the field station on Tern Island; and extending critical 

 habitat boundaries out to the 20-fathom isobath around certain 

 islands and reefs in the northwest Hawaiian Islands. 



As discussed below, there was progress during 1988 on 

 most of these issues. 



Program Funding 



As indicated above, Congress has provided funding at a 

 level of about $325,000 for the Hawaiian monk seal research 

 program in recent years. This has paid for field and 

 laboratory work which has yielded a great amount of critically 

 needed information. Although work in Fiscal Year 1988 also 

 was funded at $325,000, it was noted during the Commission's 

 December 1987 Hawaiian monk seal program review that the monk 

 seal program was being required to pay a larger share of its 

 data management costs than it had in the past. Thus, funding 

 for critical field activities had been reduced or eliminated, 

 including pup tagging, tag resighting, and other population 

 monitoring work at certain breeding locations. 



In view of the reductions the Commission wrote to the 

 Service on 6 May 1988 requesting that special consideration 

 be given to continuing to support the monk seal program without 

 cuts and that the Service advise the Commission as to what 

 steps were being taken or planned to ensure that critical 

 research would be carried forward. By the end of 1988, the 

 Service had not responded to the Commission's letter and it 

 was not clear whether or how much funding the Service planned 

 to provide for monk seal work in Fiscal Year 1989. 



Kure Atoll Head Start Project 



The Head Start Project is a pup capture and release 

 program at Kure Atoll that involves removing newly weaned 

 female pups from the beaches of Kure, placing them in an 

 enclosed pen on the Kure shoreline to protect them from natural 

 predators, raising them through their first summer of life in 

 the protective enclosure, and then releasing them back into 

 the wild at Kure. The effort was begun by the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service in 1981 in response to an alarming decline 

 in the Atoll's seal population, very high pup mortality through 

 the 1970s at Kure, and declining numbers of breeding females. 

 To further supplement the female component of the seal popu- 

 lation at Kure, emaciated and prematurely weaned female pups 

 from French Frigate Shoals that appeared unlikely to survive 

 on their own in the wild also were taken beginning in 1984. 

 These pups were taken to Honolulu where they were rehabili- 

 tated and subsequently released back at Kure. By the end of 

 1987, 16 pups had been taken and released through the Head 



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