Kaimana the monk seal was swept off to her new home Saturday morning with only a few barks of protest.

She sounded a bit like Chewbacca in “Star Wars.”

A team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including many longtime volunteers, assembled before dawn at Kaimana Beach, with the sky turning gray over Diamond Head.

First problem: No seal.

Kaimana was missing in action.

Around 7 a.m., she was spotted frolicking in the water in front of Michel’s at the Colony Surf.

The team split up, not knowing whether she would beach at Kaimana or the Outrigger Canoe Club.

Ultimately, she waddled ashore at Kaimana, her birthplace, not far from the lifeguard stand.

A crowd of perhaps 100 documented the event on cellphone cameras.

In what was clearly a well-orchestrated operation, NOAA team members hurried down and enfolded the seal in a ropelike hammock. Then they hauled her up and put her in a cage in the back of a heavy-duty pickup.

“Wraa!” Kaimana said. “Wraa!”

“Goodbye, Kaimana,” one bystander said.

And off she went.

Kaimana, formally PO3, was born in late June at the beach to mother Rocky, RH58, and the seals have been sensations — on the beach and the internet — in the ensuing weeks.

Rocky weaned the pup on Friday, abruptly departing after a final feed around 1 p.m. NOAA official David Schofield said the decision was made around dusk on Friday that Rocky was gone for good and that Kaimana could be moved first thing Saturday.

The team on Saturday brought screens in case they had to “herd” Kaimana, keeping her from going back out to sea. But in the end the extra measures were not needed.

The pup went docilely, if not altogether quietly. She was tagged and vaccinated before being released into the wild at an undisclosed location on Oahu.

NOAA officials, who took time to explain everything to the crowd, said Kaimana would be better off growing up among other monk seals rather than among humans. Kaimana can live off her fat reserves for a few weeks, NOAA experts said, but eventually will have to find food on her own.