which is just part of the carefully designed public awareness campaign that the “caretakers” of the monk seals are executing.
The front-page article confirmed that these monk seals are dangerous, carnivorous predators that are now pampered and protected, because a bunch of non-Hawaiian scientists had declared them endangered species, and to distinguish them from other seals they affixed the name Hawaiian onto them.
They must have known that a good flow of cash will go from the federal wildlife protection funds to the caretakers year after year. And there is quite a large leeway given to them how they spend that money, despite the fact that large wild animals may need protection, but don’t really need care. Nature does it better.
According to the annual reports, most of the federal money is spent on raising public awareness. This purpose, however, is intended only to save the boat, that is the continuous stream of money, because these wild predators don’t create enough action to justify spending more than a million dollar on them per year.
The public awareness is successful, because the Kaeha Foundation that calls itself the Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance is even soliciting donations for the protection of monk seals from the public. Greediness does not know limits.
The misinformation about the Hawaiian origin of the monk seal is obvious if someone checks the records. The “official” version is that these monk seals have been in Hawaii for thousands of years, but it is unsupported, because the site where the oldest, allegedly 600-year-old monk seal carcass was found is classified. So is the carbon test that allegedly proves the age of the bones.
The other “official” claim is that the Hawaiian name of the monk seal is Ilio-holo-i-ka-uaua (with a haole translation “the dog that runs in the rough water”) appeared in the chants of the Kumulipo, our ancient Creation Chant.
One needs to check only the original records of the Kumulipo to see that it is not true. There, in the chant Ka Wa Eone there is a line saying “he ‘iole holo i ka uaua,” which means “a rat that runs in the rough.”
Well, well, well. Very interesting how the rat became a dog which then turned into Hawaiian monk seal. It took only a tiny bit of change in the spelling to make a dog out of the rat and then sell it to the public as a monk seal.
There is one more proof that the monk seals have not been here for a long time. A very simple, but a logical one. No monk seal recipes exist.
You probably know the lifestyle of our ancestors: They ate everything that was edible from makai to mauka and even if they did not write down recipes they have passed them on from generation to generation.
Can you even imagine a Hawaiian man just 100 years ago going to the ocean for food for his ohana and not being happy to find a monk seal basking in the sun on the beach there, and not killing it and taking it home for having a great luau? It would have been the perfect dish for the entire ohana or the village and even a chant would have been created of the deed!
I was born and raised in Hawaii and have been living here for more than 65 years but have not seen any monk seals before the 1990s and none of my native brothers and sisters on Kauai, Niihau and other Hawaiian Islands did.
We are convinced that they were brought here to exploit the federal fund options and secure money that can be easily spent without good accounting. The monk seals had to be here to assure high visibility of the project.
There are many more monk seals on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and even if they are being considered endangered, which we Hawaiians don’t agree to, there is nobody there to set up ropes and signs to “protect” them, so there is nobody to pay the federal funds to.
In the meantime, these monk seals are overprotected here and now we have more predators that will rip our fishing nets and steal our lobsters and the larger fish. Please stop this nonsense.
You are saying that they need protection? We, the people need more. Why don’t you collect all of your monk seals here and transport them to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands? Release them there and let nature protect them.
Oh, on the way don’t forget to gather those too that would be swimming in the ocean and waiting to be blown apart into sashimi-size pieces when the U.S. Navy is messing up our ocean during their insane annual maneuvers killing with their bombs, missiles and torpedoes thousands of fish and hundreds of other endangered animals, including monk seals in the water.
As for the money that comes from the federal coffers, we can suggest better use that the Hawaiians could benefit from. Ask us for suggestions.
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Timothy Oga lives in Eleele.
