Can someone provide some information about this Walrus skull?

Why would a walrus would swim to Hawaii and die? Perhaps it is mystery similar to why wales beach themselves just as people do some pretty dumb things. HA! Or maybe its dead bloated body was carried to Hawaii by Pacific Ocean currents. Or maybe some fool just planted the walrus skull on the hawaiian beach for the fun of watching the controversy about it.

Just a complete WAG here but maybe the same way much of the detrius from the coast of Japan ended up there, currents. There is a huge expanse of water to the north of the Hawaiian chain refered to as the Pacific Trash Vortex Info and more info. The skull could have been transported from the north, circulated in the vortex for a while, and spit out on the island.

There’s also the possibility that the walrus was a meal for a great white shark, who then transported it to your neighborhood (individual great whites have been tracked from the US Pacific coast to Hawaii).

Sharks’ stomachs trap large indigestible objects (and sharks can’t digest large bones) to keep them from going down into the intestines. When the stomach has collected an annoying amount of this junk, the shark will invert its stomach, turning it inside out through the mouth. All of the junk gets dumped.

This would fit with the pitting that you see, since it would have spent awhile in the shark’s gastric juices.

Just a theory.

The ocean can move things amazing distances.

In the news recently was a story of a woman who lost her camera in Hawaii in 2007.

Someone found it in Taiwan last month.

Link

I have looked a many skulls online and I am wondering, was this an adolescent because the tusks are right in front and the other pictures show tusks on
either side, well separated.

The age of skull can be based on the extent to which the various bones of the cranium have fused together. Just by looking at very distinct demarkations between the bones of the skull on this animal it is obvious that it was not elderly. Like you said it is likely an adolescent.

The Hawain Islands were a supply, repair and coaling station for whalers & sealers (including walrus hunters) throughout the whaling era. Honolulu, Pearl, Hilo, and Lahaina were the largest. It’s possible that the skull could be refuse from those ships. Otherwise, the Japan current could have carried it south down the North American west coast from the arctic and storms and currents west to Hawaii, which I think would be pretty amazing.

Hawaiian. My apologies to Hawaii_Jake

Wouldn’t it be unusual for traders to discard a skull along with its ivory, though?