Isolation

We have a ship coming on Thursday to deliver several drums of fuel for another research project that will take place in the atoll this summer. For more than 3 weeks now I've looked out over the reef and the Pacific and seen nothing but water and the horizon. It is interesting to consider looking out and seeing a ship. Then later in the day we will actually get to talk to other people besides our crew. I enjoy people and Love my family but I still consider myself fortunate to experience this kind of isolation on our shrinking planet.

Weather

The weather here is interesting. As an example, today was a hot, uncomfortable day to be outside working. I tend to have pretty good tolerance for the heat and it seemed hot to me and the high was about 80 degrees. We have only been above 80, 2 or 3 days since I've been here. I think the high for my 3 weeks has been 81 degrees. All of the low temps have been above 70 degrees and I sleep under a sheet and occasionally pull a cover on. The feeling of heat is a combination of the humidity and the intense sun. The sun is so bright it really is uncomfortable without a hat and dark glasses. When the sun goes down and the temperature drops 4 or 5 degrees it feels comfortable again.

Library

The Tern Island library is really very good. As you can imagine people who end up in a spot like this have quite a bit in common. There are lots of field guides and nature type books about Hawaii and the North West Islands. There are self help books, Gary Larsen cartoon collections and lots of fiction. The books are all well organized. Some are very dog-eared from heavy use and all seem to suffer a little from the damp climate. I do have time to read most days and have been reading Barack Obama's 2nd book" The Audacity of Hope."

Comments

Thank you all for the comments. It helps me keep writing when I know people are watching.

Brown Noddy

The Front Door to my Home Away From Home

Common Areas

My Room

My Room

Banding Albatross chicks

This afternoon I captured albatross chicks for Laura to band. It sounds pretty scientific but the job has it's drawbacks. Think of a 3 or 4 pound balloon filled with rancid fish oil that is ready to explode from either end when it's handled. Now picture this. The scientists swoops in and picks up the chick without bloodshed or bother only to have the balloon burst from one end or the other. A biological technician in a seabird colony has such a romantic life!

Trash in Albatross Pellet

This was probably a coughed up pellet from an Albatross. They cough up pellets much like owls cough up pellets of fur and bones. What's left includes plastic and squid beaks and other indigestibles. Albatross feed on the surface of the water so all this was picked up at sea and brought back to the colony.

Plastic Debris

On Tern Island there are bits of plastic everywhere. The albatross feed at sea on floating organisms and they mistake pieces of plastic for food items or take them in inadvertently. These plastic bits are then carried back to the island in the adult and fed to the chicks. Many chicks die because the plastic fills their digestive systems until they can no longer feed. Since I've been here I've seen several spots where chicks have died and decomposed and you can see a double handful of plastic pieces in the remains. I also saw a set of remains that looked to have a large plastic float stuck in it's throat. There are pieces of plastic silver dollar size and smaller everywhere in the bird colonies and all these have been carried in by adults to feed their chicks.

MS Nielsen's Class in Penn Valley

I hope I can answer all of your questions. The only reptile we see are little geckos in the barracks. They are harmless and eat bugs. They are not native. We have no amphibians. We see lots of fish, especially when we snorkel but sometimes just looking into the water we see fish. We have seen many different kinds up to 3 feet long. We haven't seen whales or dolphins but at a different time of the year whales are seen to the north of the island. When the young albatross start leaving the island for the first time the sharks will show up to eat the young birds, but we haven't seen any yet. I read somewhere that sharks eat about 1 out of 10 of the chicks when they first fly out past the breakers. We get lots of different kinds of trash on the beaches and we do pick it up. It includes glass and plastic bottles from Asia and the U.S.A., plastic parts from commercial fishing gear and lots of unidentified pieces of plastic. My bird study work is getting better. I am learning my job and learning where the nests are in the plots where I'm working. Those were all good questions. I will try to answer any that you send me.

Albatross Chick Gallery

Notice the size 10 flip flop for scale. The chicks will eventually weigh about 25% more than the adults before they fledge. The pose with the feet off the ground is for temperature regulation. Also remember that the adults in the pictures are quite a bit larger than a Canada Goose.

Adult Seabird Survival

Most of the seabirds that nest on Tern Island are very long lived. Some of them up to 30 years and maybe beyond that. In a population like that each years chick survival isn't nearly as important to the whole population as is the survival of adults. All because of those long lives. Another way to think about it is that if a pair of birds lives 30 years and breeds 25 times only 2 chicks from all those attempts have to survive to maturity to maintain the population. Because of this fact catastrophic failure in any one nesting season becomes less important.

Laysan Albatross Gallery

These albatross have a wing spread of nearly 7 feet.

Tern Island Trash

Everything on the island is more complicated and trash is no different. All trash is separated into recyclables, burnable and nonburnable materials. All the wet garbage is spread on a screen and added to the burn barrel when the paper is burned. The recyclables are all separated into cans, plastic 1 & 2, and glass. The nonburnable trash ALL has to be washed so when the NOAA ship picks up the trash they don't get ant colonies along with the trash. The recyclables are also washed and carried back to Honolulu.

Photovoltaic Panels on the Barracks

Water Catchment Pad and Tanks

Tern Island Nuts and Bolts

There are some fairly complex mechanical systems to keep the island operating. There are 2 separate water systems. One of which uses a catchment pad(the basketball court from the Coast Guard days) and the roofs of all the larger buildings to collect water into a cistern. This water is then pumped into tanks where it can then run by gravity to the barracks and kitchen where it is filtered and pressurized. The other system uses reverse osmosis on sea water so the RO water is much more costly to produce and is used sparingly for cooking and drinking. Our power also comes from 2 sources. One consists of photovoltaic cells on the roof of the barracks to change sunlight to DC power and the other is a generator. They both charge a bank of batteries. The lights are all 24 volt DC and the DC power is also inverted to 110 volts AC for use in the washing machines and a few other appliances. All of the larger uses for 110 volt power are only used in bright sun at mid day. It all works most of the time!

Red-footed Booby

These are the 2 color phases of Red-footed Booby

Red-footed Booby Day

This morning I did my Red-footed Booby plots. This entails checking 197 existing nests for eggs or chicks and watching for new nests with an egg. I have 8 plots and all of the nests are numbered and nobody is happy to have me near so the noise and confusion of birds is pretty intense. It is not easy to decide which nest is which number so there is a lot of thinking and mental mapping. That took about 3 hours this morning and then this afternoon all 4 of us counted every Red-footed Booby nest on the island and tipped the owner with a stick to see if it was sitting on an egg or a chick. This totaled about 1300 nests so I've seen more Red-footed Boobys today than I wanted to. Some of the nests in my plots had chicks this afternoon that were eggs this morning so that was interesting. Red-tailed Tropicbird plots tomorrow in the morning and more night work tomorrow night.

The Crew

Here are the 4 of us that are keeping Tern Island going for the next month.Clockwise from the top left: Laura, Brad,
Gary, and Marie

Camera check

Is this self timer really working?

Marty

I deleted your coment before reading it. Please write me again when you have time.

Bicycle ride

Today is our day off and I just did my first bike ride. I did 6 laps of the runway which must be about 7 miles. With a 15 knot wind in your face half the time it was a good workout for a first ride on an old ballon tired clunker.

Tristram's Storm-petrel

This picture is of a nestling that we banded. It's more than half grown.

Tristram's Storm-Petrel

Tristram's Storm-Petrel is one of the rarest seabirds we are likely to see here. They are burrow nesters and are monitored on one of the seabird plots. They only nest sparingly in the North Western Hawaiian Islands and a few islands off Japan and are only seen at sea in the areas between these nesting islands. There is really very little known about this dove sized bird that spends it's whole life at sea except to breed. I helped band a couple this morning and it was quite a thrill to see and hold something so rare.

Wedge-tailed Shearwater

The bird in the center is a Wedge-tailed Shearwater. The one in the upper right is a Christmas Shearwater. These birds spend their entire lives at sea except to breed and raise young.

Wedge-tailed Shearwater

Tuesday night we were up until after midnight capturing Wedge-tailed Shearwaters to read their bands if banded, put on a new band if unbanded and then mark them. They are captured on the ground in the dark by grabbing them or with a landing net. The marking involves painting a spot of nail polish on top of their head so we would not capture them again. The project is to help determine long term survival of adult birds. It is run by a researcher that is off the island but he set it up and we work the same 4 plots for as many evenings as it takes to catch and read bands on 600 birds. We have done about 300 since I came and the other 2 volunteers had done nearly 300 before I came. It is almost done so everyone is happy about that. These seabirds are about the size of a pigeon and have the heart of a lion. They don't make capture and banding easy.

Recycle speed

I am amazed at how quickly living things that die are recycled here on the island. The albatross chicks are so large and prominent that it is noticeable when one dies. If it is close to the water the crabs clean it down to bare bones in a matter of days. Even ones that die away from the water are reduced to bones in a week or less. I'm not sure of all the organisms that take part in this cleanup work but they are very efficient. All the nutrients from the dead birds is back into the living world in a matter of days.

Questions and help

Are there any teachers or students following my blog? Let me know by comment if I can answer any questions about the island. I may not know the answer at this point but I can probably find out. Remember that you can click on the small pictures and make them larger and easier to see. There are also older posts that can be accessed at the bottom of the first screen

Seabird plots

Today I finally finished one of my sets of plots. The one I finished today was for Red-tailed Tropicbird. It is actually 10 different areas scattered around the island that were established years ago and have been monitored for quite a few years. The one I did today must involve about 100 nests. I would have to count them in my field notebook to be sure. Finding the nests is the crux of the issue. There are hand drawn maps from the last volunteer and we all see space and describe it differently, especially when the vegetation changes as the season progresses. Once you look at the map and match it to the nest then the work is pretty straight forward. Tip the adult bird with a stick to check for egg, chick or failure. You accomplish this working bent over, or on your hands and knees in the guano, all the while protecting your feet and head from dive bombing birds that don't like your presence. I'm getting better at ignoring the distractions and am working more quickly.

Self Portrait

We work late today so I had time to play with my camera this morning.

Outdoor Work

Today the wind diminished and the rain stopped for the most part and we were able to get outside and work. All 4 of us, working together, did a Mean incubation Count for Masked Booby and then I got to work in the plots that will be mine for the entire 4 months. These are Red-footed Booby and Red-tailed Tropicbird. I will survey these plots 3 times per week, mapping and collecting data on nests, new eggs, and chicks. I have a ways to go in my learning. I am settling in, and once I understand my plots a little better the work will be more rewarding and less stressful.

Laysan Albatross

This picture was taken about 5 minutes after the Black-footed Albatross picture. I found a spot in front of the barracks where they flew past consistently and waited for the birds. They are expert at soaring and cover thousands of miles on feeding trips and return to regurgitate food for their young. The Black-footed Albatross has similar habits. This bird also flew within a couple feet of me. All this movement is soaring or gliding with almost no wing flapping.

Black-footed Albatross

On the heavy wind days like we've been having the Albatross use the winds around the barracks to glide and soar. They have little fear of people and this one glided about 5 feet over my head.

Morning Walk

First thing this morning I had to walk the perimeter of the island looking for Monk Seals or Sea Turtles trapped in parts of the old sea wall that are failing or in lost fishing gear that washes up regularly. Every 4th day I do this walk and it is usually a nice way to start the day. Today it was driving rain and 25 knot winds so it wasn't pleasant going up wind but not bad going down wind. There are dozens of sea turtles on the beaches and you need to stay well away from them or the seals so parts of the perimeter can't be checked very well. It is called the entrapment walk and it happens every day. Sunday is a day off for everyone so reading and origami today for me.

Wind and Rain

We have just had our second day of high winds, which prevents work in the bird colonies. If you spook birds from their nests in high winds they are much more likely to lose a chick or egg than in calm weather. The chicks or eggs can be jostled out of the nest by the wind or the adult takes longer to get back to the nest and a Frigatebirds snatches the uncovered chick or steals nest material. Today I worked on data entry and weeded the catchment pad. The catchment is a basketball court sized slab of concrete that catches rainwater for storage. The weeds grow up through the joints and cracks and need to be removed regularly. There are dozens of Albatross adults and chicks on the pad that are not bothered by your presence until you are very close. So, you are kind of weeding between the albatross while they pay very close attention. You are also within 50 feet or so of the beach so it is a little different than hoeing around almond trees.

Dusk on Tern Island

Green Sea Turtles

Many of these turtles weight several hundred pounds.

Isolation

As long as I'm busy my mood has been good. I think about the place that I'm in and it's kind of hard to comprehend. There are 4 of us on the island now and it is many hundreds of miles to the next person.

Sounds

The most overwhelming perception on the island is the sound. Over the past few days it has increased to the point that earplugs are necessary while working in the colonies to maintain your hearing. I'm sure that it is now louder than a chainsaw when you are actually in the nesting colonies. Inside the barracks it is kind of a loud murmur and is not bothersome to me. It mixes well with the sound of the surf on the reef. I have not been sleeping with earplugs but may start wearing them at night as the Sooty Tern numbers continue to climb. I don't know how many are on the island now but within the next week or so there will be nearly 80,000 pairs. There aren't enough words in the language to describe the sounds. They include clacking, clicking, whistles of many kinds, honking, mooing, howling, screeching, and on and on. Wedge-tailed Shearwater makes sounds only after dark that have been described as a person's dieing moans but at high volume. AMAZING!

In the colony

That's me standing in the colony with the reef in the background. Black-footed Albatross over my hat and Great Frigate bird with the red throat. The other birds are Red-footed Boobies and Masked Boobies.

Day 2

There are more acronyms here than there are in education. Today we did an MIC for Greater Frigate Bird chicks. If I remember correctly it stands for Mean Incubation Count. What that entails is tipping every nesting Frigate Bird on the island and counting all the chicks or eggs that are being incubated. You use a stick about 3 ft. long and put the tip of the stick under the sitting bird and tip them up to see if they have an egg or a chick or nothing underneath. All the while they are clacking their beak at you or biting the stick but they don't leave their nest.It totaled several hundred active nests and at least that many that were empty. It took 4 of us several hours to work through the whole Island for this count. The nesting colonies are all mixed species and some areas are so loud you need to wear earplugs. There will be more new biological work tomorrow on several plots of Red-tailed Tropic bird.

First Day

Yesterday's flights all went well and my bags followed along correctly. We flew out to Tern Island today and that flight went well. Today I've been shown around by the other volunteers and given a quick overview of how things work. I also walked a study plot with Laura, one of the other volunteers, and we read all the plastic bands on the albatross chicks in that plot. The bands are put on when the chicks are very young so they can be identified while they are still in the breeding colony. When we identified the bird we then noted the stage of feather development. It's all kind of overwhelming at this point and I'm tired.

Good book

I've just reread parts of a book that I read several years ago entitled "Eye of The Albatross Visions of Hope and Survival" by Carl Safina. His first impression after getting out of the plane on Tern Island is wonderful.

..."The first glance, the first sounds, the first whiff, says that everything is different here. Wow."

"We all get out, squinting in the sudden glare of bright sun glinting off the reef-powder runway. Amid the creatures, and with water stretching away in all directions, your immediate impression is that you've arrived at the heart of creation. The next impression is that anyone who ever gets the opportunity to stand here as we are is breathtakingly fortunate. We've been here 30 seconds."

Birds of Tern Island

I've been studying the nesting birds of Tern Island so I have some idea of what I'm seeing. There are 18 seabirds that nest on the island with populations that range from 78,000 breeding pairs of Sooty Terns, the most numerous, down to 20 pairs of Christmas Shearwater and trace numbers of Sooty-storm Petrel and Blue-gray Noody. Some of the birds that breed on the island I have seen before but others will be new to me. There are also a handful of migrant shorebirds that cross huge expanses of the north Pacific on their migration route and somehow find 35 acre Tern Island to land on. Amazing!