by AUDREY McAVOY, Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) — The Hawaiian monk seal — the nation’s most imperiled marine mammal — is on the verge of getting its own emergency room.

A California-based nonprofit with decades of experience caring for marine mammals aims to break ground next year on a hospital and rehabilitation center in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island capable of holding up to 10 monk seals at a time.

The facility would be the first such center in the islands. Right now, the only place scientists can take a monk seal needing surgery to remove a fish hook or other medical care is the Waikiki Aquarium in Honolulu, and it has limited space.

The project has the blessing of federal authorities desperate to save a species whose population is declining 4 percent per year and that could disappear within a century if current trends aren’t reversed.

Jeff Boehm, executive director of the Marine Mammal Center, said his Sausalito, Calif. nonprofit decided to act because no other organization was taking the lead in building such a facility.

“None of us want to be the ones who say, you know what, it was on our watch that this species went extinct. We’ve got an urgency about it and we’ve got a strong commitment to seeing this through,” Boehm said in a telephone interview from his Sausalito office.

Read more at chron.com

Meanwhile fishing organization Westpac which represents huge long-line fishing trawlers is doing everything possible to derail protections for the monk seal. Hopefully, we do not watch this specie go extinct as a result.