Natural threats
- Low juvenile survival rate due to:
- starvation
- marine debris entanglement
- predation from sharks
- Starvation from reduced prey abundance
- lobsters have been overfished
- competition from other apex predators
- Habitat is shrinking due to erosion
- Mobbing:multiple males attacking females in attempts to mate
- Pathogens
- ciguatera
- parasites
photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/groups/worldwidewandering/discuss/72157594309666173
Anthropogenic threats
Presently:
- They can be affected by human introduced pathogens
- toxoplasmosis pathogen-from cat feces entering the ocean from runoff
- leptospirosis
- Human Disturbance-Hawaiian monk seals avoid large beach crowds
- they abandon locations if they're too disturbed leading to smaller habitat size an a smaller chance of repopulation
- Marine fisheries
- they can get caught in fishing equipment or discarded debris
- this can make it difficult to reach the surface to breathe
Historically:
- During World War II U.S. military forces hunted them
- In the nineteenth century, a large amount of seals where hunted for meat, oil and skin by whalers and sealers
- This intense hunting has been suggested to have led to a population bottleneck creating low genetic variability. Low genetic variability decreases the seals' ability to adapt to new pressures and limits natural selection leading to increased chance of extinction.
Clear topic, can easily tell your presenting information about the Hawaiian Monk Seal and its current population status, and conservation efforts. Your pages are well organized and simple, I can focus clearly on the topic without being overwhelmed by too many pictures or messy text. I enjoyed the photo of the seal, they are so cute! Can you add a few more?
ReplyDeleteOne thing to work on is that none of your pages have in text references to where you obtained your information, picture or graph. The webpage need more information and detail about the seal and current issues. Maybe add how the recent tsunami (if it did at all) affected the monk seal, or other recent things that are impacting the seal (Like the pacific garbage patch!).
Is your main synthesis the graph provided on the home page? If so, how did you find that information? If not, maybe think about ways we can impact the conservation or improvement of monk seal numbers. Such as banning plastic bags so they don’t end up in the ocean and in the Pacific garbage patch and around the seal’s necks. Just a thought. Good work so far!
Nice information presented here. I think you should have a picture on each page, especially because your animal is fun to look at. I like the depth and breadth of your lists, it covers many interesting points. I think a paragraph form may be more of what they are looking for in the end, but I'm not sure. The way that I was suggested to make the site was to basically write a paper, then put each section of the paper on a tab, and add figures. (rather than bullet listing things). You definitely need to reference your statements though, whatever you decide to do. Good start though.
ReplyDeleteNathan Churches
Very informative page, though some points could use some expansion. For instance, are there any numbers on how much the seals are being affected by these factors? Perhaps you talk about more about some of these threats in the conservation page. But I agree with the other commentors that you should probably include some more figures or pictures
ReplyDelete