WAIKIKI — A Hawaiian monk seal that had a fishhook removed from his mouth on Sunday made his way yesterday from Kalaeloa to Queen's Beach where he sunned himself.

Kermit, as he is called by the Monk Seal Response Team, looked much better yesterday than he did on Sunday, when volunteers and scientists pulled the barbed ulua fishhook from his swollen mouth.

To help seals spit out fish hooks, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is giving away barbless hooks (see box).

D.B. Dunlap, a response team volunteer, saw Kermit on April 16 and he looked fine. Six days later, Dunlap said, the seal had a fish hook hanging out of his mouth when he was spotted in Waimanalo.

"We were trying to help him because we were concerned that his face was swollen," said David Schofield, NOAA Marine Mammal Response coordinator. "We had volunteers all over the island looking for Kermit."

When the monk seal hauled himself out of the water on Sunday, Dunlap said he saw that there was an opportunity to remove the hook. The 500-pound Kermit didn't fight his rescuers when they captured him with a net, cut the hook in two and pulled it out.

"Kermit is a regular here in Waikiki," Dunlap said. "He usually makes his way from Kalaeloa to Waimanalo, Sandys, Diamond Head and here. Mostly, he's an O'ahu boy.

"Sometimes he's here with another monk seal named Irma. I can tell that he's Kermit because of the scar patterns. Now he will have another scar on his lip."

Hawaiian monk seals are an endangered species. Only 100 exist around the main Hawaiian Islands and about 1,100 in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, Schofield said. On average, NOAA removes fishing hooks from eight to 10 monk seals a year. So far this year, three monk seals have had fishing hooks removed.

"Survival is critical to repopulating the species," Schofield said.

Also critical is that the seals are not disturbed while they are on the beaches, he said. That's the job of the rescue team, which erects a rope barricade around the seal and maintains a sunrise-to-sunset vigil to keep people from getting too close.

"The first question we get is, 'Is it dead,'" Dunlap said. "Because the seal can lay here all day long and you might not see a noticeable breath."