Chapter XXIV-1/2: Return From Lisianski Island

Aloha from one half of Team Lisi. Good to be back and free of the Lisianski flies. We were picked up by the good ship Oscar Elton Sette yesterday (9/17) after about a month on Lisianski Island. It was a good stay. Lisi is an island paradise with the finest, softest sand I've ever felt and with flies and large sharks. We had a productive season tagging the last of the weaners and collecting population assessment data on all the seals there. Though at times just finding the seals was challenging. The vegetation is quite lush and thick and many of the seals like to lounge beneath the cool, leafy confines of the veg. We also were champions with poo collection and amassed over 100 scats for the season (5 bucket loads of seal poo were loaded yesterday)! It was pretty hot out there most of the time and the fly count was out of control. There were times when on survey we would have literally hundreds of flies swarming us as we walked around the island. I inadvertently swallowed a few myself while there...taste like chicken. Brenda reported several attempts of flies trying to infiltrate her nasal cavity. But we didn't let the flies damper our spirits (most of the time), and I became quite skilled at wielding the pink wand of death (aka flyswatter). Early in our stay we had numerous sightings of large tigers near shore followed by several newly shark bitten seals. Luckily that trend fizzled. But sometimes bathtime seemed a bit like Russian roulette.

Now we are back on the ship and enjoying the splendors of the Galley, fresh showers and a fly-free environment. Some of us have even been sucked into cheesy BBC time-space-continuum dramas. Ah, the civilized life...