Endangered Species: C / D

Who Would Kill a Monk Seal?

The Hawaiian monk seal has wiry whiskers and the deep, round eyes of an apologetic child...They are adorable, but also a little gross: the Zach Galifianakises of marine mammals.

... Even now, recovering the species is projected to cost $378 million and take 54 years.

...But spend a little time in Hawaii, and you come to recognize these deaths for what they are — something loaded and forbidding. A word that came to my mind was “assassination.”

...The most recent wave of Hawaiian-monk-seal murders began on the island of Molokai in November 2011

A quick aside about Bully Mission: I went to Hawaii thinking I’d write a straight-up police procedural — you know, “CSI: Monk Seal.” When I heard that Kauai’s top wildlife cop was named Bully Mission, I figured I’d found my hard-boiled protagonist.

I love how the NYT paid for the trip to Kauai. Awesome boondoggle.

Cute endangered species: classic
Ugly endangered bugs: dud

Fish and Wildlife Service Delists 21 Species from the Endangered Species Act due to Extinction
https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-10/21-species-delisted-endangered-species-act-due-extinction

Eight of the extinct bird species were found in Hawaii, including the Po`ouli, which was last seen in 2004. The Po`ouli is the most recently seen species of all 21 animals on the list.

FWIW, here's a very rare recording someone uploaded on Youtube this past June. It was made in July 1975, and you can hear a duet between a male and female Po`ouli - essentially the mating call:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Nn1JgNzWY

Now here's a clip from a 2015 Discovery program, where they play a recording made IIRC in 1987 of the last known Po`ouli. Listen to everything he says about that recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5THqAY3u5oY

Extremely heartbreaking to say the least. A commenter says he never thought he'd be crying like that over a birdcall. I know what he means.

Should mention, you can skip to 0:44 in the Discovery clip. Also, it may be helpful to hear that one first, because then you'll know which is the male and which is the female call in the first clip.

Here's another bird now deemed extinct that hasn't been seen since 1983:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VINTIdYMOU

Date wrong on that recording of the last Poʻouli male - it was more like 2004, probably the one that was in captivity for a couple of months. (They tried to find a female it could mate with, but were unable to in time.)

thank you for that!

You're welcome! It's very sad to think about it. This may sound strange, but I actually treasure those field recordings as if they were some of my favorite records. They're extremely precious given what they now preserve - something that we may never hear again in nature short of a miracle from biological engineering.

The giant salmon carp has not been documented by science since 2005, but scientists have now confirmed that three fish caught between 2020 and 2023 in the Mekong and Sesan rivers are members of this elusive species.

Great news, but also paradoxical that we're celebrating their continued survival with what's more or less the death of the only individual fish that have been recently documented. Even the photo looks fucking weird - like "hey, remember that fish that we thought was extinct? Well, we caught a live one and here's its dead body!" (I realize catching three means it's extremely likely more exist, but still....)

beautiful fish, I've never heard of them... but yeah, it does look like a salmon but with big scales