Things are going along relatively smoothly here. Almost all of our albatrosses have gone. There's only a few late ones still around. We're still doing a bit of bird banding with red-footed and masked boobies, black noddies, and red-tailed tropicbirds. But we aren't getting too many new eggs so most of the seabird nesting is slowing down. The wedge-tailed shearwaters and Bulwer's petrels are the only ones that are just getting going.
The turtle nests have begun hatching. So far we've only found one hatchling that was alive. We put it in a coffee can with sand and kept it in the dark until after sunset. We released it and it swam off. At least it has a chance now instead of being stuck up in the weeds and drying out in the sun like the other few that we found so far. I'll get some pics of them when a few more of the nests start hatching. Everybody loves baby turtles.
The weather has been pretty good lately, so we've been out in the boat a few times also. We did some trash pickup on Gin island and swam with some manta rays on the way there. See, it's not so bad here even with slow internet service.
This manta was about 8 ft. across. The water was kind of cloudy, but that's why the rays like it. Lots of food to filter out of the water.
Some brown noddies are staking a claim to some of the debris on Gin Island. We took a boat load of it, but they still have plenty of debris left to sit on.
This is Disappearing Island. It is at the other end of the atoll. At least it was still there this time. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not, but the water is always beautiful.
Dasha made some great donuts last week.
This is a Christmas wrasse at LaPerouse Pinnacle. They are hard to get pictures of as evidenced by my next picture.
This is what a lot of my Christmas wrasse pictures look like. They like to be in the surge zone so I get a lot of bubble pictures.
We had to catch this turtle and carry her back to the beach. She got through our fences somehow and was crawling around on the runway. We didn't want her to get too scraped up, and didn't want her getting stuck somewhere, so 4 people scooped her up in the net and we let her go on Shell beach.
This is a trumpet fish. Sometimes they are brownish and striped, and sometimes they are bright yellow. I don't know why this one was upside down?
2 comments:
Hey Pete... I recently discovered your Midway blog, and after spending a few days reading through it I am finally caught up to here! I look forward to following along in near real-time... as real as is possible!
Pete,
Keep up the good work, and the reporting. You're doing a fine job.
Nelson & Mona
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