Earlier this summer, we asked our Facebook fans to share their favorite Hawaii adventures.  Far and away, the number one favorite adventure in Hawaii takes place on the ocean.  At least, for our Facebook fans.  Of all the water related activities mentioned, experiencing Kauai's Napali Coastline ranked right at the top.

In the summer, the aquarium hosts Ke Kani O Ke Kai, The Sound of the Ocean, a series of five Hawaiian music concerts. You tour some exhibits, nosh on a selected menu of dinner entrees from local restaurants, and about the time the sun sets, you take your place on the grassy lawn and settle in for the evening performance. 

From the looks of this picture that I took yesterday on a remote north shore Kauai beach, this Hawaiian monk seal pup will only be snuggling with his mother for another day or two.  That’s because mom is starving. Or, at least, really, really hungry. This Hawaiian monk seal mother (known as H58 to scientists or “Rocky” to the rest of us folks), hasn’t had a decent meal since she hauled her heavy body out of the surf one Thursday evening 5 weeks ago to give birth to her son. 

Here, set to an instrumental music track by the Hawaiian musician Makana, is a slide show portraying the first week of life of an endangered Hawaiian monk seal. At this age, they are called "pups," because their Hawaiian name--'ilio holo i kauaua--translates to English as "dog running through the rough seas."

It's Friday.  That means it's "Lighthouse Day" for me, and I couldn't ask for a better day.  Sunny skies and 74-degree temperature warms my skin and just enough of a light trade breeze keeps me from overheating.

Two weeks ago, 028 was reported with a fishing hook stuck in the corner of her mouth. Four feet or more of fishing line trailed her, wrapping around her body. People said she tried to haul out at a south shore beach here on Kauai, but the line trapped under her body as she galumphed up the beach kept tugging the hook in the corner of her mouth. After a few attempts, she retreated back to the ocean.

Many people wonder, my mother included, why I had to move so far away from home to find my home--from Missouri to Hawaii. A little over a year ago, I sat in my living room on Kauai watching history in the making on TV as Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States. President Obama spoke about community service. He spoke about volunteerism. 

Yesterday, we instrumented this 4-year-old female Hawaiian monk seal with a device that will track her movements in the water--how far off-shore she swims, how deep she dives, how often she dives, how many hours--and, possibly, days--she spends in the water.

After a mile-long hike and trek along a stretch of coastline on Kauai’s north shore, I am sitting under a heliotrope tree on the beach writing this. I can’t help but pull out my camera with the super-telephoto lens and snap a few pictures of the adult Laysan albatrosses skimming the ocean’s surf, but I didn’t pack my camera to take pictures of birds, as cute as they are. 

In the past few days, I've run across numerous year-end lists:  Just about every media outlet has gathered their top 10 news stories of the year, standout athletes of the decade, best books for 2009 and top-selling movies of the year.  In the same spirit, I've compiled "Nine for 09."  This is a list of our--mine and your--favorite blog posts published on "View from Here" since January.

At two weeks of age, the Hawaiian Monk Seal pup known as "KP4" takes pleasure in using his newly-discovered foreflippers. He flaps them. He slaps his face with them. He even swims with them. In his second week of life, he and mom go for short swims in the shallows. 

Meet "KP4." Here, he squawks at his mother. At six days of age, he's a cutie. But he hasn't quite figured out exactly where on mom's body that yummy-liquid-stuff dispenses. I spent three hours with the pair yesterday, and he poked mom in the belly, neck, back and tail the entire time. A few nudges he got right and milky liquid streamed down his throat--and elsewhere. 

Early November is not known for being a busy time in Hawai'i. It's like the pause between the in-breath and out-breath. That time right before the holidays when craft fairs, parties and concerts vie for spots on my calendar and when vacationers enjoy some time off from their hectic lives. And yet, for me, early November is one of the most exciting times in Hawai'i and that just might be the best-kept Hawaiian vacation secret around. 

For the past few days, we’ve experienced winter-like weather for our islands: partly sunny, partly cloudy, chance of rain. The trades come and go. I see squalls wafting across the ocean, but they never seem to make it ashore with nothing more than a few spatters of rain. The air is heavy with moisture, making it perfect weather for rainbows. 

As for me, I spent most of Saturday at the beach. If you’ve followed my blog for the past few months, you won’t be surprised that I was pup-sitting an endangered Hawaiian monk seal. But I wasn’t checking on “Sunrise Seal,” about whom I have written and photographed extensively. At 6:00 a.m., I checked on a pregnant mom, known at K01. When I left at 10:00, she had rolled back down into the water. I figured she was heading out to feed one more time, because once she pups, she won’t get another good meal for five to seven weeks. At 2:00 p.m., I received a text message: K01 had pupped. 

What do marine mammal first responders do for fun in the sun? We practice transporting cetaceans. Because we do not have access to live animals, though, we opt for substitutes. Even though the sun was scorching during this afternoon’s training, at least the animal weighed next to nothing. 

I flew to Maui today to attend three days of meetings as part of the 4th Annual Hawaiian Monk Seal & Cetacean Stranding Response Network. At the far northern end of Ka'anapali Beach, we discovered divers launching themselves off the 35-foot rock face at sunset. See that dark speck above the rocks? That's a diver in full arch mode. 

Time. It tends to slip away all too quickly.  What with the invention of fax machines, the creation of FedEx and now the Internet, text messaging, Twitter and Facebook, we like to think our generation somehow cranked the handle of time too tightly and is now watching it unravel at an unprecedented rate. And, yet, how do we explain the aphorism “time flies,” perhaps first known in Latin as the expression tempus fugit? Was the Roman poet Virgil a poor manager of his own time? Or was he making a statement for all the people of his day, and, thereby, making the passage of time a human experience rather than a 21^st century one? 

Ten days after mom left, a team from NOAA tagged our girl. Because the scientists put two tags on her–in case one falls off–her official name is A00/A01. We, however, named her Kaikoa. 

It was overcast and drizzling when I arrived at sunrise. The Hawaiian monk seal mom and pup had hauled out before Lloyd and I showed up. We removed the signs and ropes and walked the long walk to the north end of the beach, where the seals once snuggled alongside a fence we had erected for their protection. They had long since ditched those digs, favoring spots further south along the beach. But we didn’t find them at the north end, either.

Lloyd looked at me. “Do you want to go around the point?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I answered. 

The wind barely stirred on this day at sunrise, as a rooster strutted and crowed in the bushes at the edge of the beach. I’ve noticed a couple things in the past few days. One, pup is turning grey, especially on her belly. And, two, pup is not happy with mom. 

There are days I’d like to bury my head in the sand: When the phone rings too much. When the computer acts wonky. When my to-do list grows instead of shortens. 

To answer a few questions, we are still betting pup is a female. She won’t be tagged for another couple weeks (after mom weans her) and until then–when scientists get up close and personal with her–we won’t know for sure. At this point, with binoculars and telephoto zoom lenses, we can see her four teats. Like humans, though, males sport teats, too. The real determinant is whether there is a “penile groove.” (I know. I know. But I didn’t name it that.) It’s hard to detect even with binoculars. 

Photographing Hawaiian monk seals is an all or nothing proposition.  They’re either on the beach, grinning for the camera.  Or around the rocky point, swimming sight unseen in a secluded cove.  On day 34, I found mom and pup on the beach.

Our Hawaiian monk seal mom and pup are back.  In this picture, you can see how much weight pup has gained.  Compare her now to the picture when she was one day old.

My neighbor drives one of those motorcycles that you can hear coming and going a mile away.  Really.  It is street legal, but it didn’t start out that way.  He only licensed it after he started riding it on the road last year when gas prices reached the stratosphere.

On your mark.  Get set.  Go.

Our little Hawaiian monk seal pup took a step toward adulthood this day.  If you look closely here, she holds a sea cucumber between her jaws

This explains why some people walking along remote Hawai’i beaches can practically step on a sleeping seal.  As a pup, they’re as dark as the blackest lava rocks.  As an adult, their coat can lighten to a sandy color.  That is, until they molt, then it’s back to dark, albeit never as black as when they’re born.

Mom must be getting hungry.  As you can see here, she has some extra skin folds around her mid-section.  As pup plumps up, mom thins down.  For 25 days now, mom hasn’t eaten–maybe a small reef fish here or there but no big meals.  She usually likes to go out for foraging feasts, sometimes lasting a few days at a time.  I always liken it to a Thanksgiving Day gorge

A young Hawaiian monk seal was found dead this morning on a west side Kaua’i beach.  A male, he was born in 2004.  It’s fitting, then, that on the 24th day after “Sunrise Seal’s” birth, rain prevented me from taking pictures.  Hence, I selected this image to honor I-19, as he was tagged soon after he was born.  It

Mom was sleeping in the shallows when her pup decided to take a bite out of her side.

Sometimes, following mom around isn’t easy.  Here, mom hauled out on an exposed portion of the reef during low tide.  After all that work, our Hawaiian monk seal pup took a nap, only to wake up ravenous.

Here we’re near the full moon, and as you can see, the tide on this north shore beach on Kaua’i is low.  With all the exposed reef and naturally-formed swimming holes, our Hawaiian monk seal pup couldn’t stray too far from mom.  Or me.  There was one other person on the beach today–a man on a two-week vacation here in Hawaii.  He hauled in an extreme telephoto lens on his Canon 20D.

How can you resist the face of this Hawaiian monk seal pup?  I mean, really.  And, yet, at one time this critically-endangered marine mammal was clubbed to death.

On this day, when I arrived, mom and pup slept snuggled next to the plastic fencing we installed to protect them from curious dogs.

I snapped this belly shot with hopes of identifying the sex of our new pup.  We cross our fingers for females–not because we don’t like males–

Mom doesn’t like visitors who get too close.  This is how she responds when a male encroaches.  This is also how she’d respond to us, if we ventured near.

Here the Hawaiian monk seal pup is nine days old, and that frothy white mustache is milk.  For the first five to seven weeks of its life, the pup’s sole source of food is its mother’s milk.  While it fattens up, though, mom shrivels up.

Last weekend, I sat around a table of fellow volunteers with the Hawaiian Monk Seal Conservation Hui at the Kalaheo Community Center.  It was our annual pupu potluck and while the winds whistled outside the cement block building in which we sat, someone suggested we share a favorite memory from our days spent seal-sitting.

Did I have any meetings today?  Any events to attend? I do not like to leave my home office when it rains like this.  I do not like to drive through that mud puddle, deepening the ruts in my driveway.  When I sat at my desk and checked my calendar, I discovered no necessary out-of-the-house appointments.  Good, I thought. Then, the phone rang.  It was Wendy with the Hawaiian Monk Seal Conservation Hui.  Someone had reported a  seal at the end of Aliomanu Road–down the street from me on my home island of Kaua’i.

Good news on the monk seal front:  The pup born on November 20, 2008 on Kauai’s south shore is a girl.  This is good news, because with the dwindling rate of Hawaiian Monk Seals throughout the Hawaiian archipelago, the more females we have, the more babies we’ll have.

Nuka’au was born on Laysan Island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands in 1981 and was brought to the Waikiki Aquarium as a two-year-old.  He’s a big boy.  Or, rather, a big, old man.  He is now nearly 28 years old, and he measures almost 8 feet in length and weighs between 380 and 420 pounds.

Our pup is two weeks old here.  It was the first sunny day in a week, so mom and pup decided it was high time to play.

Here, our newest member of the Hawaiian monk seal family is 8 days old.  In the first week, the pup does not stray far from mom–nor mom from the pup.  As the pup circumnavigates mom, it strengthens its flippers.  As it calls out to mom when its hungry, it strenthens it lungs.  Both efforts prepare it for its first swim.  Mom introduced the pup to the shallow water this week.

One year ago Monday, the Laysan albatross arrived at the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.They come from all corners of the globe to breed and raise their chicks. Last year, they started arriving on November 10^th.This year, they have yet to arrive.But we do have another exciting arrival on the island:A Hawaiian monk seal pup was born in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 8.