Hawaiian Monk Seals Are In Danger Of Extinction. This Woman Is Helping To Save Them.
Why protecting the species is essential to protecting our own existence.
To many, Claire Simeone has what is considered to be a dream job: She hangs out with baby seals in Hawaii for a living.
OK, so Simeone does more than just that. The TED Fellow is a veterinarian and the Director of the Hawaiian Monk Seal Conservation Program at The Marine Mammal Center, which includes Ke Kai Ola, a nonprofit veterinary research hospital and educational center dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of ill and injured marine mammals — like Hawaiian monk seals.
Images of cuddly panda bears and sleepy, floating manatees may come to mind upon hearing the words “endangered species.” But with only about 1,400 remaining, Hawaiian monk seals are among the most at-risk seal species in the world. Through her conservation work, Simeone is trying to change this statistic.
TED Fellows chatted with Simeone, a lifelong lover of science and animals who grew up watching David Attenborough, about the most common misconceptions involving her team’s work, what her day-to-day role actually entails and most importantly, what steps you can take to protect this vulnerable marine community.
Right now, what is the greatest threat to Hawaiian monk seals?
Monk seals face a wide variety of threats and you can split them into human-caused (anthropogenic) or nonhuman-caused factors. They have one of the highest rates of entanglement in ocean trash. The impact that humans have on our ecosystem and on the field, specifically — if you take all of those together — are the largest stress. Whether it’s the effect of climate change or it’s diseases, while they may be natural in and of themselves, what we have done to the landscape to help them spread, can be considered human-caused.
Monk seals are so exquisitely on the edge of representing our understanding of climate change and sea level rise because the majority of the places where they give birth, reproduce and live their lives are on the Northwestern Hawaiian islands. Most of those are little islands maybe a few feet or a meter above sea level. As we’re seeing these larger and larger storms and sea level rise, these islands are literally disappearing. These animals — that typically will return to the place where they were born for the rest of their lives — are having to find different places to go. All of these threats together are packing a huge punch to these animals. But collectively the impact that we as humans have is the greatest.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Well, a typical day is really atypical. There is so much variety in what I do day-to-day, which is really one of the things that I love the most about it. Certainly, taking care of animals is a big part of it. Particularly with endangered species, we want to make sure that the animals who are patients in our hospital continue to be wild when they go back out into the wild. So, we’re very hands-off. As much as you feel that desire to cuddle a baby seal, you don’t do it [laughs]. We don’t want them to become habituated to us or impressioned by us. We don’t want them connecting us with food or anything else. I am OK if they see me as the scary veterinarian because that means that they’re going back out into the wild and they’re not going to want to interact with humans.
Conservation of an endangered species is not just rehabilitating animals and releasing them back into the wild, even though that’s a very important prong of it. It also includes everything from collecting data to understanding what the baseline is for a lot of these animals and these health effects. It’s leading our team that goes out into the community to lead education programs that inspire the next generation of conservationists and to interact with people on the beach who may be seeing a monk seal for the first time in their entire life.
Are people surprised when you tell them that Hawaiian monk seals are endangered?
Absolutely. And most of the time, people that we talk with — whether they’re people in our own community or tourists who are coming to visit the island — many have never seen a monk seal. Or if they do see a monk seal, they often don’t realize that they’re really one of only 1,400 animals left on earth. And they’re only found in Hawaii.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Specifically, the greatest challenge for my job is how I can help people to leverage the largest voice and awareness. Because at The Marine Mammal Center we do the work that we do — we are always going to have our doors open to marine mammals in need, whether they be monk seals or California sea lions, dolphins or whales. But the biggest challenge that I see is how do we amplify those messages and the work that we do and the work that so many others are doing because conservation really takes a village. It’s not just the work of an individual, but it’s every person really becoming invested to say, “It’s not okay that this marine mammal goes extinct under my watch, and so I’m going to be a part of the solution.”
We know that if Hawaiian monk seals go extinct, we won’t have anymore. Are there other consequences that could manifest by having this entire species disappear?
Absolutely. I spoke about it a little bit in my talk with the thought around “zoognosis,” and that the knowledge that we gain and that we learn from these animals, from any part of our natural world is so vital and to us understanding ourselves as humans and for us to really be able to tackle the huge challenges that we face with life on earth and with our existence. Any time that we are removing a species from the planet, we’ve lost all of that knowledge that they have to share.
Even if somebody doesn’t feel a connection to that specific species, just understanding the importance of having all of the knowledge that we can behind us to help us literally save the world and save our own existence. That’s really if we want to think about it in a selfish way, that in order to save ourselves, we have to save these species and save the knowledge that they share.
What are some actionable steps people can take to help prevent the extinction of Hawaiian monk seals?
People need the mindset that all of our actions are linked and are impactful downstream. I think that one of the most frequent statements we get is, “I live nowhere near the ocean. I’ve never been to Hawaii.” There’s not this importance there or this significance. But we know that the actions people take, like reducing plastic consumption, is going to rapidly determine if there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. The Northwestern Hawaiian islands are very close to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with the large gyres that just dumps hundreds of tons of trash onto the islands that the monk seals can get entangled in or swallow and have all sorts of issues. So knowing that everything is linked, that reducing their consumption of plastics, they’re the first ones that can directly help to save monk seals.
A second would be practicing being intentional about where people are sourcing their seafood and supporting places that have sustainable fishing practices. We know that our seafood comes from all over the earth. But we can choose to be as local as possible and as impactful as we can in harming the earth as minimally as possible — especially because we know that monk seals have the highest rates of entanglement of any pinniped species.
And then it’s about helping to spread awareness and spread the word — really striving to make monk seals and other marine animal species as iconic as panda bears. It’s knowing that every species that we coexist with has so much knowledge to share if people can spread the word and say, “This is the monk seal and this is why we need to preserve them. This is why they’re important.” That act of awareness and spreading that inspiration is what’s needed to really cause this massive effect.
Head here to learn more about Hawaiian monk seals and for additional resources.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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