Sunday, August 2, 2009

Blogspot Finally Works Again (for now)

I can finally do my own blogs again. Thanks for putting them up for me all those weeks Dasha. It must have been some setting that they changed, because our internet service is a little bit worse than usual. Oh well, it's always going to be something.

We've been finding more and more turtle hatchlings that are crawling around the island instead of finding their way into the water. They usually crawl toward light and with a bright, high moon like it is now, they sometimes go for the middle of the island instead of the surf.

The seal pups that have weaned also have been scooting up all over the island too. The runway isn't a good spot for them, so we have to put them back on the beach. I think they learn fairly quickly that there isn't much for them up here anyway.

We're getting ready for a couple of ships in the next couple of weeks. Next Sunday, the Sette will come and get the shark guys and 2 of the seal crew. They'll be dropping off 3 more people to help with some seal work that I'll tell you about next time. They'll also be bringing about 15 boxes of groceries for us, so we're kind of looking forward to that. A few days later, the Kahana will be bringing a lot of supplies and some construction materials to fix the warehouse up. We'll finally be getting some mail too. The last time we had that was in June. I hope people sent me some goodies!!


A baby green sea turtle is trying to get into the water. I put it in a bucket though and we let it go after sunset, since there are fewer fish and birds to eat them at night.

There was a question last week on the tagging. So Buzz, here's what the seal tags look like. This one was on Midway. They just put it on the tail flippers. With the sharks, they implant a tracking tag and they also give it a dorsal fin tag so they immediately if they've caught it before. I don't have pictures of that though.

This is a bush near the barracks that the black noddies love to nest in.

This is just a picturesque bush near the beach.

The brown noddies nest on the ground or on roofs and the chicks are usually white or gray when they are small. The black noddies nest in the bushes and the chicks are always black, except for the front of their head.

3 comments:

Seagull Steve said...

Pete - Glad to hear things are going well on Tern. I do miss the seabirds quite a bit....right now I'm working for Bat Conservation International in Pennsylvania....not exactly like the northwestern islands but interesting in its own right. Who are the new sealers coming in?

Julie Zickefoose said...

Amazing blog, Pete. I stumbled on it while Googling images of masked booby. I never cease to be amazed at the things people are doing, photographing and writing on the Net. Thanks for your good work and I wish you fair winds, following seas, and a large audience.

Pete Leary said...

Steve, glad to hear things are going well.
Julie, thanks for the comment and well wishes. I'm always interested to see who stumbles upon my blog.