re: Louisiana couple regrets touching monk seal in Hawaii after video goes viral

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Are they only found in a small area because that’s where they have always been or is it only a small area now?

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While I agree native Hawaiian's are some territorial lunatics', they are not the group freaking out about the seals. As usual, its overly concerned white liberal outsiders forcing their agenda. Even the NY Times (from a 2013 article) questions the Feds role in trying to legislate the seal rights above the rights of native fisherman. It seems locals question if the seals were even native to the area. The article is a very good read.

NY Times Magazine 2013 article on monk seals

From the 2013 article:

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That skepticism is compounded for native Hawaiians. After all, they now walk beaches that their families have used for centuries and find tracts of sand literally roped off by NOAA monk-seal responders — men and women who, on Kauai, are almost exclusively white, wealthy retirees from the mainland. (It’s these haole, as Hawaiians call white outsiders, who have the luxury of standing watch over a sleeping monk seal all day.) Even the idea that a wild animal needs such coddling strikes some locals as absurd. “The seal needs to rest!” one man, Kekane Pa, told me sarcastically. “The seal needs to rest because it’s been swimming in the water.”

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And another quote from a concerned "volunteer monk seal responder" who found a monk seal killed on a beach frequented by primarily locals:

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Mary Frances Miyashiro, a retired teacher and social worker who patrols that coastline as a volunteer monk-seal responder, arrived on the scene first. She sat with Noho’s body for an hour, waiting for others to come and heft the seal into an insulated body bag so it could be driven into town for a necropsy, or animal autopsy. “My heart sank,” Miyashiro told me. “I didn’t know what to do with those feelings, so I picked up trash.” It felt hopeless, like the killings might go on forever

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