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.