Monk Seal Poipu Kauai Ceramic Art Tile
— the morning the beach belonged to the seal.
Not only on a wall.
“A sleeping animal can change a morning. The Hawaiian monk seal hauls onto Poipu's warm sand and the beach goes quiet around it. In Hawaiian the species is ʻīlio-holo-i-ka-uaua, the dog that runs in rough water. When one comes ashore, volunteers stake a quiet rope at fifty feet so the seal can rest. Fewer than 1,600 remain. Poipu is shaped like a wishbone, with a sandbar walking out into the surf. People come for the snorkeling. Some leave thinking about something else.
Monk Seal Poipu Kauai Ceramic Art Tile, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Poipu Beach sits on the southern coast of Kauai, the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands at roughly five million years. The beach is a natural tombolo, a sandbar that joins two crescent bays. The inner arc is protected enough for children to wade; the outer arc opens into the long Pacific swell. The county park is a few minutes from Koloa town, the site of one of Hawaii's first commercial sugar plantations, founded in 1835. Hawaiian monk seals (Neomonachus schauinslandi) haul out at Poipu regularly to rest between foraging trips, sometimes with a pup. The species is endemic to the Hawaiian archipelago and exists nowhere else on Earth.
Federal and state guidance asks visitors to stay at least fifty feet from a Hawaiian monk seal on land, and at least one hundred fifty feet from a mother with a pup. When a seal comes ashore at Poipu Beach Park, NOAA-trained volunteers stake out a perimeter with rope and a quiet sign. Touching, feeding, or otherwise disturbing a seal can carry penalties under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. A hauled-out seal will typically sleep for three to five hours and return to the water on its own schedule. Photographs are welcome from outside the rope; the best ones look like sleeping driftwood with a slow rise and fall.
The etiquette around a hauled-out monk seal is the etiquette of any tired animal asking for an afternoon. Walk quietly past. Lower the voice. Keep dogs on a short leash and well away. The volunteer monitors who set the rope, often working with Hawaii Marine Animal Response, are not security. They are there to translate between the seal and the beach. The species was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 1976, and the population has crept up from a low near 1,100 in the 1990s to roughly 1,600 today. Each individual matters. The sleeping animal at the rope is one of fewer than two thousand of its kind on the planet.