I live on O’ahu and I’ll never forget the first time I encountered a monk seal while surfing. It was near sunset and I was kind of off by myself, away from the rest of the crowd. I heard a sound of heavy breathing from behind me and I thought that maybe someone was paddling up. Nope, it was a seal.

At first my brain couldn’t make sense of it. I grew up in Florida and so immediately thought it was a manatee (for some reason I thought monk seals were like sea lion size or something smaller and leaner), but I knew this was impossible. Then it yawned and I saw its sizable teeth and realized what it was. It was funny because it was about that time that it realized I was looking at it and it had this “oh shit!” look in its eyes. We gave each other a cautious side-eye just before it went back underwater and swam away.

These things are big. What would possess someone to think they can approach one is beyond me. A couple years ago there was a story of a lady out swimming in Waikiki and she apparently wandered into an area where a recently born seal was on the beach. The mother messed her up, iirc.