Sunday, February 15, 2009

Whales

This is the last week of this group of volunteers. They've been here for about 4 months and will fly out on Wed., if there are no plane troubles. We're losing 4 volunteers and getting 3, so it will be a little busier around here until a couple more show up on the Kahana in March. I've only got a few weeks left before I go off island for training and vacation too.

We got out for a boat trip on Friday, now that we've had a few days of good weather. We saw a few humpback whales on our way to and from LaPerouse Pinnacle. They were pretty far away, but we could see their spouts, fins, and backs every now and then. I didn't want to disturb them, so we just watched them from afar (too far for pictures with my little camera). We could hear them singing when we jumped in the water at LaPerouse to snorkel.

Here's some nice table coral out by LaPerouse Pinnacle.

I saw a big green sea turtle while snorkeling today.

These are bluefin trevally. They can get up to about 25 pounds and like to follow people around while they snorkel. I don't know if they're just curious or think we'll scare up some food for them.

Brie and Kelly are putting temporary bands on the albatross chicks. They are starting to wander away from their nests a little, so we want to know which chick came from which nest in the plots that we monitor.

This frigatebird got hit by the plane propeller a few weeks ago. It looks almost like it got chopped in half, but I think only the tail feathers got knocked off. It flies around fine, but might be a little less maneuverable. You can look at my older posts for what a full tailed bird looks like (the one back in Nov. shows the tails nicely).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh wild!!! i'm so glad you got a picture of that guy. nice one. -kelli

Anonymous said...

That frigate bird's brush with a prop gives new meaning to "a close call!"

AS usual your photos are so darn interesting - any chance to get some whale "talk" on a hydrophone?

Buzz

Jana said...

Where will you be going for vacation? Jana

Pete Leary said...

Thanks for the comments. Next time I'm at LaPerouse I'll try some underwater movies with my little camera and see if I can get some sound.

On vacation I'll be in Cleveland, OH for a while then Czech Republic for a couple of weeks to visit the inlaws.