Island Air not up a creek just yet

Five consecutive quarterly losses can’t be good for anybody. But at least for Island Air owner Larry Ellison, the world’s fifth-richest person, a quarterly loss of $3.6 million must be like losing change in the sofa.

Moreover, it’s not like Ellison, who also owns 98 percent of Lanai, isn’t doing things to improve the airline, which was struggling when he bought it in early 2013.

He is adding two new 71-seat turboprops to his fleet soon, has boosted operations and maintenance spending, and has been investing in employee training. The airline — which operates more than 250 flights weekly between Oahu, Maui, Kauai and Lanai — actually enjoyed a 70.6 percent increase in passenger traffic in the latest quarter, to 114,378.

So don’t cry for Island Air. Its 250 or so employees likely will be just fine.

Monk seals’ best friends are human

When it comes to the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal, any change in the population trend is significant.

So it’s good news that the number of reported seal pups and juveniles has increased a bit in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, even though the overall population has declined over the last three years.

The reasons for the increase are not fully clear. But human intervention will continue to be critical to helping them hang on. Teams from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra- tion recently rescued five seals from marine debris and sent two pups to the monk seal hospital in Kona. They also relocated 11 female pups to a safer location. That may not sound like many, but with only about 1,100 seals left, every seal saved counts for a lot.