XIX: A Task Completed

First off...how cute is this seal? Let me introduce to you YW29. She is one of the seals we relocated from French Frigate Shoals to Nihoa. She is the favorite of the ships crew because she managed to get out of the stretcher net when we were bringing her on board and she was ever so cooperative and climbed right into her cage.

She apparently is enjoying her new place and spent much of the day hanging out near us on the beach and lounging in the surf. She is not very shy and is always looking for something (or someone) to play with.

Okay...back to our story. The weather and island smiled on us again today and we touch ground at about 745. We headed over to the beach to do more of the same. The priority today was larger animals for full health surveys and instrumenting. One of the biggest lessons we learned yesterday is that the beach gets incredibly hot during the middle of the day so we had to work quickly before it became to warm to work with the seals. Luck was on our side and were were able to catch two adults right away. The seals weighed between 200-300 lbs each. The restraints went very smoothly and the seals were quickly on their way back to the big blue. Shortly after our second seal we decided it was too hot for holding seals for more than a couple of minutes so we stopped the full work ups, escaped to the shade, and waited for seals to show up that might need flipper tags.

While we waited for the sun to drop a bit, we were able to flipper tag one of the last weaners and a juvenile seal. We were also blessed with a sub-adult male that hauled up on a secluded portion of the beach. We were able to instrument him and get him on his way quickly. And with that we were done for this trip to Nihoa. In total, 4 instrumented weaners, 4 instrumented adults, and several newly flipper tagged seals. This team was great and everyone worked hard to get the work done and keep the seals safe. Also, we thank and respect each seal we worked on. While we wish we didn't have to do the work, every animal that is studied adds to our understanding of the species and hopefully what we can do to keep monk seals from going extinct. So thank you seals.

We slowly packed up our gear and started making our way back to the pick-up. We got done a little bit early and it was still pretty warm out so we spent the rest of our time lounging in the tide pools and goofing around with the camera. Those photos are below...most of them are shots of what we look like to fish.

Anyway...my portion of the blog is done for this trip. Bob, Tenaya and I are getting dropped off at Kauai tomorrow. And Chad and a few others will continue up the chain to do some more research and pick up our other team members.

Thanks again for reading and hopefully someone else will take up this blog on the cruise.