Getting Back to Normal

Things were about back to normal around here. Normal being great, interesting, and busy. I moved out of Charlie barracks and into a house. A group of our contractors that were working on renovations to the old officer housing left. Four NOAA employees came to help pick up derelict fishing gear from the reef and shoreline. The NOAA ship "Oscar Elton Sette" will come soon to take all of that away from here as well as all of the other islands in the NW Hawaiian Islands. I'll put in another plug for Chris Jordan and his group. They are doing really good work out here and I'm sure their film will be great from their shots so far. It's been really intersting watching them work. I've been picking up a lot of good photo tips from them. As you've likely noticed, I write a lot more about the things that go on around here every week, and they do a lot more descriptive writing, poetry, and artistic photography to give you the feel of Midway. http://www.midwayjourney.com/ and Emily's latest post at http://emilysmidwayjourney.blogspot.com/ One of Chris's crew was here before on the team of another movie called "Bag it". We watched it last night up at Capt. Brooks. It's a good documentary on plastic use. John Klavitter (our deputy refuge manager and former wildlife biologist) and Matt Brown (former manager here) are both in it. The weather was a bit windy last week. We were going to go over to Eastern Island to clean out the duck seeps to try to prevent another botulism outbreak in the Laysan ducks. When we get a chance, we'll pump all of the water out, scoop out the mud/muck at the bottom and let it refill from the freshwater lens in the island. Alright, enough writing for this week. Life goes on. The parade field birds don't seem to know that there was a tsunami.

I don't know if the NOAA marine debris collecting group will have a chance to get any of these nets and ropes that washed up into the middle of Eastern Island. At least they are less of a hazard to marine animals up in the middle of the island, but they can still be a bit of a hazard for birds getting entangled.

This is one of the few Bonin petrel chicks left on Eastern. There weren't that many to begin with over there. There is a lot more hard packed ground over there.

This young Great frigatebird probably didnt' die in the tsunami. Since the tree is still there. It either didn't get enough food or got entangled.

This whale spine washed up on North Beach a few weeks ago. It's about 7 ft long. The skull was found nearby a couple of days later. I haven't had a chance to identify it yet, but I will one of these days.

I'll end with another white tern.