Channels of the Hawaiian Islands 7 miles. ʻAlalākeiki means "crying baby." The Kealaikahiki Channel is the channel between Lānaʻi and Kahoʻolawe. It literally means "the road to Tahiti"; if one takes a bearing off of Kealaikahiki Point on Kahoʻolawe while in the channel and heads directly straight, one arrives, more or less, in Tahiti. In practice, however, Polynesian navigators probably did not quite ply a straight route to Tahiti. The channel is 17 miles wide. The ʻAuʻau Channel is one of the most protected areas of ocean in the Hawaiian Islands, lying between Lānaʻi and Maui. The channel is also protected by Molokaʻi to the
Hawaiian monk seal its own, and returns to the sea to forage for the first time since the pup’s arrival. Most seals are found on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian monk seal is endangered, although its cousin species the Mediterranean monk seal ("M. monachus") is even rarer, and the Caribbean monk seal ("M. tropicalis"), last sighted in the 1950s, was officially declared extinct in June 2008. The total population of Hawaiian monk seals is in decline - the larger population that inhabits the northwest islands is declining while the smaller population on the main Hawaiian Islands is increasing. In 2010, it was