Chapter XVIII: The Sands of Nihoa

This morning we awoke to the delicious smell of bacon, eggs, and pancakes wafting through the passage ways of the ship. A peek out of the porthole showed Nihoa rising sharply out of the ocean on the horizon. We at our breakfast and started prepping our gear (again) for what we hoped would be an easy landing at Nihoa. Winds were calm and the swell was definitely present but not as large as we had feared..so we were cautiously optimistic.

At just around 12 pm we were set to put the small boats in the water and make our way to shore. Chad, Tenaya, and I were driven by Lester and Mike to the rocky shelf that serves as the landing for the island. It was a little surgey but definitely workable. Nihoa was going to let us on to do our work. So the three of us jumped ashore, caught our gear being thrown after us, and scrambled up to some dry land. The small boat left to get the rest of our team, Bob, Erin, and Mark. Shortly afterward they joined us and we could start our work.


This trip was a new experience for a few of the folks who had never been on Nihoa, and for those of us who had, we took a new route to the seal beach. We stayed along the shore which was a whole lot easier and faster than our usual trek all the way up the steep slopes of the island and back down another gully. So after a short walk along an extremely lovely coastline we had our first glimpse at seal beach.


The beach was crowded today with a total of 27 animals ranging from suckling pups to big old adult males. We even caught a glimpse of a few of our relocated seals frolicking in the surf zone. They seemed to be fitting into their new home pretty well.

So, the beach was crowded which meant we had to be very careful about disturbing animals unnecessarily, particularly mothers with pups. It was also very hot so we had to make sure when we were doing our work that the seals (and researchers) didn't overheat. We decided it was best to just work on some of the weaners at first and give them new flipper tags and a satellite transmitter. The flipper tags are so we can monitor their survival and determine how successful they are (in foraging, reproduction etc) throughout their life. The satellite tag will show us how they develop their feeding behavior as young naive animals. Then as the day wore on and cooled off a bit we could move to older animals. We quickly got to work...and we worked...and worked...and worked.

By the end of the day we had instrumented 4 weaners, flipper tagged a 5th, and fully worked up and instrumented a sub-adult female. This is an incredible amount of work for just a half day. Today's team absolutely rocked and I thank them all for a great effort. So we left the island feeling very satisfied and thankful to have had a chance to work on this beautiful island. We have another day and our fingers are crossed we can get on again. We will keep you posted.