A week after a bystander’s cellphone video appeared to show a tourist heaving a coconut-sized rock at a Hawaiian monk seal swimming in calm waters off Lahaina, barely missing its head, federal authorities charged the Seattle resident with harassing the endangered animal.
On Wednesday, they arrested the person believed to be in the video: Igor Mykhaylovych Lytvynchuk, 38. He’s expected to appear in court in Honolulu on May 27.
Those decisive moves followed near-universal outrage as images of the startled male monk seal and a defiant Lytvynchuk went viral in Hawaiʻi and beyond, prompting calls for action.
Protecting the mammals from human harm, advocates say, remains a complex and uphill battle.
Most incidents don’t get caught on camera. Federal enforcement is stretched awfully thin across the Pacific region. Misinformation about the seals competing with fishermen for food, seal advocates say, continues to spread through local communities and spur attacks. [...]
On Maui, Mayor Richard Bissen vowed to personally see that Lytvynchuk, who was vacationing there, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If convicted, Lytvynchuk faces up to one year in prison for each charge plus fines of up to $50,000 under the Endangered Species Act and up to $20,000 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Initially, authorities believed the seal nearly hit was a female named Lani but later determined it was a different, male seal, Bissen said in an Instagram post Thursday. [...]
Enforcement Challenges
Out of at least 16 incidents of confirmed, intentional monk seal killings by humans in the past 17 years that remain unsolved, federal officials have only managed to prosecute one case. That incident, on Kauaʻi, dates back to 2009.
On Maui, Mayor Richard Bissen vowed to personally see that Lytvynchuk, who was vacationing there, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If convicted, Lytvynchuk faces up to one year in prison for each charge plus fines of up to $50,000 under the Endangered Species Act and up to $20,000 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Initially, authorities believed the seal nearly hit was a female named Lani but later determined it was a different, male seal, Bissen said in an Instagram post Thursday. [...]
Enforcement Challenges
Out of at least 16 incidents of confirmed, intentional monk seal killings by humans in the past 17 years that remain unsolved, federal officials have only managed to prosecute one case. That incident, on Kauaʻi, dates back to 2009.
Maria Sagapolu, assistant director of the office’s Pacific Islands Division, said in 2024 that there were fewer than 12 people to cover enforcement of the entire U.S. Pacific region, including Hawai‘i, Guam and other U.S. territories.
The Pacific represents the smallest of the OLE’s five divisions but has to cover the largest area, according to Sagapolu, representing some 1.7 million square miles. [...]
Among the $7.5 million in green fee tourism outreach funding cut by the Legislature was a $700,000 proposal to work with the tourism industry on better visitor outreach and more “culturally grounded messaging that promotes safe wildlife interactions,” according to a statement from the Department of Land and Natural Resources on Thursday.
Those dollars also would have funded a pilot marine protected species reporting app, the agency said, for the community to help report a host of threats related to Hawaiʻi’s wildlife, including monk seals. The project was recommended by Gov. Josh Green’s volunteer Green Fee Advisory Council, but the Senate removed its funding last month.
by Marcel Honoré, Honolulu Civil Beat | Read more:
Images: Hawaiʻi District Court document/2026; The Marine Mammal Center, NOAA Permit #24359/2023
[ed. The human capacity for stupid cruelty can never be underestimated (which appears to have infected Molokai as well). When a witness confronted the man, he said “he did not care and was ‘rich’ enough to pay any fines,”. Video here (Hawaii News Now).]
