Visitor Group

We had another good visitor group out here this week.  It's an interesting class at the University of Hawaii-Hilo.  It's a marine biology class but with a strong emphasis on native Hawaiian culture.  Basically, they are learning to use cultural knowledge and observations in addition to the things that they learn in class or books.  They've been getting up to start the day with a chant at sunrise, and also end the day with a chant at sunset.  They also had individual projects and gave presentations last night.

We missed out on the solar eclipse today.  I guess you had to be further north to catch it. 

The 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway is coming up in a couple of weeks so we're keeping pretty busy getting ready for that.  It won't be a large celebration, but we will have some veterans of the battle coming out.

Here's an updated photo of the Short-tailed albatross chick on Eastern Island.  It will probably only be around for a few more weeks.  It looks a lot like the Black-footed albatross chick behind it, but quite a bit bigger.

 You can tell it's getting warm again, because most of the adult albatross are going for the shade.

 Here's another shady spot for the albatross.  A lot of the chicks stay where they are and don't go to the shade.

A Masked booby is sitting on the pier on Eastern Island.

 A squid washed up on the beach.  It was about 18" long and was the biggest one I've seen washed up.

 This was the old Commanding Officer's desk from the Navy days.  It was in the abandoned hangar and the termites started getting to it, so it was taken out, refinished, and now will be in the Refuge Manager's office.  I'm glad to see it getting use.

The UH Hilo group is painting the FWS visitor center.