You're probably wondering why I haven't posted for a while, at least I hope you're wondering. It turns out that Google products do not work from the island anymore. Blogspot and Gmail are both out of commission here. So, I sent the text and my pictures to Dasha (my wife) and she's putting it up. Thanks Dasha! For those of you who were checking Mary's blog too, that's why she couldn't post either.
Anyway, I'm back on Tern island with 15 other people. It's pretty busy around here. There are 3 people tagging sharks to see where they go, 4 people monitoring and tagging monk seals, 2 people tagging nesting green sea turtles, 5 volunteers, and Dave and me. The good thing is that we are finally getting some of the food from 2003 eaten up. Today, I'll catch up on my ride back to Tern and show you some pictures of the other islands. They all look a lot alike. Low sand islands with no trees and a lot of birds.

Here we are unloading supplies on Green Island at Kure Atoll. Kure was also a Coast Guard station like Tern Island.

This is the old Coast Guard building. I got to spend the night here since I was helping set up.

The people at Kure will be staying in the tents since there's not enough room in the building.

The verbesina is almost as bad at Kure as it is at Midway.

This is Southeast island at Pearl & Hermes Atoll, aka Pearl & Hermes Reef.

This is a view completely across the island looking at the Oscar Elton Sette.

Here is the seal camp at Pearl & Hermes.

A population of Laysan finches was brought to Pearl & Hermes as a backup to the population on Laysan Island. They are very curious. About 50 of them came to check out the new supplies.

Some finches flew out to the ship and would not fly back to the island. We think that they were looking for fresh water, which was scarce on the island. We had to catch them, put them in this bucket, and have someone come out from the island in a boat to bring them back. The picture was taken through an air hole in the bucket lid.

This is Lisianski Island. See, most of these islands are similar, but you can tell them apart.

A monk seal watches us set up the tents on Lisianski for the seal monitoring crew that will be out here for the next couple of months.

Colleen and Angie sitting on the beach in front of their tents on Lisianski Island.

Technical Difficulties

Sorry, I can't blog from the island right now due to technical difficulties. I'll try to figure it out soon.

Back at Midway

I'm a little behind on my posting since I've been really busy lately, but now that I'm riding the ship, I've got my evenings free. It was really great to get back to Midway. Most of the people are the same, and there have been a few improvements, but overall it feels like I just went on a short vacation. The food was still great, the views were still great, and there were still a lot of birds. I was busy a lot of the time with computer training, but I got some time to go out on the boat with Cynthia Vanderlip (who normally lives on Kure Atoll) to do a dolphin survey. She was taking pictures of all of the dorsal fins of the dolphins for identification while I took GPS and depth measurements. We were out with the pods for a couple of hours so you'd think I'd get some really great pictures, but I only got a few decent ones. I also helped out with some plant work, and pulled a little verbesina for old time's sake. The island looks really good. Greg has some more help from the Thai guys (Sam & Moo) with spraying verbesina and they are almost keeping up. Really, things are so similar that I don't have much to say. It's pretty musch the same as I have on my "Pete at Midway" blog, but I'll put up a few pictures anyway.

Here's a ~10 ft tiger shark that we passed on the way to the dolphin survey. I put my small underwater camera over the side as we were going by. It didn't seem to mind.

See, there are still a lot of albatross chicks on Midway.

I got this picture the same way as the shark picture. That little Olympus is handy to have sometimes.

Here's one of the spinner dolphins jumping.

The mini-golf course is now open for business. We were working on this last spring.

The hydroponics greenhouse is up and running also, right now mostly for salad greens. The person running it got there the week before I left last year.

The cable houses are falling down pretty quickly now that there is absolutely no maintenance done on them right now.

I went snorkeling on Sunday morning and saw this little frogfish under the cargo pier.

Gary, John Klavitter, and Steve are extirpating the one cactus plant from the island.

The Laysan ducks had a bad year last year. Many of them died off due to botulism. The problem seems to have run its course and the ducks are doing well again. These ducks are getting snapped at by the albatross chick.

Here's a gratuitous white tern chick picture.

Here's my ride back to Tern. The "Oscar Elton Sette" is pulling up to the cargo pier. I'll either be back on the 19th or 20th after stops at Kure Atoll, Pearl & Hermes Reef, and Lisianski Island to drop off the monk seal crews.

Vacation Pics

Finally! Here's a few pictures of my time off of the island. They've got nothing to do with Tern Island, but it's something to look at. I should be on Midway next weekend, so I'll do my next entry from there.

Spring crocus in Cleveland.

The beach at Lake Erie is a little different than the beach on Tern Island.

I went to a couple of battlefields on my time off. This is at Antietam in Maryland.

This is a memorial at a battlefield in Czech Republic where Napoleon's army was defeated.

This sign is telling you that you are at the border of Czech Republic and Germany. The tree is in Germany.

This is Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany. It was bombed in WWII and finally rebuilt a few years ago. The dark bricks are from the original church.

This is the view of Dresden from the top of Frauenkirche.

Random people on a sidewalk in Dresden.

Zwinger Palace in Dresden.

Zwinger Palace has a great art gallery in it.

This is the St. Wolfgang chapel near Krupka, Cz. Rep. This was built in 1700.

This church is in Most, Cz Rep. It was moved on rails 841 meters to make way for a coal mine. It was built in 1594.

We went on a few hikes. One place we went is called Milešovka and it's an old castle converted into a weather station.

We also hiked up a mountain called Bořeň. It was hazy the entire time I was in Cz. Rep.

This beautiful castle is called Karlstejn. They started building it in 1348.

View of Prague castle.

St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague castle.

Here's a view of the castle from the crowded Charles bridge.

Changing of the guard at Prague castle.

There was an Easter Market in the Old Town Square in Prague.

This is called Powder Tower because they used to store gunpowder there.

This is the national museum in Prague.

It was kind of odd to see these plastic penguins against the Prague backdrop.

We also went to a couple of soccer games in Dasha's hometown of Teplice.

These sculptures were in a town called Kutna Hora.

This is the Sedlec Ossuary where they have the bones of 40-70,000 people. Many were plague victims. A monk started arranging the bones and it's one of the weirdest places I've been. All of the decorations are human bones.