Preparation

This week there wasn't a lot that was new, although we have a few new seal pups born, and a few more turtles nesting. We are mainly preparing for this week when we have a University of Hawaii class visiting. They will be coming Monday morning on the Woods Hole research vessel Robert C Seamans. They'll be here for a couple of days learning about coral and management issues at French Frigate Shoals. The day after they leave, we'll be getting our supplies on the Kahana. We'll also be getting 4 new volunteers and losing one volunteer, see you later, Caitie. We'll have a week or so of turnover time, and then the other volunteers and Paula (asst. mgr) will be heading back to Honolulu.
I've got a lot of prep work, so I'm keeping this week's entry relatively short.

Here's one of the issues with our seawall. Turtles get in and can't get out. They aren't any good at backing up, especially when they get wedged in somewhere. I had to first dig, then pull this female out today with help from Dasha. I'm guessing it was about 175 lbs.


Here's a sooty tern family with a brand new chick under wing.

I haven't shown you a red-tailed tropicbird flying for a while, so here's one.

The brown boobies nest on LaPerouse Pinnacle. The chicks look a lot like the masked booby chicks.

Dasha got a chance to go out with the seal crew last week. She got the rare chance to see our resident spinner dolphins. They don't like the boats much, I think mainly because we can't go fast enough to make a good wake for them to play in. On Midway they liked playing around the boats.