More internet trouble, so more pics this week

I didn't get a blog posted last week, as you probably noticed. Our computers are acting up again and it takes too long to upload photos. I finally got them all up so here you go.

The Kahana came back from its trip up to Midway. We loaded our recycling, trash, and a few other things going back to Honolulu. We also said goodbye to Greg, who was a great help with the invasive weeds for the last week. And Melinda also left. She's done satellite tagging her albatrosses for the season. Tern Island's population is now 6 and will be until the seal and turtle people get here in May.

The turtles are getting ready to dig nests. We are seeing a lot more on the beach these days. We've also seen a couple of pregnant seals, so we should be seeing some pups relatively soon.

Today, after our Easter egg hunt, we had a nice Easter dinner of fried spam (we're out of ham), naan (bread), Czech spinach, and pineapple casserole. It reminded me of my grad school potlucks when all the foreign students brought their country's random dishes. It was tasty, and we're all stuffed.

The NOAA seal crew's boat is being loaded onto the Kahana. The weather was windy, rough, and rainy. It kept things interesting.

We take two boats out when we go, so here is the other boat next to LaPerouse Pinnacle.

We had a picnic on Trig Island during our albatross chick count on the other islands. From right to left: Ruth, Dasha, Caitie, Sarah, Greg, Paula (Melinda is behind me taking other pictures). It was kind of a cloudy, but the wind was low, so it wasn't bad. We didn't get as sunburned as usual.

Here are the glass floats that we found so far this winter on the other islands within the atoll, with a pool ball and soft ball thrown in for scale.

This is another Laysan/Black-footed albatross hybrid. This one stays on East Island. We have one that likes to be on Tern. Hybrids don't seem to like each other though, they prefer one species over the other. They have a mixed species dance, so it's tough for them to get mates, although on Midway, I've seen them on nests. We don't know if it is their egg or not when we see that.

Humpback whale. This is as good as I could do with my little camera zoomed all the way, and zoomed some more on the computer. We passed by a couple on the way from East Island to LaPerouse Pinnacle.

This white tern chick couldn't figure out how to get this fish swallowed. It dropped it on the ground, so I gave it back, but head first, so it all worked out.

The Masked booby chicks are getting bigger than their parents.

Sarah gets to do the plot with the Tristram's storm petrels. They are finally old enough to band now. She just banded this little one and is about to put it back in its burrow.

This is a Grey-backed tern chick that was just hatched today. It's already walking around looking for a good hiding spot from the frigatebirds.

Busy Saturday

The Kahana paid us another visit on Saturday and brought us another 3 months worth of supplies. We should be set pretty well with groceries and supplies for when the monk seal crew and the turtle techs get here in May. It got a little busy on Saturday since we also had to have a plane fly in with a freezer repairman for the Kahana. It all worked out, but I'm hoping I won't need another plane during a supply offload anytime soon. At least we had extra help from the volunteers and staff heading out to Laysan Island. It was nice to have one of my ex-volunteers going there (Whitney) so she could help out as a tour guide for all of our island visitors. We had 20 people here for a little while, including the pilots.

I'll have a little more help this week since I got another volunteer. Caitie will be helping us out for a few months. Also, for those of you who used to read my Midway blog, you'll recognize the name Greg. Greg and I got rid of quite a few invasive plants during my year on Midway. He's here to help out for a week and a half with my invasive weeds. He should be able to get rid of quite a few of them since this island is only about 34 acres, compared to about 1200 acres on Sand Island at Midway (of course he's not done with that yet). We'll get all kinds of projects done with all of these people here now!

I just noticed I didn't take any pictures of the Kahana or airplane this time. Oh well, you can check my older posts if you want to see them again. Just pretend they are from Saturday.

Here's Caitie getting a good picture of a green sea turtle.

Here's a reef whitetip shark (I took this picture a couple of weeks ago). It was too close to fit in the frame.

You need at least one picture of the birds.

I'm a week late on posting this picture, but this is some of the trash that has washed up on Gin Island. There isn't any vegetation over there. Just some seals, sand, birds, and marine debris. We picked up a bit, but we can't fit all of this in the boat in one trip.

Just another Tern Island sunset.

Nice weather

This past week was a pretty good week out here. We got a lot of birds counted and even finally got out on the boat again. The trade winds have been blowing us around for the last few weeks, but yesterday was beautiful and we checked up on the condition of the other islands. It was good to see that they didn't get washed over like last year. We are expecting the Kahana (supply ship) later this week, so it's time to get the trash all packed up to send back to Honolulu. We would normally really be looking forward to getting the fresh food, but since we just came back with some fresh groceries after the evacuation, it will just be really good, instead of really, really good. So here's a few pictures and I'll throw in a couple now and then from the last few months. Maybe next week I'll show our Christmas tree.

White banded surgeonfish and convict tangs swim around in large schools around LaPerouse Pinnacle.

This monk seal swam by to check us out.

Here's Melinda helping to unload the big pile of ropes that we found while we were out. At least there were no animals entangled in it.

A white tern is bringing a little squid or cuttlefish to its chick.

I was up on the roof of the barracks and took this.

On Christmas Eve, I found a glass fishing float still wrapped in it's netting. That's the first one I've found in a net. It took a long time to get all that algae off too. We found a couple on East Island yesterday too.

Let's Try This Again

I don't really know where to begin. It's been a while and a lot has gone on around here since my last real post in September. Shortly after I left, the island was evacuated for Hurricane Neki (at least I posted that one). No one was on island for a few weeks and then Ty and Alex came back and started getting the place fixed up. Two freezers and four refrigerators full of food went bad since the power was off, but it was taken care of with a little help from the crew of the NOAA ship "Oscar Elton Sette". Ty and Alex held down the fort until I got back with a new volunteer crew in December. We've been a little shorthanded over the winter, so it's been busy.

A week before last Monday, it looked like we were finally going to catch up on things with the addition of 2 more people and the return of the internet. One of those people was Dasha, my wife, who'll be volunteering for a few months now that she just graduated with her Ph.D. in Pharmacology. It'll be a nice break from lab work. The asst. manager position was also filled, so when you hear me mention Paula, that's who I'm talking about. I said "looked like" we'd catch up because 5 days later we got evacuated for a possible tsunami from the earthquakes near Chile. It was good that there was no wave since the elevation of the island is only about 6 feet. At least I got to take care of some busines and get a few supplies during my 5 days in Honolulu.

The usual things are going on around the island; the albatross chicks and Tristram's storm petrel chicks are getting bigger, the great frigatebirds, red-footed and masked boobies, red-tailed tropicbirds, Bonin petrels, and gray-backed terns are all laying eggs, thousands of sooty terns are hovering over the island, and the whales are swimming around outside of the atoll.

That's the quick update for 6 months' worth of things going on. I thought about writing a lot of detail or actually writing with some sort of style instead of just a few lines about what went on, but that would be too much reading. I don't like to read a lot of pages on the computer, so I try to keep it sort of short and just show a few pictures. I keep threatening to write with more adjectives, but for the moment, I'll spare you.

Laysan albatross flying.

Here's another Laysan albatross shading its chick.

Here's a black-footed albatross chick panting in the sun. It seems like it may not be a great food year and many of the chicks are being left sooner than usual.

The frigatebirds are busy trying to find mates. The males sit in their spot and the females fly over to evaluate. Almost all of the males are displaying right now, so the bushes are pretty colorful.

The old seawall still looks the same and the water still looks like a swimming pool.

Here we are at the Lihue airport on Kauai on our way back to Honolulu. It's me, Dasha, Sarah, Ruth, Paula, and Melinda. I know we're tiny so you'll have to take my word for it. We only left with what we had in our pockets, since the plane couldn't take extra weight.

Here's a closer up picture of Dasha out meeting the neighbors (the birds, in case you didn't get it).

Back to Tern

I've got some bad news for now. The internet on the island is out thanks to the Hurricane Neki evacuation. I'm going to try to get it going when I get back out there, but it might not work until our next plane in February. It was a good time off the island and I got some good Wilderness First Responder training in Bend, OR (which is a really nice town, by the way). The Kahana is Taking us out in the morning in the biggest swells in 40 years in Hawaii. It's going to be a rough ride. I'll fill in some details if I ever get the internet back. So I hope I don't lose too many of you. I don't even have any pictures to put up, but don't worry, I'll be back.

Hurricane Neki

If you've been following Hurricane Neki, you might have noticed it's supposed to get very close to French Frigate Shoals. The island was evacuated by a Coast Guard C-130 today, so Ty, all 4 volunteers, and all 5 construction workers are safe and sound in Honolulu.
Once the hurricane passes, the Coast Guard will fly over and survey any damage. So we'll have to wait and see, but at least everyone's fine.

Here's a link to the video of the Coast Guard plane landing on Tern.

http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=687665

Last blog for a while

As always, it was another busy week. On Wednesday, we had some visitors stop in from the office in Honolulu and the from the Regional Office. They hopped on the Kahana at Midway so they could see how things are going on Laysan, French Frigate Shoals, and Nihoa. After a tour of Tern Island, Ty and I got lunch on the Kahana, then took the group to East Island and snorkeling at LaPerouse Pinnacle. It's always good to give people a look underwater, since the atoll has only about 67 acres of land and 232,000 acres of coral reef. Sarah (volunteer) left on the Kahana too so now we have 4 volunteers to take care of business until Dec.

We had a plane on Friday. Another 10 minutes and we wouldn't have. It started pouring rain just after it landed. I'm sure they would have had to turn around like last week since the visibility would have been too bad. We don't have a full service airport here so pilots have to fly on visual flight rules. It's tough to land if you can't see the island. The runway got covered in water, but thanks to our high tech water removal equipment (the volunteers and a bunch of brooms), most of the water was swept off of the main takeoff path.

If all goes well, I'll be out on the plane tomorrow (Monday). On my time off, I'll be doing some first aid training in Bend, OR, working in the office in Honolulu, and hanging out in Cleveland, and whatever else looks good while I'm gone. I may or may not make any vacation posts, we'll see if there's anything interesting in the rest of the world. If not, then I'll probably post when I get back here in Dec. See ya!

This is Round Island. It comes and goes. I hope it stays around long enough for this pup to wean. You can see Tern Island on the horizon. I wish I could bring my nice camera in the boat, but I'm not taking the chance on it getting wet. This is about as good of a zoom as I can get with my little waterproof Olympus.

These are "Nenue". That's the Hawaiian name for various species of chubs, which all look very similar, so we'll stick with nenue. They are very common around here and every now and then we'll see a yellow one in a school of gray ones.

Here is a bluefin trevally swimming below me. They usually follow seals around to see if they scare up any food. They also follow people around, until they see that we aren't doing anything interesting. They are fairly big and get up to 25 pounds. The giant trevally, which also follow seals and people, get a lot bigger, about 5 ft and 150 lbs. My pictures weren't as good of those guys this time.

This is a blue-grey noddy on LaPerouse Pinnacle. It's a bit fuzzy since I had to zoom in a lot on the computer, otherwise it would have just looked like another guano spot.

This is what our warehouse looks like with no walls. It's probably a little more interesting for people who've been out here before. It should be all fixed up by the time I get back.

This is the runway today. It looks a little better than it did a couple of months ago.

New volunteers and rain

I got the new helpers on Monday. I'm glad that Adam and Sarah are still around to help show them the ropes. Ty is catching on quick for all the "acting manager" jobs that he'll have around here while I'm at training and on vacation. He says it reminds him of working on a ranch, with all the cooking, cleaning, and other chores that everyone has to pitch in on. He also said, "You have a really cool job". I know.
We finally got some rain. The problem is that it came the day the plane was bringing more construction workers. They got here and the visibility was terrible and there were big lakes on the runway. They flew over, took a look, then flew back to Honolulu. It rained again the next night, so we got up early and took brooms and spread all of the puddles around to dry them out. It was a pretty big job to get that done. It ended up being pretty dry so at least the plane could land on Wednesday. It was a bit muddy though. I'm hoping it doesn't rain on the 21st, since that's when I'm supposed to be flying off.
I finally got a Sunday off today, so I went snorkeling with the new people, went for a run, and watched "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". So absolutely no work today. The construction guys worked a half day, and were glad they could get finally get off the hot roof for a bit.

Here comes some of our supplies and new volunteers. The Kahana is in the background.

I'm training Ty on how to get through the little channels to get to the other islands. We took our lunch along and ate it on Trig Island. I think we need one palm tree on this island. I believe some introductions are in order; Sarah, Erika, Alex, Ty, Adam, and Katie are in the picture.

Here is one of two Bristle-thighed curlews that are visiting right now. They usually prefer the other atolls for some reason. They nest in Alaska and take their winters on islands and atolls throughout the pacific. Last I heard there's only about 7,000 of them in the world.

This is the other curlew that's here. I'm glad it got this grasshopper. It's invasive and we're trying to get rid of them. It was interesting to watch the bird try to kill the grasshopper before it could eat it. It would shake it up to stun it, then slam it on the ground, and catch it again before it could get away. These grasshoppers are tough, this one is about 4" long and even a stomp with the old shoe usually doesn't phase them. These birds will also eat other birds eggs, which they crack open by hitting them with rocks.

Here's another uncommon shorebird I haven't shown you before. The little light colored bird is a sanderling. The other 4 are ruddy turnstones. The turnstones are always around but there are only a couple of sanderlings here each season.

Happy Labor Day

It's another working weekend for us on Tern Island. We had a plane today, which brought a runway inspector and John and Josh, who'll be working on the warehouse. They came today so that they can help unload the Kahana tomorrow. It's bringing the rest of the construction materials, plus 3 new volunteers and Ty, who'll be taking care of things out here while I'm gone. He usually takes care of Tern Island from Honolulu, so now he gets some hands on experience. We are losing 2 volunteers, Whitney gets to take the Kahana to Midway and fly back from there, and Therese will fly back to Honolulu from here in a few days. Sarah will stay to help train the new volunteers and take the Kahana back, and Adam will stay out here a while longer.
We'll have another plane the day after tomorrow with a few more construction workers. So we're well on our way to the 14 that'll be here when I leave. Things are really busy around here, but it feels good to see some results.


The plane is taking off for Honolulu.

Since I talked about the nice view I had while running my 10k's, I thought I'd show you. This picture shows the nice blue water, but it also makes it look like a desert island with all the dead vegetation. It has been really dry out here lately, but still beautiful.

Sarah and Whitney were watching the seal crew do their work. The sooty tern was just looking for a good spot for..... whatever they use their spots for?

This brown noddy chick is only a couple of days old and wandered out into the middle of the runway. Either that or a frigatebird dropped it before it could eat it (more likely). I put it off to the side, near the most likely parents, but its chances aren't good.

I haven't shown you a baby turtle for a few weeks. Here's one that we let go early in the morning and is almost home.

New Manager

OK, it's supposed to be official as of today that I am the new manager of Tern Island. I was only "acting" manager up until now. I had to be here a year before I was eligible for the increase in grade. It won't change anything, but I'll at least get a raise.

We've been busy, as usual, out here. This time we've been clearing out the warehouse so the construction work can start in a week or so. It's really difficult to find other places to store all that, since that's why we have the warehouse in the first place. They should be done with it by late Nov, so I'll just have to keep things cluttered until then.

I've still had time to continue with my jogging. I decided 5k wasn't enough excercise though, so I bumped it up to 10k. Now that's enough excercise, at least for the time being. That's 5 laps around the runway. The scenery is great, so it doesn't get old. And some of the meaner birds like to try to peck my head at certain spots on the loop. It keeps me paying attention at least.

We'll be starting our flights this weekend. Many of the sooty terns have gone and I hope even more leave by the weekend so none of them get hit. The Kahana will be coming up on Labor day to bring the rest of the construction gear and 3 new volunteers. Ty will also be coming out from Honolulu to act as manager while I get my time off the island in Oct/Nov. So there's only one more week of 5 people, then by next week, we'll be back up to about 13 people. It makes cooking night a little harder, but other than that, it should be alright.

I took a little time this week to go out with Whitney and band some Bulwer's petrel chicks. We have these nest boxes for them since it hard for them to dig burrows with all the coral chunks everywhere. They use them quite a bit. Here, there are 3 chicks out of 4 nest boxes.

There was another nice sunset this evening.

This red-footed booby was just watching me work on the tractor.

This is one of my favorite little fish. It's a Hawaiian cleaner wrasse. They have little cleaning stations where bigger fish come to get cleaned. This picture is a little blurry, but I've been trying to get a picture of one forever, so this is as good as it gets.

Tern Island - Population: 5

I thought being on a little island out in the middle of the ocean meant kicking back, reading some books and watching the wildlife. Not quite, apparently. We had 2 more ships this week. Really, they were the same 2 as last week, but instead of big offloads, we had big onloads. The Sette came through on Thursday and picked up the seal crew and all of their stuff. They also picked up the 6 seal pups that they tagged last week. I got an email from them saying that they let them go at Nihoa and everything is good with them. I hope they make it. We had one pup that just weaned that didn't make it. It was attacked by a shark a couple of days ago, but finally died yesterday, probably from infection.

The Kahana came today to pick up all of our trash and recycling from the last 5 months. Elizabeth also went aboard and is headed back to Honolulu. We are now down to the usual island poplulation of 5. Four volunteers and me. It's more cooking nights, entrapment walks, and cleaning duties for each of us, but it's kind of nice to have it so low key. All of the people who come out here are great, but it's just nice to have it slow down sometimes. When the construction on the warehouse starts in a few weeks, we'll be back up to 15 again. So I'm enjoying it while I can.

We're getting all of our trash into pallet tubs to put on the Kahana this morning.

We're bringing out a boatload of gear to the Sette.

A young brown booby was checking out our propellers as we waited to pull up to the Sette.

This is a brown noddy with its albino chick. It can fly now, but the parent still feeds it. Like I've told you before about albinos, seabirds don't usually make it to adulthood. There are a lot of factors working against them like bad eyesight, sun damage, being picked on, more obvious to predators, etc.

Just a gecko on the window.

More Groceries

It's been a very busy week with 2 ships and people coming and going. We offloaded the ship all day Saturday and had a couple of loads on Sunday morning, but we've got everything we need and we're back up to "good" on the food supply. And more importantly, we're good on the TP now too.

No one left on the Kahana today, but Elizabeth came on island to work on our emergency planning and supplies. She'll catch the Kahana on its way back from Midway to get back to Honolulu.

The volunteers have been working extra hard, so after the ship left this morning, I took them out for a reef survey where we snorkel around and look for entanglement hazards. We only found one net, but saw a lot of nice coral and fish. We also watched "Jaws" two nights ago. I remember when I first saw that as a kid. I was even scared to jump into the deep end of a pool for a couple of years. The one white-tip shark I saw today didn't worry me, but I think I'll wait on letting new volunteers watch it until after they've seen a few sharks. Along those lines, I think it's probably good that we don't have a copy of "The Birds" on island.

This is the landing craft from the Kahana bringing our food and construction materials.

A few of us took a break after work a couple days ago to go jump in the ocean.

This seal is going to be relocated to Nihoa where it will have a better chance of surviving than here. It's got a satellite tracker on it's back so it can be monitored. If no one is around to remove the device, it will just fall off when the seal molts.

Whitney is swimming through a school of little fish.

Here's Therese and Mark swimming around a nice bunch of coral.