Pearl and Hermes continued

Here is a satellite view of Pearl and Hermes Atoll, where we've been hanging out for the past wek and a half. The "atoll" is sort of a confusing concept, and indeed I did not completely grasp the concept myself until I came up here and saw it first-hand. I know my explaination of an atoll to mom left her a little hazy.. So, since I mention it so often in this blog, I'll just try to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. An atoll is this: It is what remains of a high, volcanic island (just like the main Hawaiian islands), after the island has completely subsided into the sea. The barrier reef that forms around that high island is all that is left- a ring of coral. Because coral is alive, and constantly depositing its calcium carbonate skeleton, the coral reef builds upon itself and stays close to the surface of the water as the rocky part of the island sinks/erodes below sea level. This ring of coral is an atoll. The atoll is not in itself an island, but there are usually spots along the ring of coral reef that accumulate sand and become islands. (Otherwise known as motus). In the case of Pearl and Hermes, the atoll is approximately 15 miles across at its widest and has 7 islands scattered around the periphery, most of them low sandspits. In the center is the lagoon, which is a mishmash of deep pools, sand-channels and patch-reefs. We call this the maze, because the patchreef can be too shallow to drive a boat over, and it weaves in and out and all over the place. I'm sure you can see this by the photo...

Today brought a small hiatus from the usual debris work. My boat team was assigned to place some substrate-mounted oceanography equipment at several sites on the south side of the atoll. We placed three "STR"s (subsurface temperature recorders) on the bottom at various isobaths (45 and 75 ft.) on the forereef. These STRs are nicknamed the "pipebombs of science" because they look and feel like homemade incindiary devices. After navigating to the GPS point where the old STR had been placed, we donned our scuba gear and went down to swap it out with a brand new one. (They stay in place for a year or more, and record temperature vs time data). The method for attaching these devices to the reef is, as you'd expect, very high tech.......: zip-ties. We would find a little archway or hole in the reef that we could get our fingers through, and zip-tie the heck out of it until the thing looked like a little kid had gotten his hands on it. Because I am only a rookie NOAA scientific diver, I was not allowed to dive past 60 feet, and thus only got to do one dive at the 45 ft isobath. The dive started off great, with visibility that was mind-blowing. I'm going to put myself out on a limb and say that is was quite possible that there was 200 feet of vis in this particular spot... With about 50 big uluas circling us the whole time, 3 Galapagos sharks, and one friendly whitetip, the wildlife was pretty good too. (Oh yeah, and I saw a masked angelfish there too- quite rare). My dive buddy Kevin Lino and I got to the bottom and immediately started to work- he at cutting the old STR off the reef, and me at screwing stuff up... We had a reel with a line on it that led to a surface float (our boat did not anchor because the swells were pretty big, and thus needed a marker of some kind to circle around while we were submerged). The reel was malfunctioning and would not lock, so I began trying to fix it. While I was doing this, the digital camera that I had around my wrist worked its way loose, and unbeknownst to me, rocked to the surface. We needed the camera to take shots of the STR serial number, depth, and surrounding area. So, when I went to go for the camera, it was gone. I communicated this to Kevin with hand signals, and he signaled back that he would go to the surface and look for it while I mounted the new STR. I busied myself with the zip-ties, but felt like banging my head against the reef. Luckily, our other two team-members on the boat had spotted the camera when it hit the surface and saved my ass from making a $400 mistake... It could've been easily missed too- rough water, big swells, lots of wind, near the surf-zone.. Anyway, I finished mounting the STR, completely oblivious to the shark that Kevin told me later was making close passes at the back of my head. Kev joined me on the bottom and we gathered up our gear. That done, we began our ascent. Our required 5 minute safety stop at 15 feet allowed for a good chance to chill out and watch all the fish circling us, mostly big uluas. For those of you that don't have a clue what an ulua is, here is a picture of one for you. They are also known as jacks. Up here, they get up to around 100 pounds and can be as big as I am. They like to come in close and bite shiny things. Susie, one of my boat crew, was bit on the hand two days ago by a curious (stupid) ulua.

After checking out the wreck, we headed to southeast island to pick up some land debris. As the third island that I've been allowed to set foot upon during this cruise, southeast island is much different from the other two (Green island at Kure, and Laysan Is). It is very low (perhaps only 5-6 feet above sea level, and very small (only 400 meters long perhaps). It is vegetated in two distinct patches with grasses and low-lying coastal plants. An even lower sand-spit connects the two vegetated patches, and apparently during storms or excessively high tides, is awash. The backside of the island has a small stagnant lagoon of turbid turqois bordered by beach-rock shelves. Three people from the NOAA protected species division are camped out there for the duration of the monkseal pupping season. One of them is Kevin L's roommate from back on Oahu, so we stayed and chatted it up with her for a while. I perused her collection of glass fishing floats and monk seal skulls while the endemic finches hopped around at my feet.

In general, operations have been going really well and we've been bringing in a ton of debris. Our cargo container on the back deck of the ship was long ago filled to the brim, and now we've resorted to just piling it up the the deck anywhere we can find space. Needless to say, things aren't smelling all that good right now. Our four boats have been consistently bringing in 300-600 kilos per boat per day, and it stacks up quick.

Three days ago, our boat team had a most amazing day of towing, apparently the best Kevin L. has ever seen in his 4 years doing debris. We were assigned an area of the backreef on the southwest side of the atoll. It was crisscrossed with deep channels, cliffs, overhangs and other cool features. In places there was up to 90% coral cover- mostly montipora capitata/flabellata (rice corals) in whites, pinks and neon purple, and Pavona duerdeni (pork-chop coral) in brown. The fish were out of this world, and I saw more new species than I'd ever encountered before- Japanese angelfish, cardinalfish, etc. There would be grey reef sharks around every turn, and of course the ubiquitous uluas.... Not to be too cheezy or anything, but the towboarding was like a Disneyland ride- swooping down into deep ravines, pulling hard turns under the overhangs, coming in low to the deck and then shooting up over ledges. Kinda like that scene in Star Wars where Luke is driving the X-wing through all those channels in the surface of the Death Star and then dives into the center of the thing to blow it up..... Yeah...

We didn't really find any net there, but had a heckuva good time. That, of course, was the one day we forgot to put a battery in the camera, so it will remain a fond memory locked up only in my brain, as it probably should be anyway...

Pearl and Hermes

Friday, July..... sorry, August 3rd (?) finds us finishing our 6th day of operations at Pearl and Hermes Atoll. To my numerous readers who have an affinity for the finer things in life, Hermes is not pronounced "Heir-mais", but is instead a good old American "Her-meez".....

Named for the two whaling ships the "Pearl" and the "Hermes" that were dashed to pieces on the reef here in 1822, the atoll is the third furthest north in the Hawaiian chain. The crews of both ships managed to swim to one of the low sandy islands that rim the atoll, and survived there on fish, seabirds and rainwater for perhaps a year. The shipwrights among the crew spent that time salvaging lumber from the wrecked ships and over the course of the year, constructed a new ship on the beach. They then sailed the new boat down the chain to Honolulu as if it were no big deal... Coincidentally, the wrecks of both the Pearl and the Hermes were discovered by marine debris divers in 2003 while towboarding a section of reef near southeast island. Anchors, bronze pots for separating whale oil, keel bolts, etc were found in about 15 feet of water. The discovery of the ships sent a shockwave through the maritime archeology community. (I'm not sure how well a shockwave travels through a medium that consists of perhaps 7 crusty old men) But regardless, the two ships are the only two of their kind ever to be found. We're hoping for a quick dive on the wrecks one of these days after work.

Before I launch into sappy descriptions of how amazing the reefs are up here at P&H, I'll give you all a breakdown of a typical day in the life a marine garbageman. Here goes:

I wake up to my roomate Steph's alarm clock at 6:15. (I forgot to bring an alarm) Usually I don't hear the alarm, but wake to the sound of him brushing his teeth, or in the case of this morning, Steph mumbling "I wanna shoot myself". Steph is a French-Canadian who has been doing marine debris for about five years. I hop out of bed, usually feeling very refreshed due to the excess of blood that has been pooling in my brain for the past 8 hours. (Our 220 foot ship has had a rather alarming list since day four- the average angle of my bunk is about 5 degrees to port). I asked the captain about the list the other day at dinner and he mumbled something unintelligible about "engineers, burn plans, fuel...hhfmmffrabehl..." Rumor has it that not even he knows why we're listing.. whatever, at least we're not sinking.

As I was saying, I hop out of bed- perhaps hop is not the word. Being that I have the top bunk and the bunk has no ladder, I feel for the corner of the desk with my toe and balance precariously on it while I worm my way around my privacy curtain in the very narrow space between my mattress and the ceiling. That done, I go to my locker and put on my Crocs (shoes made of rubber). I've slept in my clothes, so there is no need to change. I open the door and head aft out into the hallway. It is still pitch dark outside and I feel my way out onto the winch-deck to begin my duties of the morning. Breakfast is served at 7:00, but we prep our boats and gather all our gear before eating. One day I'll have avon duty and the next I'll have gear duty. Avon duty consists of checking the air pressure in all the pontoons' chambers, priming the fuel lines, testing the radio, making sure the tarp and cargo net are all in place and ready to recieve our glorious payload (debris), and making sure the crane straps are all clipped in to the appropriate D-rings.. Our gear consists of: an emergency oxygen kit, a small "pony bottle" scuba tank and regulator (for freediving emergencies), a cooler full of all our lunch-making materials, and two pelican cases full of spare parts, emergency equipment, first aid, tools, backup radios, etc. Also included are two GPS units and an underwater camera. After the avon is checked and all the gear is staged in the "longline pit" (the lowest part of the ship where there is a cutout in the railing), we go eat. The galley is a room about the size of your average elementary school classroom, but with ceilings that are just a little over head-high for the average midget. Clem, the chief steward, reigns over the galley with a glorious fist. She is an older Samoan woman who definitely knows that food is the single most important part of one's life, and without a doubt loves to sample her own wares. If I were not burning so many calories holding my breath underwater all day, I would have turned soggy around the middle long ago under the Clem's watchful eye. It's not that the food is unhealthy, it's just that it is SOOO GOOOD and there are so many choices and so much of each dish, that I cannot help but stuff my face just so I can get a taste of everything she has put out. Roast duck, veal, lamb shanks, fresh ahi and ono (which the crew catch almost daily but sadly I cannot eat), and the world's most amazing paniolo cornbread. Mike, the second steward, is a world-class baker and usually sabotages any effort I make to eat healthily by placing a tray of pastries at the end of the buffet at EVERY meal.... Both are two very friendly, agreeable people.

With breakfast done, a small-boat safety meeting is called at 7:30 with everyone in attendance. Because the NOAA corps are really a non-militant branch of the military, (proudly advertized on the new NOAA corps license-plate frames : "Our nation's 7th uniformed service" ??!) everything is very punctual onboard the ship. Let us be very clear right now that I am not a part of the NOAA corps- that is the officers of the ship only. They have a 5 year committment and live on the ship full-time. I am but a NOAA "scientist" who gets the pleasure of being a "guest in their home" during the research cruises.

The small boat safety meeting consists of the usual mumbo-jumbo about always wearing your hardhat when the cranes are turned on, keeping your life jacket zipped up, be careful when climbing down the boarding ladder, etc. Same authoritative spiel every day, given by the ship's diminutive safety officer. Then we break into our teams, four teams of four, and get ready to load the avons. One by one they are winched from their places on the boat deck and craned over the side of the ship. Once they're in the water, we climb down a rope ladder that is thrown over the side and down into the boat. Then all our gear is handed down to us by the crew of the ship. This part can be quite comical. Imagine trying to stand up in one of those bumper-car rides you find at the fair... The open ocean waves are yanking the avon around and beating it against the hull of the ship, yanking it to the end of its bow/stern lines and back again. I slipped on my arse the other day trying to unload gear. There was an adendum to the safety meeting the next morning about "taking your time while loading the boats so as to avoid slipping on your arse and falling into the gap between the avon and the ship and having your head squished like a grape...."

Once everything and everyone is in the boat, we radio the bridge and let them know we're departing the side of the ship. The ship draws 15 feet of water, so it always stays outside the atoll in depths greater than 60 feet. We then set our GPS course to the nearest boat pass (a deepwater gap in the barrier reef that will allow small boats to make it through the surf into the interior lagoon). We'll have pre-designated coordinates already uploaded to our GPS that will take us to our survey site for the day. If the survey site is in the center of the lagoon, ("the maze" as we call it for the maze of patchreefs and sand-channels that crisscross the interior) we do swim surveys. Basically this just means you have a designated section of patch-reef to survey for debris, and you snorkel all around it until you've covered the periphery. If the survey site is on the backreef (the inside margin of the barrier reef ), then we towboard back and forth across the site with 15 meter buffers between each track line. Towboarding is incredibly fun. If you're in deep water, our 50 foot towlines will allow you to dive on your board to about 25 feet before you bottom out. They're pretty easy to maneuver and you can easily swoop and dive between coral heads with only inches to spare. If we find a net on the bottom, we come to the surface and signal the boat to stop with a clenched fist in the air. The boat then circles back, drops the pony bottle in the water in case one of us gets tangled in the net and needs a breat underwater, and holds station while the two divers in the water cut the net off the reef. When the net has been freed, the divers usually lug the net over to the side of the boat, trying not to be tugged under by the waterlogged clump of nastiness that usually has several good-sized dead coralheads wrapped up in it. We take a bunch of data on the size of the net, color, if there are coral recruits growing on the net, substrate type, etc, then the two people in the boat don their gloves and haul the net in over the side. This can be a big job. We had one conglomeration a few days ago that was so big that we had to call another team over to help us get it into the boat. All eight of us strained for 15 minutes- tying bracing lines, tightening knots here or there, setting up parbuckles, etc. When finally got it in and took it back to the ship and weighed it, the darn thing came in at a whopping 400 kilos (880 lbs). That was after all the water had drained out of it....

We have very important roles within our boat teams, which we constantly switch off several times a day. There are two divers in the water looking for net. There is one coxswain to drive the boat, run the GPS, tilt the engines when needed, and haul in the towlines. And then there is the spotter, whose sole job consists of watching the two divers in the water to make sure there are no big biting creatures following along at their fintips. We take these roles very seriously- Not once has the spotter been caught yapping to the coxswain, looking the other way at the beautiful lagoon, mooning the other boats, kicking back on the pontoon soaking up rays, etc. We're always in good hands.

After a 3 hour morning session of towboarding or swim surveys, we anchor up for lunch. The lunch spot is usually in a place that also provides for great freediving (aka outside the atoll on the fore-reef) Several lunches now I have spent diving, not eating. Who's going to waste their time eating when you're in a place like this?

Lunch is followed by another three hour intensive afternoon tow. Of course, no one person is in the water for more than 1.5 hours at a time because we switch off. Every half hour the coxswain (driver of the avon) must radio the ship to check in and to relay who is in and out of the water at that time. The crew is pretty laid back (minus the captain) and so the radio chatter is, needless to say, informal. Ehhhmm. Don't make the mistake of radioing in your bottom-of-the-hour check-in in the voice of Borat, Kazahkastani reporter, when the captain himself has replaced the lowly radio-operator unannounced. ....crickets.

Around 4:00 we start making our way back to the ship. Depending on where our site is for that day, it may be as much as 10 kilometers away. When the boats are fully laden with debris, they do not move all that fast, and prior planning must come in to play if you are to make it back to the ship in time for dinner. Our boss loaded his avon with 1,016 kilos of debris a couple days ago (more than a ton- keep in mind these boats are only 16feet long). They had to transfer all the gear and people to another boat, and run the engines in tilt at low speed to avoid submarining the bow. Took em about an hour to go 5 km.

When we get back to the ship, it is usually a traffic jam with ourselves and four other boats waiting to be hoisted aboard. Yesterday somebody squirted more mayo in the water while waiting, and attracted the usual Galapagos sharks. Though it was against the rules in such close proximity to the ship, I managed to convince my crew leader to let me dive in for a quick swim. A couple came in to check me out pretty close and I got some good pics. An ono swam by too, which was the first time I'd seen one while in the water. Ugly fish I gotta say. We see gray reef sharks and whitetip reef sharks every day while towing, but you don't see the Galapagos sharks until you get into deeper water outside the atoll.

When our boats have been hoisted aboard ship and all the gear is rinsed and put away, we head in for dinner. After completely stuffing myself, I head upstairs to the computer lab to enter data or attempt to learn some of the more advanced GIS stuff. When I say advanced I mean "very elementary", but more involved than downloading waypoints....

Then it is usually a shower and maybe a movie in the "theater". Tonight we watched "The 40 Year Old Virgin" in the total comforting embrace of 70's-vintage vinyl recliner chairs. Oftentimes, during movie hour (and somehow it seems like ONLY during movie hour), the crew decides to conduct a CTD (lowering a temperature and salinity guage over the side to 500 meters). In order to lower the probe at the proper angle, they person at the helm must maneuver the ship constantly, using the main engines and the bow thruster to do so. It just so happens that the movie theater is located in the bow, directly above the bow thruster. To say that the bow thruster is noisy would be a rediculous understatement. When that incredible piece of machinery is engaged, it feels as if the ship has just charged fullsteam into a field of icebergs. The entire massive structure of the ship begins to shake, vibrating our beautiful flat-panel plasma screen on the wall of the theater. I have visions of entire thousand-head herds of wildabeasts stampeding their way up the narrow ladder from the engineroom, bellowing mightily, with frothy rabies-laden sputum streaming from their nostrils. The volume on the TV goes all the way up to 90 clicks and still you struggle to discern diologue. The crew tells us that there has been some damage to the bow-thruster, in fact asking one of our divers to go under and take some photos of the darn thing yesterday. Judging by the noise it makes, I would hazard a guess that perhaps it is missing one of the propellor blades, or that perhaps a whale of some kind has become lodged inside the apparatus.

To end my day, I check my email, or read a book in my bunk. The ship, meanwhile, is steaming around aimlessly all night, making laps around the atoll, or circling certain seamounts that the crew loves to fish. I think they do this so that the motion of the boat is more comfortable for sleeping. If we were to stay in one spot all night, it would get pretty rolly I would guess. And of course, because no ship is allowed to anchor in the national monument anymore....

That's it. It's time for bed. Now you know what the glamorous life of a marine garbageman consists of! More on the beautiful atoll of Pearl and Hermes later.

Kure, Part Deux

Operations proceeded smoothly at Kure the last two days we were there. Lots of territory was covered by towboard, with divers switching every hour and a half between duties of driving and towing. During our transits to and from the ship, the resident pod of spinner dolphins would find our avons, and excited by our speed, swim along at our bow. At full bore, we're usually doing around 20 knots and the dolphins easily match that speed, diving in a out of the water inches from the boat and splashing anyone sitting up front.. One of our teams stopped to dive with the dolphins one day on the transit home, and found a big net halfway embedded in the sandy bottom near where they were swimming. One of the dolphins had a piece of net hung up on its pectoral fin too, although its net was probably from a different source. So, the next morning, my boat team headed back to pull up the big net on the bottom. It was pretty big, and about 25 feet down, so we brought along some liftbags. (heavy nylon open-ended bags with straps attached, look kinda like miniature hot-air balloons) A thin strip of the net about 8 feet long was sticking out of the sand, but the majority of it was buried, and the suction was way too much to pull it out by hand. So, we attached two 200 lb liftbags and filled them with air from a scuba tank. One of the bags ripped out the piece of the net it was attached to and went rocketing to the surface, literally. Anybody directly over the bag would have been launched out of the water... hmmm. That lesson learned, we attached another bag to a more substantial piece of the net. Once filled, all we had to do was dive down and shake the bags back and forth. As they vibrate, they slowly work the net out of the substrate and if they're properly placed, they pretty much do all the work for you. Two liftbags pulled some of the net out, but we had to throw on a third bag to get it all to go. It worked like magic, and the third bag was just enough to work all of it out of the sand. The net exploded upwards in a giant mushroom cloud of sand, and hung there at the surface like a limp, well.... net. Jubilee and I then painstakingly cut out all the old coral heads that it had gathered over the course of its life since it fell off some fishing boat a couple of years ago. Then, of course, it went up and into the boat- not an easy task for something that is 15 feet long, waterlogged, covered with slimy growth, and weighs a couple hundred pounds...

After the days work, all the avons (there are 4 of them) and the ship's SAFEboat all rendesvouz back at the ship. Usually, we all get to the ship within a few minutes of each other, so plenty of time is spent circling around off the stern quarter of the ship waiting for your turn to be craned aboard... Two days ago, the ship's SAFEboat (which goes out every day carrying two other NOAA guys to do fish surveys) returned to the ship the same time as my avon. They charged right up to us and began to play bumper boats. One thing led to another, and soon there was a volley of mustard and mayo from the lunch coolers. My attempt to spray mustard failed miserably, as the French's mustard nozzle makes for a poor stream and terrible trajectory. The Kraft mayo, however, sprays a nice inch-wide stream as far and as long as you want. After Jubilee and I, our boat, and all our dive gear were thoroughly coated in mayo, a truce was called. Side note: most bottled mayo these days apparently requires no refrigeration. The ships cooks were under the assumption that our mayo would be fine left out on the galley table day after steamy tropical day. Upon close examination, it was found that OUR mayo did indeed require refrigeration- not only that, but it had expired in February...

So, I'm covered in mayo, and thoroughly disgusted. I had just asked my boss if it was alright if I jumped in the water to wash off, when four Galapagos sharks appeared out of nowhere, instantly attracted by the greasy little bits of mayo floating in the water. They swam around, nipping at all the little chunks. Somehow a breakfast biscuit found its way into the water, and Frank accidentally dropped a chicken wing over the side. The sharks weren't intersted however, and never touched anything but the mayo. Ken and Jeff and I have always tried chumming for sharks back on Oahu with good stuff like Ahi bellies, and have never met with any success. Who knew all you needed was mayo?? Frank stuck his arm over the side of the boat and took this pic.

Yesterday, our last day at Kure, we finished up with operations at around 2:00 in the afternoon. Not one to waste good diving time, the boss had us rendezvoused up in the middle of the atoll, and then took us outside the barrier reef for a fun-dive. We anchored up in 40-50 feet of water in an area of spur and groove reef structure. Derek and I took off to find some neat stuff to film with his underwater video camera. The visibility was absolutely PHENOMENAL- You could see well over a hundred feet in every direction, quite possibly 150 feet. I felt like I was floating in the sky above the ground and that I could fall at any moment. Pretty cool. The reef was pretty standard- big coral-cement spurs with small evenly-spaced pocilipora heads everywhere. Sand channels lay between the coral spurs. At first not much was going on; just the usual reef fish hovering around near the bottom. Then, a small gray reef shark meandered over and began circling, then another. A little while later, two big uluas showed up and came to check us out. Derek and I took turns diving down to the bottom. I'd go down, hide behind a ledge, and settle in for a while. With no scuba tank bubbles to scare off the fish, after I'd sat there for a while, the uluas came in very close to check me out (see pic), and so did the two sharks. By the end of the dive, we had the sharks, the uluas, a school of rainbow runners (see next pic), and a school of kawakawa (small tunas) circling around us in one big gyre. Pretty amazing, I gotta say...

After loading our boats onboard the ship, we set course for Pearl and Hermes Reef, about 150 miles southeast. We arrived this morning and began ops around 9:30

Kure Atoll

We've been at Kure Atoll (pronounced Kure-eh) for about 4 days now.. It felt great to get back in the water after our weeklong transit on the ship. On Tuesday our team hopped in the water on the north side of the atoll to begin our towboard surveys. I was filled with what some might call "awe" or "shock" or perhaps "giddy slobbering" when I saw the endless pristine fields of blue and white montipora coral that stretched away before me. (Something you'd never see on Oahu) We began "work", and I was towed behind the boat on my towboard, swooping and diving around coralheads and ledges- literally as close to flying as I'll ever get. The fish were HUGE, as expected, and the visibility was tremendous. I was totally stoked, and ready to declare a national holiday when one of my co-workers said "Oh yeah, Kure has nice beaches, but the diving really isn't all that great compared to the other NW Hawaiian Islands..." I was stunned, being that our first day of operations had been so amazing. But I began to think about it, and it makes sense. Kure, being the world's northernmost coral atoll, has some pretty cold water temperatures in the winter, and thus probably fewer tropical species that care to tolerate freezing their asses off half of the year. Right now during the month of July, the sea-surface temperatures are such that Kure's water feels no different than that of the main islands, 7 full degrees of latitude south. In winter however, the water circulation patterns cause a sharp drop in temp up in the northern regions of the state. Regardless, the diving is far better than anything I've experienced in my life, and it sounds like there's nowhere to go but up! As part of our first three days of operations, my boat team made several runs to Green Island, the main island on the southern side of the atoll. There are three people from the NOAA protected species division camping out there during the monk seal pupping season, much like the folks on Laysan. Our ship was carrying supplies for the campers, which as far as I could tell consisted mostly of two giant coolers full of gourmet ice cream. We met the folks at the old coast guard pier that juts out on the north side of the island (they used to have a station there in the old days). After dodging the monk seals that were strewn like bowling pins all over the beach, we got their gear ashore and had a little chat. They liked to chat. I suppose 4 months on a desert island will do that. The woman in charge, Cynthia, seemed very content on the island- 50ish years old, tan tan tan, and a headful of dreds, she was master of her domain. Apparently last year the crew of the ship had trouble convincing her to leave at the end of the season.... One of the other campers took us to the highest point on the island (probably about 15-20 feet) and showed us the grand view. A family of 4 Laysan Albatross occupied the summit of the "hill", so we had to jockey for space to snap a few photos. Green Island is small, perhaps a half mile long and a quarter mile wide, but again like Laysan, is home to thousands of seabirds.
The monk seal campers had very kindly collected all the debris from the island's beaches and piled it all on the pier. We began shoving it over the side and into our avon (inflatable motorboat). We kept piling and packing and piling some more until we had at least 500 lbs aboard. The pile of debris inside the boat was monstrous and almost head-high. I sat on top of the mound of stinky nets for the entire 5 km ride back to the ship. Best seat in the house. Over the course of the week we made 3 trips, and other boats made about 4 more, and now our 22 foot cargo container is almost half full... We've been pulling a relatively minor amount of debris off the reefs themselves as most of Kure was surveyed thoroughly last year.
When the monk seal campers arrived this March, they discovered that a 30 foot sailboat had washed ashore on the east side of the atoll. It had washed over the barrier reef and into the lagoon and then sunk in about 12 feet of water... There was noone aboard. After reporting it to the coast guard, they found out the story behind the boat. The "Grendel" was captained by a 70 year old man who was making the crossing from New Zealand to Seattle just as he had 25 TIMES before... (!!!) Apparently he went missing this spring and noone has heard from him since.
The boat was directly adjacent to one of our survey areas, so we stopped for a few minutes and dove on the wreck. It sat in about 12 feet of water at about a 45 degree angle. The mast stuck up out of the water about 20 feet and looked almost brand new- roller furling headsails, newish looking radar antenna, weather instruments up top, etc... The hull was steel and looked to have a small hole in the port side. I dove into the cabin and found a couple of guitar cases, a bunch of jars with granola in them, and floating up against the ceiling was a pair of the man's shoes. It was kinda unnerving and pretty sad, not knowing what happened to the old guy. I'm guessing he just fell overboard somewhere in the night and wasn't able to climb back onboard- the sailor's worst nightmare. There was a carved wooden polynesian mask on the bulkhead, and a wooden alligator was floating up against the starboard cabin wall. The monk seal people had taken many of the man's personal belongings back to the island so they could be sent to his relatives, along with the anchor, much of the hardware, and the sails which had been torn to shreds. We took the sails with us along with all the land debris back to the ship...

It's time for bed now, but I'll post more on Kure soon.

Laysan Island

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.

Day 3&4

Things are going great out here. Yesterday we made landfall at Tern Island (part of French Frigate Shoals Atoll) where we offloaded three people and some supplies. One of them was a Fish and Wildlife volunteer who was to be spending 4 months there doing bird stuff, and two were NOAA employees who were on a shark culling mission to eliminate a few specific sharks that have been eating the endangered monk seal pups.. The island itself just started out as a sandbar, but during WWII the military built up the island with coral they blasted from the reef in order to build a runway on it. It is a very small island with a few barracks on it, and of course an old runway.

Millions of seabirds call the runway home, so any plane landing must do several low flybys before they land in order to scare off all the birds. When we arrived, the wind was blowing 20 knots, and the little island looked very barren and bleak. The fish and wildlife boat came out to meet us (we came into the shallows as far as we could before our 15 foot draft limited us)... The folks on the boat looked a little bedraggled and had a crazy shipwrecked look in their eye... Tern Island is the only outpost of civilization before you reach midway, ~700 miles northwest. There are other islands (called motus) that make up French Frigate shoals atoll. Most of them are just sand-spits, but there is one remnant of volcanic rock called La Perousse pinnacle that still remains of the high island that has now sunk into the ocean. See picture. We will be returning to French Frigate shoals on one of our later cruises to do debris removal, but for now we've begun steaming our way northwest to Laysan Island. I'm part of the crew that will be removing nets and debris from the beach at Laysan, so I'll have to break out my quarantined set of clothing in order to land on the island. I'm looking forward to seeing the endemic Laysan Finch and the Laysan duck (only 600 left in the world), both found nowhere else in the world but this tiny island. There is a freshwater/brackish "lake" in the middle of Laysan that seems to provide great habitat for birds....

This morning it was my duty to assist with a CTD operation aboard the ship.. This is an oceanographic operation during which we drop a big apparatus with various instruments attached down to 500 meters, where we then take conductivity measurements (determines salinity), Temperature readings, and collects water samples. We winch the apparatus over the side using a deck-mounted crane, and then lower it on a cable to the required depth. My duty was to guide the thing up and over the side, as it is swinging around on the cable in the rocking seas. It is bigger than I am and weighs way more than I do, so it was kind of hard to control, but we managed to seal the deal. I then had to relay the angle of the cable to the crane operator as he lowered it down to depth to avoid drift and damage to the underside of the ship. Anyway, today we start gearing up for land operations ashore.

Day 1&2

Well, it is our second day at sea and things are going great! Yesterday after leaving Pearl Harbor, a Coast Guard helicopter conducted training operations with the boat, lowering a basket down to the deck to simulate an evacuation. Unfortunately I saw none of this, as all scientific personnel aboard were instructed to stay in the mess hall so as to stay out of the way... We're steaming along at about 11 knots, and the crew have fishing lines trailing out the back 24/7. The ship is a diesel/electric drive, meaning that the main propellors are powered by electric motors, using power produced by diesel generators.... I was talking to the captain at dinner and he gave me all the stats on the ship: approx 220 feet long, 43 foot beam, 15 foot draft. Fuel capacity is 163,000 gallons of diesel, and at full bore the ship only burns 1% per day. Last night at sunset, we passed to the south of Kauai, and Niihau was barely visible as the sun went down. This morning we passed Nihoa Island, a 900 foot rock that is the second to last of the higher Hawaiian Islands. It is a huge seabird nesting location, so we were seeing lots of seabirds skimming around including tropicbirds, red-footed boobies, and numerous petrels of unidentifiable species.. It was barely visible on the horizon, as the ship passed several miles to the south. These days in transit to and from the islands are very laid back. No real duties except eating, reading, watching movies and sitting on the flybridge snapping photos... The food is awesome- we have an allstar cook and baker aboard, so there are always homemade desserts, etc. I feel like a kid in the candy store....
Our first stop will be Tern Island at French Frigate Shoals atoll....