In Honolulu

I've been working in Honolulu this week, so there isn't a lot of Midway news that I have for you.   I told you a while back that you can look at Google street view and take a virtual tour of Midway, at least on Sand Island, but they have now put up streetview for most of the rest of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.  You can now see Lisianski and Laysan Islands, Pearl and Hermes Atoll, and French Frigate Shoals (Tern and East Islands).  If you've ever been wondering what some of those other islands look like, now you can find out.  Here are a couple of links that talk about it.

http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/community/nw-hawaiian-islands-go-live-google-street-view

http://www.papahanaumokuakea.gov/news/google_streetview.html

 I probably won't post a blog next week, but I will the week after when I'm back on Midway.

I took this photo before I left.  This shows one of the access trails that we maintain on Eastern Island.

Our flight back to Honolulu was pretty quick.  You can see how fast the plane was going.

 I've been staying in the USFWS bunkhouse to save some travel money.  I used to stay here all the time when I worked on Tern Island.  There are a few other temporary FWS people staying here too.

 It's the Chinese New Year (year of the Horse) so we went to Chinatown last night.   It was pretty crowded over there.

Today I went over to the tide pools near the Makapu'u lighthouse with my friend Julia, who used to work on Kure Atoll.  If you were watching the pro-bowl today, you saw that Oahu wasn't very sunny today.

 There is an interesting blowhole there from the surf.  This is called the Dragon's Nostrils.

It's a little more impressive in this photo.

 There were quite a few humpbacked whales in view.  Most of them were too far out for good photos, but I got a few fin and tail photos.