Chapter II: The First Day on the Ship (or...Wow, you are looking decidely green today...)

Today is my first day aboard the OES and we are transiting from Honokahau Harbor on the Big Island to our first stop, Nihoa. More on Nihoa in Chapter 4. During the transit we don't do much except work on the computers, prep our gear, eat (a lot) and watch movies endlessly. One exciting addition is Xbox 360 Rock Band. Anyway, life on the ship quickly slips into a pattern...sleep, eat, work, eat, movie, read, work, eat, movie, sleep.

So, since nothing much is going on on the ship, I am using this post to explain what goals are for this cruise.

Objective I: Field camp pick up an drop off.

We have annual field camps that go up to the NWHI (see map -->) to monitor and count the monk seals living in those remote islands. Much of their time is also spent intervening when animals are entangled or otherwise in danger. Researchers camp at each of the six main islands that have monk seals (French Frigate Shoals (FFS), Laysan Island, Lisianski Island, Pearl and Hermes Reef, Midway Atoll, and Kure Atoll).

Due to budget constraints we had to decrease our field effort this year. Generally this cruise would be to pick up our full camp contingent, but we are doing things a little differently this time around. We will pick up crews from FFS, Laysan and Kure and drop short camps off at Lisianski and Pearl and Hermes. These short camps will be picked up on the next cruise.

Objective 2: Relocation of monk seals from FFS to Nihoa Island.


One of our highest priorities in researching and recovering the Hawaiian monk seal population is understanding why juvenile seals have such a difficult time surviving. There are many threats to young animals including predation, starvation, and entanglement in marine debris. Currently, less than 1 in 5 seals born will live to see adulthood in the NWHI. This needs to change if the species is going to survive. We are currently developing a number of strategies to increase juvenile survival and one of them is simple relocation. Well the concept is simple. It is based on the idea of moving seals that are born or living in areas of low survival to a location where survival may be higher. Choices are limited in the NWHI, but Nihoa looks promising. We are conducting a pilot study of picking up 6 recently weaned monk seals at FFS and moving them to Nihoa Island. There will more details about this in future posts.

Objective 3: Studies on the health and disease status and foraging behavior of monk seals at Nihoa Island.

A small group of us will be camping at Nihoa for about a week at the end of this cruise to study the resident population there. This is a part of Tenaya N.'s masters project. We will be satellite tracking several seals to find out how monk seals at Nihoa make a living. More information on this is coming later too.

Scientist of the Day
This section is going to focus on a new scientist each day and demonstrate the quality crew we are working with here...and yes, there is a fair bit of quirkiness thrown in to the mix.

The first SOD is Kathleen G. Kathleen is the newest addition to the monk seal research program and is heading up our Mortality Mitigation Program. She is going to be overseeing and designing many of our future studies and interventions to increase monk seal survival, with particular focus on young seals.

Kathleen just completed her PhD dissertation which was part of a project to "examine long-term impacts of poaching in Tarangire National Park and the Mikumi-Selous Ecosystem, Tanzania. The latter area contains one of the largest and most heavily poached elephant populations on the continent." More information on her project and old lab is located here.

Kathleen is getting thrown into the deep end with the program. Her first day of work was Monday. Tuesday she was whisked away to the Big Island. Wednesday she departed on a two month trip to the NWHI where she will be visiting all the islands and camping at Pearl and Hermes Reef for 3 weeks.

Her favorite books is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
She enjoys spending time with her dog, Kermit, a beagle with a distaste for open water.
Her new favorite drink is the Mai Tai.

Okay it is a beautiful flat day on the ocean, I am going out on deck. Tomorrow is another transit day so more monk seal background information and another SOD will be on tap.