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Recognizing heat stroke/exhaustion and how to avoid it | Q&A with To The Point ABC10.com KXTVThe death of a Navy SEAL candidate during the grueling selection process known as "Hell Week" — where drop out rates are as high as 90% — has exposed a culture of cheating and performance-enhancing drug use by many trainees.
Earlier this year, Kyle Mullen had just made it through the infamous week — but when he talked to his mother Regina Mullen on the phone, she knew something was terribly wrong.
"He could barely breathe and I was yelling at him," she told CBS News.
"I asked him, 'Are you in a hospital?'" she recalled.
"No Ma, don't worry," she remembered him saying. "I love you."
Then, she texted him: "I need to know your condition. You did not sound good."
He died hours later, she said.
His cause of death was pneumonia, which his mother attributed to the time he spent submerged in the cold water off the coast of Southern California. But a search of a car he shared with other trainees found performance-enhancing drugs, which he had told her about.
"He said it would help him, help them, recover faster and get them through Hell Week," she said. "It was the only way possible to get through."
Forty members of Mullen's 210-person class of would-be SEALs admitted to taking banned substances — a warped testament to training that pushes young men to their absolute limits. Mullen's story and the program's struggles with drug use were first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.
Mullen's mother told CBS News that on the first day of his training, he was not given water all day.
"At the end of the day, he got heatstroke of 104.3 was his core temperature," she said.
Trainees can quit at any time they want — but Mullen refused.
"I'm not going to die," he wrote to himself. "If I do, I'd rather die here."
Mullen's mother likened what he experienced to a "sick hazing."
"It's not training," she said, adding, "I believe you need SEALs, but not this type of torture."
There is growing interest in the commercialization of grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) products from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. While seal fur has been sold and blubber processed into oil for a long time, few markets exist for seal meat and organs. However, over the past ten years, small businesses in the Magdalen Islands have been offering these products based on sustainable practices, contributing to the sound management of this resource in the St. Lawrence.
A dark meat with a salty and unique taste, grey seal is appreciated by wild meat aficionados. Grey seal meat and liver are commonly prepared as tataki, filets, sausages, or pâté, and are increasingly being consumed by hunting families in coastal communities as well as sold in Québec’s gourmet restaurants.
As experts in ecotoxicology, environmental health and wildlife pathology, we set out to study the nutritional value of seal meat and organs, as well as the chemical contaminants and pathogens that may be present in these products.
Interested in trying grey seal? Here is a short guide to making informed choices.
This article is part of our series, The St. Lawrence River: In depth. Don’t miss new articles on this mythical river of remarkable beauty. Our experts look at its fauna, flora and history, and the issues it faces. This series is brought to you by La Conversation.
As part of their traditional way of life, the Magdalen Islanders hunted seals for food and fur until the nineteenth century. To this day, the activity remains at the heart of their culture, contributing significantly to the local economy of the Magdalen Islands and other communities along the shores of the St. Lawrence.
There are around a thousand commercial hunters who are active each year and recreational hunting of grey seal is also permitted. Despite a recent surge in hunting activity, these hunts do not threaten the status of this population, which has been designated “not at risk”. There are an estimated 340,000 grey seals that live in Eastern Canada, including the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Naturally present in the environment at low concentrations, certain chemical elements, such as copper and iron, are nutrients that are necessary for the proper functioning of living organisms. But, in some cases, these “essential” elements can reach high concentrations that are potential health risks.
Some organisms can also accumulate high concentrations of “non-essential” trace elements, including chemical contaminants such as mercury, cadmium and lead. These have no biological function and are toxic at very low concentrations for both seals and humans.
Results of our initial study show that grey seal meat and liver can be a good source of nutrients, particularly iron and copper. This study suggests that the best practice is to eat the muscle, heart, and liver from weaned seals that are less than six weeks old. Why? Because the levels of essential and non-essential elements measured for this age group did not exceed any of the maximum recommended concentrations for weekly consumption, even for the most vulnerable populations — pregnant women and young children.
Grey seals begin feeding at sea at around six weeks old, and this is when we found that the concentrations of mercury and cadmium increased in meat and liver. For seals, most trace elements are absorbed from food and so these results probably reflect the change in diet after weaning. While these concentrations do not pose significant risks to the general population, greater vigilance is advised for pregnant women and young children.
The view of the Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine Regional Public Health Department is that Health Canada’s recommendations for the consumption of canned albacore tuna for pregnant women and young children should also apply to grey seals from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Albacore tuna has intermediate mercury concentrations similar to those measured in the muscle and liver of grey seals six weeks and older.
Seal kidneys should be avoided, however, due to higher concentrations of cadmium and mercury. This is the case for both seals less than six weeks old and older seals. High levels of lead were also found in a few grey seals. These findings highlight the importance of promoting lead-free and non-toxic ammunition for hunting, for environmental reasons and to avoid meat contamination.
Although both juvenile and adult grey seals are hunted for meat, the commercial hunt for seal organs targets only weaned pups younger than six weeks. Our study confirms that this commercial practice is appropriate for human consumption.
A second study evaluated the presence of five infectious agents, namely bacteria and parasites that can be transmitted to humans by grey seals during the preparation or consumption of raw or undercooked meat. Such “zoonotic” infections are also possible through contact with livestock and poultry, as well as with various wild animals in North America.
The good news is that the parasite Trichinella (which causes trichinellosis) was not detected in any of the sampled seals. In addition, very few seals showed signs of infection with Brucella bacteria (which causes brucellosis) and Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae (associated with seal finger infection).
However, all seals showed signs of exposure to the bacterium Leptospira interrogans (responsible for leptospirosis), and half of the seals tested carried the parasite Toxoplasma gondii (which causes toxoplasmosis).
But don’t panic. Canadian standards for the handling and slaughter of food animals guarantee healthy products from the commercial seal hunt, especially when combined with proper cooking practices. Moreover, it is recommended that all hunters wear disposable gloves when handling seals to avoid contact with bacteria.
To reduce the risk of infection by Toxoplasma gondii, commerically hunted seal meat and liver is always frozen at -10C or less for three days before going to market, which destroys the parasite. For recreational hunters, this practice is highly recommended, especially when the meat is eaten raw or undercooked, such as in tataki (the best way to eat it, according to the chefs!). Thoroughly cooking seal meat to an internal temperature of 74C should also inactivate any pathogens.
It should be noted that unlike pathogens, chemical contaminants (mercury, lead, cadmium) are not destroyed by freezing or cooking.
By working in collaboration with hunters and local decision-makers, our work contributes to putting science at the service of communities to promote sustainable management, and the healthy consumption of this unique St. Lawrence resource.
How can we make informed choices when eating grey seal products? Choose the meat, liver and heart of young seals (less than six weeks old) and apply standard sanitary measures (gloves, freezing or thorough cooking) when handling seals and their products.
Would you like to taste seal meat or other products from the St. Lawrence? Visit the Manger notre Saint-Laurent website to discover where to buy them.
Contact with nature is also good for your health! The Exploramer Museum in Sainte-Anne-des-Monts offers a complete training course on seal hunting. This workshop is given by Réjean Vigneau, an experienced hunter and owner of the Boucherie Côte à Côte in the Magdalen Islands, and Yannick Ouellet, a local chef.
Seal revealed his parents weren’t the people who pushed him to become a singer — it was one of his teachers.
Speaking on his Think About It podcast, the “Kiss from a Rose” singer opened up about the teacher, who’s one of his “champions and pivotal figures,” as the person who helped him realize he could sing.
“The person that really started it for me … that made a difference, was a teacher named Mr. Ren,” Seal recalled.
Seal said he attended a school that served low-income, blue-collar families. “I wasn’t very good academically and, like most of the people in my class … [I thought] we were never going to amount to anything,” he said.
“[Mr. Ren] was the one that saw me, and saw something in me and encouraged me to sing,” the Grammy winner said. “The first time I sung publicly was in front of him. I guess I started singing because I idolized him.”
Seal said Mr. Ren pushed him further by putting him onstage “in front of the parents and teachers” at the end- of-the-year celebration. The young singer was understandably nervous and “froze.”
“I’ll emphasize that my parents had never heard me sing. They didn’t even know I could sing,” added Seal, adding he was supposed to sing an a cappella version of Johnny Nash‘s “I Can See Clearly Now.”
“I remember being so afraid, and closing my eyes and getting through this song, and being lost in it and finishing it. And it was like one of those scenes in the movie where you could hear a pin drop,” said Seal.
Seal said he “never forgot that feeling” when the audience erupted into cheers, and he eventually pursued a singing career — because, as he said, Mr. Ren “believed in me.”
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CORONADO, Calif. — Kyle Mullen always had the natural drive and talent that made success look easy. Until he tried out for the Navy SEALs.
The 24-year-old arrived on the California coast in January for the SEALs’ punishing selection course in the best shape of his life — even better than when he was a state champion defensive end in high school or the captain of the football team at Yale.
But by the middle of the course’s third week — a continual gut punch of physical and mental hardship, sleep deprivation and hypothermia that the SEALs call Hell Week — the 6-foot-4-inch athlete from Manalapan, N.J., was dead-eyed with exhaustion, riddled with infection and coughing up blood from lungs that were so full of fluid that others who were there said later that he sounded like he was gargling.
The course began with 210 men. By the middle of Hell Week, 189 had quit or been brought down by injury. But Seaman Mullen kept on slogging for days, spitting blood all the while. The instructors and medics conducting the course, perhaps out of admiration for his grit, did not stop him.
And he made it. When he struggled out of the cold ocean at the end of Hell Week, SEAL leaders shook his hand, gave him a pizza and told him to get some rest. Then he went back to his barracks and lay down on the floor. A few hours later, his heart stopped beating and he died.
That same afternoon, another man who survived Hell Week had to be intubated. Two more were hospitalized that evening.
The SEAL teams have faced criticism for decades, both from outsiders and their own Navy leadership, that their selection course, known as Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training or BUD/S, is too difficult, too brutal, and too often causes concussions, broken bones, dangerous infections and near-drownings. Since 1953, at least 11 men have died.
For just as long, the SEAL teams, who perform some of the military’s most difficult missions, including lightning-fast hostage rescues and the killing of high-level terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, have insisted that having a bare-knuckle rite of passage is vital for producing the kind of unflinching fighters the teams need. Without BUD/S, they argue, there could be no SEALs.
Privately, they talk of training casualties as a cost of doing business. A former SEAL, David Goggins, wrote in his memoir about a sailor who drowned during his Hell Week. Soon afterward, he wrote, an instructor told his class: “This is the world you live in. He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last to die in your line of work.”
BUD/S is hardly the only dangerous selection course in the military. Many Army Special Forces soldiers and Air Force pilots have also died in training. But few if any courses have so high a rate of failure.
After Seaman Mullen died, the SEAL teams appeared to try to deflect blame from the course and frame the incident as a freak occurrence. Though Seaman Mullen had coughed up blood for days and had needed oxygen, the Navy announced that he and the man who was intubated were “not actively training when they reported symptoms,” and that neither “had experienced an accident or unusual incident” during Hell Week.
The official cause of death was bacterial pneumonia, but Seaman Mullen’s family says the true cause was the course itself, in which instructors routinely drove candidates to dangerous states of exhaustion and injury, and medical staff grew so accustomed to seeing the suffering that they failed to hospitalize him, or even monitor him, once Hell Week was over.
“They killed him,” his mother, Regina Mullen, who is a registered nurse, said in an interview. “They say it’s training, but it’s torture. And then they didn’t even give them the proper medical care. They treat these guys worse than they are allowed to treat prisoners of war.”
Seaman Mullen’s death immediately resurfaced the old questions about whether the curriculum of intentional hardship goes too far.
And soon those old questions were complicated by something new.
When the Navy gathered Seaman Mullen’s belongings, they discovered syringes and performance enhancing drugs in his car. The captain in charge of BUD/S immediately ordered an investigation, and soon about 40 candidates had either tested positive or had admitted using steroids or other drugs in violation of Navy regulations.
The Navy has not tied the sailor’s death to drugs. The service is expected to release reports on the training death and the drug use in the fall. A Navy spokesman declined to comment on Seaman Mullen's death or on allegations of widespread drug use, saying it would be inappropriate to do so before the reports are released and Seaman Mullen’s family is briefed on their findings.
Still, the prevalence of drugs at BUD/S has some men in the top reaches of the SEALs deeply unnerved — not just because drugs may have contributed to the death of a sailor, but also because they see their spread, and the lack of discipline and order it implies, as a threat to the entire SEAL organization that could grow in unpredictable and ugly ways.
Sailors who enter the program bolstered by steroids and hormones can push harder, recover faster and probably beat out the sailors who are trying to become SEALs while clean, said one senior SEAL leader with multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The inevitable effect, he said, is that a course designed to select the very best will end up selecting only the very best cheaters, and steadily fill the SEAL teams with war fighters who view rules as optional.
“What am I going to do with guys like that in a place like Afghanistan?” said the leader. “A guy who can do 100 pull-ups but can’t make an ethical decision?”
The Navy has so far been officially silent about the discovery of drug use at BUD/S. Details of Seaman Mullen’s death and the subsequent drug sweep, many of them reported here for the first time, are based on interviews with Navy leaders, medical staff, enlisted SEALs and recent BUD/S candidates. All of them spoke on the condition that they not be identified by name, because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Without comprehensive testing, there is no way to assess the full extent of the drug use in the program. But more than a dozen current and former candidates described a culture in which drugs have become deeply embedded in the selection course over the last decade.
SEAL leaders say they don’t have the authority to start a testing program to attack the problem. They formally requested permission from the Navy in June to start testing all candidates but are still awaiting a response.
Meanwhile, the drugs are there.
One young sailor who went through BUD/S in May said that many would-be SEALs had come to believe that the course was too hard to complete without drugs. Despite Seaman Mullen’s death, he said, some sailors were still using illicit performance enhancers — in particular, a group of unregulated supplements called SARMS that are difficult to detect.
It is hard to say what role performance-enhancing drugs played in one death when there are so many other complicating factors, said Dr. Matthew Fedoruk, the chief science officer of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Even so, he said, the chemicals some sailors are relying on can interfere with the function of the heart, liver and other critical organs that are already under incredible stress from the brutal training.
If enough people in a community are doping, he said, it spreads risk even to those who are clean, as the level of competition rises and more people are pushed to exhaustion and injury.
“It makes it that much harder for the people doing the right thing to shine,” he said.
Navy leaders say they are determined to correct the problems. BUD/S now requires all candidates to be medically monitored for 24 hours after Hell Week, leaders have dialed back some of the most abusive course requirements, and several SEALs were quietly removed from instructor positions after Seaman Mullen’s death.
The broader questions about the punishing nature of the course, and what role it played in the proliferation of drugs and the death of a young sailor, may prove harder to address.
The Navy has made hundreds of changes over the years meant to improve safety and increase graduation rates. At the same time, the SEALs who run the course have quietly resisted anything they see as lowering standards. So no matter how much the Navy has tried to make BUD/S easier, it seems to only get harder.
In the 1980s, about 40 percent of candidates graduated. Over the past 25 years, the average has dropped to 26 percent. In 2021, it was just 14 percent, and in Seaman Mullen’s class this year, less than 10 percent.
When Seaman Mullen started BUD/S in January, it was his second attempt. His first try was in August 2021, and he had spent more than a year running, swimming and lifting weights to prepare. He lasted less than a day.
Instructors call the first three weeks of BUD/S the attrition phase, a maw of punishing exercise, frigid water and harassment meant to wash out anyone lacking strength, endurance and mental fortitude — individuals the instructors derisively call “turds.”
That first day, the instructors put candidates through a gantlet of running, crawling, situps and push-ups on the hot sand with no breaks, Seaman Mullen’s mother said. Late in the afternoon, the men were racing in teams, carrying 170-pound inflatable boats over their heads, when Seaman Mullen passed out.
He called his mother from an ambulance a short time later and explained that he had not had a drop of water all day. When he fell, he told her, an instructor hurled insults at his limp body and told him to get up. When he did not respond, medics measured his temperature at 104 degrees and sent him to the hospital with heatstroke.
Heatstroke, concussions, fractures, muscle tears and lung issues are common at BUD/S, one Navy medical employee at the SEAL training base in Coronado said, but the injuries are often dealt with internally, which avoids scrutiny from outside the SEALs. Often, the employee said, injured candidates are encouraged to quit the course voluntarily, instead of being pulled out by medical staff, and their injuries are never formally reported to the Navy command that oversees workplace accidents.
Seaman Mullen was assigned to an internal recovery unit, where he had four months to mend before a second attempt at BUD/S. During that time, he helped care for other injured candidates recovering in the barracks, according to his mother, whom he called regularly for medical advice.
Many men were coughing up bloody fluid from a condition called swimming-induced pulmonary edema — a potentially life-threatening ailment that is so common among men training in the frigid water at BUD/S that SEALs refer to it casually by the acronym SIPE.
During his four-month wait, his mother recalled, Seaman Mullen started talking to her about performance enhancing drugs.
Men he met in the recovery unit were using steroids and human growth hormone, he told her, and he was considering it. He told her he would have to buy a used car as a place to stash the drugs.
“In all his years playing sports, he had never touched that stuff,” Ms. Mullen said. “I told him not to do it. But he ended up getting the car and sharing it with a bunch of guys.”
In interviews, SEALs report knowing of men who used drugs during BUD/S at least as far back as 2009. The Navy uncovered what the senior SEAL leader called “a steroid ring” in 2012. He said BUD/S began testing candidates that year, but the testing lapsed a few years later.
By 2016, former candidates said, drugs were back. That’s when 19-year-old Brandon Caserta went through BUD/S and told his father, Patrick Caserta, a retired Navy senior chief petty officer, that drugs were “rampant.”
“He refused to do them, but he said the guys that did definitely had an edge,” Mr. Caserta said.
Three weeks in, Seaman Caserta collapsed while carrying a boat. Instructors yelled at him to get up, and when he said he couldn’t, his father said, they made him quit the course. An X-ray later revealed a broken leg.
Candidates who don’t complete BUD/S often must serve out the remaining years of their enlistments in undesirable low-level Navy jobs. Seaman Caserta ended up manning a snack counter at a distant base.
“He really was disheartened,” his father said. “He felt like he’d been cheated out of something he had worked hard for.”
In 2018, Seaman Caserta left a note for his parents criticizing the Navy for its treatment of him and saying he did not want a military funeral, and then hurled himself into the tail rotor of a Navy helicopter.
In a perverse way, the drug problem at BUD/S is a natural outgrowth of the mind-set the SEALs try to cultivate, according to Benjamin Milligan, a former enlisted SEAL who recently published a history of the force, “Water Beneath the Walls.”
The SEALs want operators who can find unconventional ways to gain an advantage against the enemy, he said in an interview.
“You want guys who can solve problems in war, guys who know how to play dirty, because war is a dirty game,” he said.
An often heard unofficial adage in the SEALs holds that, “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”
During BUD/S, he said, the “enemy” to be outfoxed is the course itself.
“No one can do everything the instructors ask, so you have to learn how to cheat to get through,” he said. “Everyone knows it happens. The point is to learn how to not get caught.”
“Basically, you are selecting for guys who are willing to cheat,” he added. “So, no surprise, guys are going to turn to drugs.”
Seaman Mullen showed up for his second attempt at BUD/S in January with fresh determination and a used car. But by the end of the second week, he was spitting up bloody fluid and struggling to breathe.
“I said, go to the hospital right away,” his mother recalled. “He said, ‘No, ma, if you want to go to the hospital, they will make you quit first. Besides, it’s just SIPE.’”
Ms. Mullen said her son, on the advice of other SEAL candidates, started secretly taking the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, which was against Navy rules but used by SEALs as a potential treatment for SIPE. He recovered enough to keep training.
Then came Hell Week — days of cold-water swims and sand-pounding runs totaling over 200 miles, with only about five hours of sleep in five days. The SIPE came raging back, and the fluid pooling in his lungs started to drown him from the inside.
Seaman Mullen fell behind on runs, according to a candidate who was there with him, and instructors singled him out for what they call “remediation” — extra push-ups, situps and plunges in the freezing surf that may have made his condition worse.
He collapsed at one point, and an instructor kicked him repeatedly and told him to quit, the other candidate said. Instead, the sailor struggled back to his feet.
Navy medics are present for every moment of Hell Week and give candidates daily medical checks. Anyone whose vital signs show dangerous changes gets sidelined, a medical officer there said. But, the officer added, the medical staff avoids interfering with the pain and suffering that are the purpose of BUD/S.
By Wednesday, medics were intermittently giving Seaman Mullen oxygen in the back of a medical truck parked on the beach as he continued stumbling through the course, photos from the time show.
In any other job, pushing people to exhaustion while fluid floods their lungs would seem reckless, but it has been happening in Hell Week for so long that the practice has come to seem somewhat normal, according to Mr. Milligan, the historian. He went through Hell Week in 2001 and said a man in his class who had fluid in his lungs was given medication through a nebulizer, a practice Mr. Milligan said was “not uncommon.” A few hours later, while the class was swimming in a human chain in a pool, the man slipped from Mr. Milligan’s grasp, sank to the bottom and died.
Seaman Mullen was determined to persevere. On Friday morning, at the completion of Hell Week, he and 20 other remaining men emerged from the freezing surf. He was too weak to walk on his own, so he staggered in the other candidate’s arms, his eyes filled with tears of joy and relief.
After a short speech by the admiral in charge came medical checks, and the class insisted that Seaman Mullen go first. The other candidate said he was stunned when his friend emerged from the check just five minutes later, saying he was told he was fine.
Seaman Mullen was coughing so much that he soon filled a 32-ounce Gatorade bottle with bloody sputum, according to his autopsy, but by then there was no one with medical training present to notice. The medical staff had gone home after Hell Week finished. Instead, according to the candidate and Ms. Mullen, who spoke to several of her son’s classmates who were there, the men were watched by newly arrived BUD/S candidates, called white shirts.
A few hours later, one of the white shirts called the medical staff phone to report an emergency, the candidate said, but no one picked up, so the white shirt called 911. When a civilian ambulance arrived, the medics found Seaman Mullen with no pulse, according to the autopsy.
The next morning, five men in white Navy dress uniforms appeared at the Mullen family home in New Jersey. Ms. Mullen opened the door, saw them and said, “My son is never coming home, is he?”
In the months since, the family has pushed for accountability. The military is shielded by law from wrongful death lawsuits. Instead, Ms. Mullen says her goal is to have Congress impose independent oversight on BUD/S.
Officers in charge of BUD/S have removed some of the most punishing aspects of the course in recent months, clamping down on pre-dawn workouts and runs with heavy packs. Six hours of sleep a night are now required in all weeks but Hell Week, outside auditors have been brought in to watch instructors, and a higher percentage of sailors are now making the cut.
But on the beach, sailors say, the problems continue. A month after Seaman Mullen died, there was another close call. After late-night training in the frigid surf, one sailor — cold, wet, hungry and exhausted — started shivering violently, then became unresponsive while huddled in the arms of another sailor who was trying to keep him warm, according to two sailors who were there.
The sailors immediately called the BUD/S medical office, but once again, they said, there was no answer. They put their classmate in a hot shower, called 911 and were able to get him civilian medical help.
The next morning, the two sailors said, instructors let the class know they were not happy. To punish them for calling 911, the sailors said, the instructors made the class do long bouts of push-ups. Whenever anyone dropped from exhaustion, instructors made the man who had been treated at the hospital for hypothermia plunge again into the cold surf.
On the rocky beaches of the Hawaiian archipelago, a 500-pound Hawaiian monk seal naps peacefully in the sun. A NOAA biologist carefully uses a syringe at the end of a pole to safely vaccinate the seal from a distance with minimal disturbance. The seal barely wakes up from its nap! It is now protected against a potentially fatal disease that has killed tens of thousands of other species of seals around the globe.
NOAA scientists are vaccinating endangered Hawaiian monk seals against a strain of morbillivirus. They’ve completed 700 successful vaccinations—that’s nearly half the population. It’s the world’s first attempt to protect this wild marine mammal from a deadly outbreak.
Once hunted to near extinction, the species is rebounding in part due to long-standing legal protections and ongoing conservation measures. Join us in highlighting the Hawaiian monk seal as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and several other laws that protect our oceans and coasts.
Hawaiian monk seals are especially vulnerable to disease threats because of their small population size. They are spread across a vast, remote area, making early detection of an outbreak very difficult. Morbillivirus is a highly contagious and lethal group of viruses that include canine distemper and human measles. Outbreaks have killed tens of thousands of seals around the globe. Phocine distemper, the type of morbillivirus that most commonly infects seals, has not yet been detected in Hawaiian monk seals. To proactively protect the species against morbillivirus, scientists launched the first-ever effort to vaccinate a wild marine mammal.
Hawaiian monk seals are vaccinated with a vaccine made for ferrets. After years of research, testing in captive seals, planning, and practice, NOAA scientists and partners vaccinated the first wild Hawaiian monk seal in 2016. Efforts are now focused on protecting pups born each year. They receive their first vaccine during routine flipper tagging and their second vaccine 3–5 weeks later.
Vaccinating seals is not an easy task. Most Hawaiian monk seals live in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Scientists spend 2–4 months in rugged field camps on the remote islands each summer. In addition to vaccinating Hawaiian monk seals, their work involves:
This is the 40th year of NOAA’s Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program. Up to 30 percent of the Hawaiian monk seals are alive today because of the lifesaving efforts of NOAA and our partners. These efforts have no doubt contributed to recent population growth.
The Hawaiian monk seal is one of the most endangered seal species in the world. They are native to the Hawaiian archipelago and are found nowhere else on Earth. In Hawaiian, their name is ‘īlio holo i ka uaua, which means “dog that runs in rough water.” Hawaiian monk seals are a part of the biodiversity that make Hawaii’s ocean ecosystem unique.
The overall population had been declining for more than five decades due to historic seal hunting and food limitation. Modern-day threats include entanglement in marine debris, disease, habitat loss, and interactions with humans.
Though the Hawaiian monk seal population has been on the increase in recent years, it is still far below historic levels. Scientists estimate that the population across the Hawaiian archipelago surpassed 1,500 in 2021 for the first time in more than 20 years. The current upward trend is due in part to NOAA Fisheries’ Species in the Spotlight recovery efforts. Federal agencies and our partners are working hard to bring this species back from near extinction.
Hawaiian monk seals have likely inhabited the entire Hawaiian archipelago for millions of years. Voyaging Polynesians arrived in Hawai‘i in the 1200s, establishing communities in the southern portion of the island chain. Human settlement in this area slowly led to the local extinction of monk seals on the southern islands. The more remote and rarely visited islands to the northwest became the refuge for seals for centuries until the arrival of Europeans in the late 1700s. Then seal hunting and other human activities accelerated the decline of monk seals. A seal hunting expedition by the brig Aiona in 1824 was thought to have killed the last Hawaiian monk seal. But in 1859, an exploratory voyage to the Midway Atoll discovered monk seals on the islands.
Since 2013, the Hawaiian monk seal population has been increasing due in part to legal protections.
In 1972, the landmark Marine Mammal Protection Act established a national policy to protect all marine mammals in U.S. waters, including the Hawaiian monk seal. Four years later, the Hawaiian monk seal became the first marine mammal listed under the Endangered Species Act. These monumental Acts set the groundwork for future protections at the national and state levels.
The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument encompasses key habitat for Hawaiian monk seals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian monk seal is also the official state mammal of Hawaiʻi and protected under state and federal law.
We need your help to protect this important species.
With your help we can protect Hawaiian monk seals for future generations to experience. You are our partners in conservation. If you’re lucky enough to see a Hawaiian monk seal on the beach or in the water, be sure to keep your distance and admire from afar.
Photo: istockphoto.com
A: If you have questions about what it means to be house poor, you’re not alone. There’s no official consensus on the definition of house poor, meaning it can be hard to identify and discuss. While the term is often used surrounding real estate purchases, it can actually refer to several aspects of owning a home that contribute to placing an individual in a situation where they are living beyond their means.
In the sections below, you’ll learn more about the meaning of “house poor,” along with some of the various factors that can contribute to an individual or household becoming house poor. Some strategies on how to avoid becoming or remaining house poor will also be shared.
Photo: istockphoto.com
So, what does it mean to be house poor? The term house poor is used to describe an individual who spends such a large portion of their income on housing that they do not have enough funds to meet other needs or aspirations.
Being house poor doesn’t have to do with your yearly income—just the percentage of it that’s spent on your house. For example, a person earning a $250,000 salary could be just as “house poor” as someone who makes $50,000 a year.
According to a survey conducted by Consumer Affairs, 69 percent of homeowners feel that the definition of house poor applies to them. In the same survey, three out of every five homeowners indicated they have had to forego other home essentials to keep up with their mortgage and other housing bills.
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The cost of being house poor can be significant. When you spend a large percentage of your income on your mortgage and home-related expenses, you aren’t left with adequate funds to cover other stuff.
Some of the downsides of being house poor include:
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Sometimes, buying the best house you can afford on paper isn’t the best decision. Don’t forget that there are other factors and expenses to consider beyond the purchase price of a house and your projected monthly mortgage payment.
Some additional factors you should account for when determining how much house you can afford include:
Financial circumstances change. It’s possible to be able to comfortably afford your home when you initially purchase it but end up house broke years, or even months, down the road. Some life events that could impact your ability to cover your mortgage include having children, losing a job, or losing a spouse, partner, or roommate who contributed to monthly bills.
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While understanding what house poor means is important, it’s also important to understand what you can do to avoid putting yourself in a similar situation. Creating a budget is one of the most important things you should do before you begin house hunting or put an offer on a home.
Your budget should include projected utility, food, transportation, and medical costs. Include your monthly income and savings and leisure money goals before determining how much you can reasonably afford to spend on a mortgage.
If you don’t have the room in your budget for your dream home, it may be the right time to look into a small townhouse or a condominium that can serve as a starter home. Once your financial situation changes, you may be able to upgrade to a larger home.
If you are house poor and looking for some breathing room in your budget, there are a few different options to consider. The first is to look into refinancing your home. If you have enough equity in your home, refinancing could help remove the private mortgage insurance (PMI), which could reduce each payment.
Another option to consider is to sell your home and downsize to something more affordable. While this may not be your ideal solution, having some breathing room in your budget could help lower your stress and make it easier to cover other expenses.
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Filler is like an art form and getting it right requires a bit of restraint. While the rise of the ubiquitous “pillow face” proves that bigger isn’t always better, it boils down to a matter of preference. But overdoing filler can have consequences—namely, "filler fatigue."
Not to be taken too literally, this doesn’t happen when the body gets tired of filler, per se. Instead, this occurs when filler is overapplied and creates a less than desirable finish. This is a relatively new phenomenon and as such, there aren’t any in-depth studies to draw from, but the proof is literally in patients’ faces. When we asked Dr. Robert Schwarcz, Manhattan-based, double-board certified oculofacial plastic surgeon and Orvos Skin Science founder, to describe filler fatigue from a medical standpoint, he acknowledged that sentiment first.
“There have been no formal studies or biopsies that have been reported in these patients to confidently comment on this with an evidence-based answer,” he acknowledged. But in his opinion, he’d chalk it up to “not all filler being fully metabolized and repeated injections in the face.” Eventually, this leads to prolonged swelling and water accumulation, which can add weight to the face, Dr. Schwarcz explains. And instead of leaving a fuller, more natural-looking finish, the face appears puffy.
When more filler is added to the overdone filler, that’s when filler fatigue can occur. This overapplication can override the efficacy of filler altogether. “If we replenish lost volume, we get a more youthful appearance and lift surrounding structures,” nurse practitioner and Nicole Frontera Beauty founder Nicole Frontera tells Coveteur. “If someone is overfilled and you're trying to add more with the hope you'll be able to lift the skin, that's what I would classify as filler fatigue—your filler will no longer do the job you're trying to do.”
Ahead, Frontera and Dr. Schwarcz break down how to avoid filler fatigue and what can be done to treat it.
In order to understand filler fatigue, it’s important to understand what exactly hydrophilic filler is. These types of fillers, like Juvederm Ultra, for example, tend to draw in more water and create a more swollen-looking finish. Dr. Schwarcz believes that these are the more significant culprit of filler fatigue. “This increased water that is being held by the filler molecules can adversely affect your skin's elasticity,” he explains. “The fillers can also migrate about one to two centimeters from where it was intended to be placed.” This can also be chalked up to lymphatic drainage sites in the face being compromised, leading to lymphatic backup in the form of fluid mounds and festoons.
Certain parts of the face can be more susceptible to filler fatigue. Per Dr. Schwarcz, “cheeks, lips, and lower eyelids are most susceptible to looking overfilled or doughy.”
This is less about specific brands and more about using the right types and amounts of filler in the correct spot. “If you go to a provider that is very educated, it doesn't matter the brand,” Frontera explains. “Many companies make wonderful products and it's up to your injector to know what products go in what areas and which tissues. One brand won't cause this more than another.”
When Frontera sees a client experiencing filler fatigue, she presents them with two options: dissolving the filler completely or potentially consulting with a plastic surgeon—but neither is a quick fix. “The options I give them are dissolving, which can become a long, unpredictable and challenging process, or if they’re more mature, I might just refer them to a plastic surgeon and explain that maybe the best choice is to do something more invasive,” she says.
But the first approach with filler fatigue should always be to ease off of filler, not ramp it up. “Give your face a rest or even consider utilizing hyaluronidase to dissolve some existing hyaluronic acid filler,” Dr. Schwarcz suggests.
“Realistically, if we can just put small amounts of filler at a session, much of this can be avoided,” Dr. Schwarcz explains. Requiring a large amount of filler in a single session might point towards a surgical approach, like a facelift or lower eyelid blepharoplasty, he says.
Spacing out appointments can also help you steer clear of filler fatigue. Frontera generally tells her clients to space appointments out by six months. “Fillers last at least six months,” she says. Alternatively, they can combine filler with other aesthetic treatments to cut down on the amount of filler being injected. “Combination treatments can help patients avoid looking overdone and avoid filler fatigue,” she adds. “For example, 10 months after filler, I can add threads and a few months later, I can use lasers. Combination therapy helps to avoid too much of one thing and lead to something like filler fatigue.”
Combining treatments can create a more tailored, natural finish. Since filler isn’t a blanket solution, this can help you target skin issues more effectively. “Just using filler will cause people to look strange and overfilled. They stop working and start to do what they're not supposed to—it can cause those faces that people are afraid to have,” Frontera adds. A key element is going to an injector with enough tools in their arsenal, or the right colleagues at their disposal, to not rely on filler too heavily. “An injector with lots of tools can choose a different modality, and if they don’t have all the tools, they should join forces with a colleague to incorporate other treatments like lasers, to avoid overfilling and filler fatigue."
For over a century, arbitration has been utilized to resolve disputes as an alternative to navigating the traditional court system. In recent years, arbitration has grown immensely as a dispute resolution tool, thanks to comprehensive legislation at the state and federal level and overburdened court systems that have exacerbated the need for viable alternatives to traditional litigation of claims that may arise in any context.
Arbitration is entirely a creature founded in contract law. Everything about it arises solely from the agreement of the parties. This means that, if negotiated, your company can design almost every aspect of this resolution procedure for any dispute arising out of contractual relationships. The only limits to customizing arbitration are: (1) creativity; and (2) public policy and legislation.
A giant flame burning outside St Petersburg, big enough to be seen from Finland, captures Europe’s challenge as autumn approaches: Vladimir Putin is flaring off gas while the continent braces for a winter of discontent triggered by record energy prices.
Putin’s attack on Ukraine has brought home the need for more pan-European public goods and joint action, above all for security and energy independence. It reinforces a realisation that was already seeping into the political consciousness thanks to the pandemic and the climate crisis.
But the next six months will put leaders’ best intentions to severe political and economic tests. The need to do more together comes just as national politicians face extreme temptation to become more inward-looking. And governments will have to invest more money in the common good just as their economies take a turn for the worse.
At home, every country is racked by high energy prices, and the demand to cushion the blow for voters and businesses will take up ever more political attention. It would be a mistake to let the cost of living crisis distract from helping Ukraine, since it is largely caused by Putin’s weaponisation of gas prices. But the temptation to do so, and the pressure to put one’s own country first, will only get stronger as the suffering from rising energy bills becomes more severe.
Then there are pre-existing frictions that undermine the EU’s ability on collective action. Poland’s and Hungary’s erosion of the rule of law remains unresolved. The European Commission has declined to approve the latter’s recovery plans and has launched its new instrument for holding back other budget transfers to Budapest, too. Warsaw’s plan is approved but any disbursement is conditional on further concessions on its politicised judiciary reform. The economic squeeze may bring both back into the fold but it could also tempt them to play a bigger spoiler role.
Elsewhere, the political spectres from the eurozone crisis have started appearing again. Suspicions about how Italy is spending its recovery fund money are not far below the surface. Grumbles can be heard that Berlin has not shed its penny-pinching instincts when it comes to EU financial aid for Ukraine. And in Spain — previously hard hit by crises but today relatively well placed with its large gas import capacity — politicians find it hard not to invert Germany’s old lecturing, accusing it of living beyond its (energetic) means.
Beyond the politics, economic obstacles to policy action are mounting, too. Inuring Europe from Putin’s energy manipulation will require investments to better tie the bloc’s energy infrastructure together. But public and private finances are set to deteriorate.
Most growth indicators point in the wrong direction; mere stagnation would be a lucky outcome. Even if Europe is spared an outright recession, Putin’s gas games make it poorer through much-worsened terms of trade. Germany, of all countries, has gone into trade deficit on the back of expensive gas imports. Add to this a monetary orthodoxy telling the European Central Bank to reduce aggregate demand, damp wage demands and rein in the eurozone’s (impressive) job growth.
This perfect storm makes for a winter of divisiveness and therefore indecision. That, of course, is Putin’s goal. It must be all of Europe’s goal to avoid it.
It is a good start that EU leaders are keenly aware of their predicament. As all face energy crises at home, they understand the domestic pressures on their counterparts. Some are trying to prepare voters for what is going to come. But it will take great political deftness to land such a message among those who have long felt bypassed by whatever abundance there may have been.
Between EU countries, intriguing political reconfigurations are under way. Hungary’s friendliness with Russia has alienated it from Poland. This has neutered the Visegrad group, joining both with Czechs and Slovaks, often in opposition to western Europe. Countries on the EU’s northern flank are awkwardly finding they cannot be defence hawks and fiscal hawks at the same time: if they want greater investment in Europe’s security, they must be open to more joint spending or laxer restrictions on national budgets.
These are at most hints of a more cohesive politics. To realise it, and frustrate Putin’s designs, government chiefs must resist their instincts as merely national leaders. German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s much-awaited speech in Prague on Monday is the best chance to give a strong lead. To say it is a make or break moment for Europe’s future may be an exaggeration. But only a slight one.
ragamnyakabar.blogspot.com Glen Rose’s downtown — lined with boutiques, antique shops, bookstores and cafes in early 20th century building...
