{"id":418431,"date":"2026-01-20T09:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/418431\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T09:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:34:10","slug":"hawaiian-monk-seal-seen-soaking-up-sunshine-in-waikiki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/418431\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawaiian monk seal seen soaking up sunshine in Waikiki"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) &#8211; Rocky, the Hawaiian monk seal mother of 15, was seen soaking up the sun in Waikiki on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">She was spotted near the lagoon, next to lifeguard tower 2-C. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Experts with the Hawaii Marine Animal Response were on site to make sure onlookers were respectful and kept a lawful distance. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI came here to Waikiki from Michigan, came over here at the beach, and I got an experience like this,\u201d Mike Zsohar said. \u201cNever seen this in Detroit. Really cool to see all the spectators around. She is alive, moving around a little, sunbathing &#8211; just like everybody else &#8211; and enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The law requires people to stay at least 50 feet away from monk seals and 150 feet away from mothers with pups. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Anyone who sees a seal is asked to alert the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hotline at (888) 256-9840. <\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) &#8211; Rocky, the Hawaiian monk seal mother of 15, was seen soaking up the sun in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[14144,1147,11639,94149,29127,12851,20281,94148,8477,11260,79,4814,1608,12858,201],"class_list":["post-418431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animal","tag-animals","tag-hawaii","tag-hawaiian","tag-hmar","tag-honolulu","tag-marine","tag-monk","tag-noaa","tag-rocky","tag-science","tag-seal","tag-sun","tag-waikiki","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}