Chapter XXXII: One Last Look At Nihoa

We're almost home, just a few more days. But on our way we have Nihoa island to check on one last time.

Fortunately on this visit, we have beautiful weather and we are able to get all of our scientist ashore safely. The weather has been very nice for the past few days, which makes our eastbound transits much nicer. If the normal northeast trade winds are blowing, our eastbound transits are heading directly into the wind which makes the ride on the ship a bit rough. On this day, we arrived to clear skies and calm seas.

Our goal today is to see if the pups that were nursing when we were here on our last visit have weaned. We also want to do a population count and see if the translocated weaners and seals with our satellite tags are around. But first, we need to hike over to the beach with all of our gear.

Arriving at the beach, we find the usual rogues gallery of seals. Since this is the only beach on the island, it can get very crowded. Today is no different and we find a number of seals laying around.

On our patrol of the beach, we find three weaned seal pups without flipper tags. We capture them one at a time to give them their flipper tags and take measurements. After we're done, they go right back to playing and bothering the other seals. Ahh...kids now days.

Then we see them interspersed among the seals on the beach. With our satellite tags still attached to their backs they swim along the shoreline and sleep on the cool wet sand. They seem to be doing what seals do naturally, which hopefully means the satellite tags are collecting a lot of useful data. In a few months the batteries in the tags will run down and the seals will start molting the tags off. But, till then they'll give us a brief insight into the life of the seals at Nihoa.

With our work done, we say goodbye to Nihoa for this year. We also give our thanks for allowing us safe passage and watching over us during our visits.

Photos courtesy of Mark Sullivan.

Chapter XXXI: Mahalo Nui Loa French Frigate Shoals!

Erin, Mark and I spent twelve fantastic days in the lovely FFS with Dave, Jessie and all of the amazing wildlife. We appreciate Dave and Jessie’s hospitality, and their allowing us to assist in the seabird counts and banding.

The birds definitely rule Tern Island!

We accomplished all of our monk seal research goals, and enjoyed the scenery along the way. Here are just a few pix from our underwater explorations that our trusty Montauk took us on:

And of course, we’ll end with some seal pix to hold you over until next time…

ALOHA!

Chapter XXX: The Chad's Crib

Hi everyone, and welcome to my "crib". I thought I'd spend some time to give you a tour of my home away from home. So come on it and take a look around...

Here we start in my living room. I've got bulkhead to bulkhead carpeting. There is plenty of room for one chair. The fluorescent lighting and beige metal lockers and shelves gives the room a very bright office environment feel.

Let's move over to my bedroom. I have a very roomy twin sized bed. The bed is very firm; it's almost like sleeping on a flat mattress laid on a hard metal shelf. I've changed out the gray wool blankets for my own comforter to add some color to the room. Next to the bed is my walk-up-to closet with my various field clothes.

I have a guest room that's next to my bedroom, well, it's actually it's above my bedroom. It's spacious enough if you're less than 5'6" and have a prehensile tail to help you climb up to the bed.

I also have my own head (nautical term for the bathroom), or as my friends like to call it,"The Reading Room", complete with a shower stall and, most importantly, floor drains. The remarkable thing about this room is that emergency drills and pages occur only once I'm committed to using it. Strange...

Here we have my entertainment center. I have a 17" flat screen TV and DVD player to watch episodes of Battlestar Galactica and Lost. One can only guess why we like to watch shows about people lost on spaceships and stuck on islands while we're at sea on ships or working on islands. Anyway, also on my entertainment center is a desk where I do my work and also write blogs, hopefully for your entertainment. Fortunately the desk is directly in line with my door, so to people passing by, it looks like I'm hard at work when I'm really surfing the web (don't tell anyone, lets just keep this between you and me).

Well, that's about it. Hope you enjoyed checking out my crib. I like it, it's been home for over 100 days this year. It's in a good neighborhood, and the commute to work is very short. The best thing is I wake up to the smell of breakfast cooking every morning...PANCAKES!!

Chapter XXIX: Aloha Midway

Once a major naval base, and a prized piece of land in WWII, Midway Atoll now serves as a haven for sea birds, monk seals, green sea turtles, and an abundant marine ecosystem. Under the watchful eye of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the wildlife has taken back the atoll and flourished in the safety of its lagoon and on its islands. Still, we cannot forget the dedication and sacrifice of our armed forces during and after the war. Throughout the island we see memorials and monuments testifying to their bravery in the defense of our nation and fight for our freedoms.

After three days at Midway, it's time to say goodbye. We had a very nice visit and got a lot of work done. During our August trip we saw two untagged weaned pups. We were able to tag one of them, but the other eluded us. Fortunately, on this visit we found the weaner on Eastern Island and got it tagged.

On our boat rides across the lagoon we meet up with the resident spinner dolphins. As they come in close to ride our bow wake and check us out, we can hear them whistling and chirping through the water. Someone once asked,"Why do they jump and spin in the air?". I think the answer is simply, because they can.

We also said goodbye to Jason, Jessie, Tracy, and Marie who caught a chartered flight back to Honolulu. After a few weeks in the field, they seem ready to return to life back in the city. A ride in the Midway "limo" to the airport reminded them of the conveniences of life in the modern world.

So as we depart Midway to continue with our journey, we want to say thank you for the hospitality and, till our next visit, Aloha.