2 Ships and a lot of Visitors

This week was pretty busy with 2 ships. On Monday, the Robert C. Seamans, part of the Sea Education Assoc. (SEA) from Woods Hole, MA, came to visit with 26 students and faculty from the University of Hawaii and 14 crew. They were here for 3 days to learn about French Frigate Shoals and some of the biology and management issues we have here. They got the chance to count various types of coral, do some water sampling and see some of the marine debris and plastic that affects the seabirds. It seemed like they all had a great time. We even took the whole island population over for dinner and a tour on Tuesday evening. It was a good visit. They left Wednesday afternoon.
The Kahana came to bring our summer food and supplies on Wednesday morning. It was a pretty smooth offload and we should be able to make it a few more months with what we've got. They also brought 4 new volunteers, Keith, Pablo, Phillip, and another Sarah. So far, I've had a Sarah in every group except one. Caitie left on the Kahana and Sarah, Ruth, Paula, and the turtle techs (Tammy and Kristen) will be heading back on the return trip to Honolulu. The ship is coming back Thursday, so we're getting all of our trash ready to put on the ship. It will be a little less busy next week, logistically speaking, but we're still busy banding albatross chicks so don't worry about us getting bored around here.

The Robert C. Seamans is a 134', brigantine rigged ship. It was really nice, as you can see.

Here's a view of the Kahana. It's nice too, but a little more utilitarian.

This is a crazy nest. The red-footed booby adopted this frigatebird chick. We see the frigatebird parent coming back to feed it, but the booby chases it away. It's apparently getting food from someone though.

This is Pablo getting his banding practice for the albatrosses, with Dasha holding it for him.

This sooty tern was bothering the Laysan albatross as it was trying to feed its chick. The albatross didn't end up catching it, but almost.

These are some more fish on the roof. It's 2 Hawaiian whitespotted tobies (I put them next to each other so I could get by with one picture instead of two). The terns probably dropped them there.