Yesterday we conducted land debris operations at Laysan Island. Described by one website as the "crown jewel" of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, my expectations for this island were quite high. I was not disappointed. Laysan is a small, oval-shaped island approximately 1 mile in diameter. There is a hypersaline lake that lies in the middle of the island, and provides excellent habitat for waterbirds like the endemic Laysan duck.. We landed our Avons around 8:30 in the morning in a little cove on the west side of the island. We were greeted on the beach by about 8 people from the monk seal research camp and the Fish and wildlife camp.. Many of them had been there for months with very little outside contact and No fresh fruit, due to invasive species quarantine rules... For the marine debris crew to even be allowed on the island, every one of us had to be wearing brand new clothing from head to toe, and even that had to be in the deep freeze for 24 hours prior to landing. Much of Laysan has been restored to native vegetation following the extermination of introduced rabbits several decades ago.. Thus, there are many rules about what you can and cannot bring to the island, to minimize the risk of weed seeds or other invasives making it onto the island.. Guano mining took place there extensively about a century ago, but today the island looks much as it did before human contact. It was 'effin BEAUTIFUL.. We had several big piles of debris to pick up on the beach at Laysan. The campers there were kind enough to gather it up for us and consolidate it into piles on the beach. We hiked a few miles around the north side of the island, gathering debris. Some of the crew was following us around the shorline in our Avons (inflatable motor boats). They would pull into shore, oftentimes in the middle of the surf for us to load the debris onboard. When full, they would run it back out to the Sette (our big ship) and offload it using the onboard crane and cargo nets... Let me tell you, it is a lot harder than it looks loading a saturated, sandy, encrusted, stinky, 300 lb mass of ropes, nets, and garbage into a small boat in the middle of the surf. Talk about Amorphus (did I spell that right?)....
Anyway, after the debris was cleaned up, we all hiked back around to the monk seal camp for lunch..
Everyone else ate on the beach and swam in the cove, but I could not bring myself to waste time eating when I was on this amazing island that I may never return to in all my life..... (now that the NW Hawaiian Islands are a national monument, it is pretty much impossible for any normal civilian people to go there. No ship is allowed to anchor anywhere in the monument, and unless you are there on a research mission and have acquired about a million different permits, you just can't go... In that respect, I feel like this may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience).. So, during lunch, I hiked around into the interior of the island with my camera, and captured as best I could the absolute brilliance of the place. It felt so isolated yet so completely full of life.. There wer thousands upon thousands of seabirds there, roosting in every bush and flying around your head in huge numbers. Sooty terns, white terns, great frigatebirds, red-footed boobies, red-tailed tropicbirds, brown noddies, black noddies, wedgetailed shearwaters, black-footed albatross, Laysan albatross, and of course the famous Laysan finches... The majority of these birds were just fledging.. The albatross chicks were quite possibly the most awkward creatures I have ever seen. Though almost the size of the adults (6 foot wingspan), the chicks can barely walk without falling over, and they've got ratty looking downy feathers sticking out everywhere. I felt like I was in the galapagos somewhere, because all the birds, especially the chicks, were absolutely fearless. I took several photos of one Laysan albatross chick with my camera on Macro setting (5 cm-30 cm) for example... There was one grove of palm trees on the island, and the rest was dominated by native beach grass and forbs...
I couldn't hike all the way down to the lake because there were so many bird burrows in the trail, and not crushing baby birds is high on my priority list... So, unfortunately I never got a look at a Laysan duck.. I did however see the Laysan finches (found nowhere else in the world)- 3 fledgling finches to be exact, sprawled out on the sand behind a plastic tote in the monk seal camp. One was completely prone, with its head on the ground, another looked like it was going to tip over any minute. I thought they were dying at first, but as soon as I advanced with my camera to close range, they perked up.. They look strangely like the Maui parrotbill...
The monk seals, of course, were everywhere. Basking amongst the debris, behind logs, in the shallows, just about anywhere. It was pupping time, and all the little pups (dubbed "wieners" by the monkseal people) were playing around. Cute little sausages. Probably pretty tasty too. One adult swam right up to our Avons, herding ahead of it a bunch of our crew, who had been swimming behind the boats... You would never guess that there are only 1600 of these creatures left in the world by the way they dominate the place..
The fish were amazing too- BIG wrasses swimming right up onto the sand, almost out of the water, and huge Uluas and omilus swimming around in water only as deep as they were. You could almost scoop the manini out of the water with your hands. I haven't even donned my snorkel yet, but when I do, I'm bound to be blown away. Derek spent his lunchhour swimming around with his eyes open, trying to see all the fish (we had all left our dive gear on the ship)...
We had only scheduled a half day of operations at Laysan, so at around 12:30 we packed up the boats and headed back out to the ship, leaving our extra food with the grateful campers. One by one, we craned our boats back aboard ship, and then set sail for Kure Atoll, our next destination. Kure is the furthest northwest of all the NWHI and is actually almost on the international date line. We're supposed to be arriving there sometime early tomorrow morning, where we'll dig into the nitty gritty of our debris operations.
Anyway, after the debris was cleaned up, we all hiked back around to the monk seal camp for lunch..
Everyone else ate on the beach and swam in the cove, but I could not bring myself to waste time eating when I was on this amazing island that I may never return to in all my life..... (now that the NW Hawaiian Islands are a national monument, it is pretty much impossible for any normal civilian people to go there. No ship is allowed to anchor anywhere in the monument, and unless you are there on a research mission and have acquired about a million different permits, you just can't go... In that respect, I feel like this may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience).. So, during lunch, I hiked around into the interior of the island with my camera, and captured as best I could the absolute brilliance of the place. It felt so isolated yet so completely full of life.. There wer thousands upon thousands of seabirds there, roosting in every bush and flying around your head in huge numbers. Sooty terns, white terns, great frigatebirds, red-footed boobies, red-tailed tropicbirds, brown noddies, black noddies, wedgetailed shearwaters, black-footed albatross, Laysan albatross, and of course the famous Laysan finches... The majority of these birds were just fledging.. The albatross chicks were quite possibly the most awkward creatures I have ever seen. Though almost the size of the adults (6 foot wingspan), the chicks can barely walk without falling over, and they've got ratty looking downy feathers sticking out everywhere. I felt like I was in the galapagos somewhere, because all the birds, especially the chicks, were absolutely fearless. I took several photos of one Laysan albatross chick with my camera on Macro setting (5 cm-30 cm) for example... There was one grove of palm trees on the island, and the rest was dominated by native beach grass and forbs...
I couldn't hike all the way down to the lake because there were so many bird burrows in the trail, and not crushing baby birds is high on my priority list... So, unfortunately I never got a look at a Laysan duck.. I did however see the Laysan finches (found nowhere else in the world)- 3 fledgling finches to be exact, sprawled out on the sand behind a plastic tote in the monk seal camp. One was completely prone, with its head on the ground, another looked like it was going to tip over any minute. I thought they were dying at first, but as soon as I advanced with my camera to close range, they perked up.. They look strangely like the Maui parrotbill...
The monk seals, of course, were everywhere. Basking amongst the debris, behind logs, in the shallows, just about anywhere. It was pupping time, and all the little pups (dubbed "wieners" by the monkseal people) were playing around. Cute little sausages. Probably pretty tasty too. One adult swam right up to our Avons, herding ahead of it a bunch of our crew, who had been swimming behind the boats... You would never guess that there are only 1600 of these creatures left in the world by the way they dominate the place..
The fish were amazing too- BIG wrasses swimming right up onto the sand, almost out of the water, and huge Uluas and omilus swimming around in water only as deep as they were. You could almost scoop the manini out of the water with your hands. I haven't even donned my snorkel yet, but when I do, I'm bound to be blown away. Derek spent his lunchhour swimming around with his eyes open, trying to see all the fish (we had all left our dive gear on the ship)...
We had only scheduled a half day of operations at Laysan, so at around 12:30 we packed up the boats and headed back out to the ship, leaving our extra food with the grateful campers. One by one, we craned our boats back aboard ship, and then set sail for Kure Atoll, our next destination. Kure is the furthest northwest of all the NWHI and is actually almost on the international date line. We're supposed to be arriving there sometime early tomorrow morning, where we'll dig into the nitty gritty of our debris operations.
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