Finally Back Again

Ok, I think that was my last vacation for the year.  It wasn't much of a vacation in Virginia.  I had to help Dasha move from our apartment to a house and just in time for Hurricane Irene.  It wasn't too bad in Alexandria, but our power went out, and the sump pump didn't work so we had to scoop out hundreds of gallons of water from the basement by hand.  Luckily, the power came back on just as it was about to overflow onto the floor.  At least I had a great vacation in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  I've included a few photos from there too. 

A lot has been going on here while I was gone.  The Kahana brought our supplies and the US Coast Guard ship Kukui came to do some work here and at Kure Atoll.  We also had a Coast Guard C-130 come about an hour after our plane came to pick up some of the Coast Guard personnel and a construction crew from Kure.  I've made it through a few hundred emails already and should be caught up in only another week or two, so if anyone reading this is expecting a reply from me, I'll probably be getting to it soon.  Alright, time for some photos. 

 I got to ride out on the new airplane.  Our flight contractor got a G-IIB.  It's almost the same as the last plane, but a little more headroom and the seating setup is a bit better. 

This plane flies a lot higher than the old G-I.  You can barely see French Frigate Shoals in this picture.  It's fairly small from 45,000 feet.  You can see that the atmosphere is pretty thin up there too.  You can maybe see it a bit better if you double click on the photo.

 This is part of Pearl & Hermes Atoll.  The reef pattern is pretty cool.  We didn't see Laysan or Lisianski this time, but we did see Nihoa, FFS, Gardner Pinnacles, and P&H.  I didn't get clear photos of Nihoa and Gardner due to the double windows on the plane.

There isn't much to see here, but this is Sand Island at Midway as we are getting ready to land.  It is pretty small, isn't it?

Now for some vacation photos.  Of course, I took a couple thousand, so here are just a few representative shots.

 These mountains are called the High Tatras in northern Slovakia.  We spent a week there.

 The hiking was wonderful.  It was really surprising how many people were up there, but I can see why because it is really beautiful.

 The mountain in the background is called Lomnicky stit. It looks a lot higher than 8,643 ft (2634 m), but the level of the surrounding land is not as high as it is in the Rocky Mountains.  There is a little gondola lift to the top.

 This is my brother-in-law, Tomas, taking a photo from the overlook on top of Lomnicky stit.  It's a pretty long drop from there.  It was clear down below, but there were some clouds up there the day we went.  It snowed up there 4 days later.

 This was our hotel for the week, the Grand Hotel Praha. 

 This was the view from our hotel room. 

 One interesting thing about the Czech Republic is how many of the hilltops have castles on them.  This castle is called Hazmburg.

 I'm not sure of the story behind these castle ruins, but it was probably nice five or six hundred years ago.

 This is the old town square in Dasha's hometown of Teplice.  There are some hot springs here that were said to be discovered in 762 A.D. Beethoven worked on some of his symphonies here while getting treatment in the spa. 

I of course had to go check out a soccer game in Teplice.  The stadium may look familiar if you saw the last "Pink Panther" movie.  I sat in the hooligan section for the first half, but moved for a better seat in the second half.  When you go with the rough crowd, you have to stand the whole time, and it's not quite the same when you don't understand the Czech taunts.

New Volunteers

We lost our extra volunteers this week.  They went back to Honolulu on Thursday along with two of our long term volunteers, David and Eryn.  They got a lot of native plants planted and weeds pulled.  We did get a new group in and it was nice of Amelia to stay to help train Anthony, Eamon, and Dani.  They've had to learn quickly about botulism and Laysan ducks.  We've had a few sick ones this week.  

I'll be flying out on the next plane, and coming back 3 1/2 weeks later.  I've had a lot of leave time to burn up this year thanks to spending 9 1/2 months on Tern Island last year.  I'll try to do a blog when I get back, or maybe I can do an entry while I'm in the Czech Republic. 

Tyler and Nikki are cutting back some of the naupaka in front of the FWS office.

There is a lot of grounding wire all over Eastern Island.  This brown noddy and chick don't seem to mind.

I haven't had a sunset picture for a while, and the colors were nice the other evening, so here is one.

The water was pretty cloudy out near the reef last week.  You can barely see the monk seal in this picture.

If I mess with the brightness and contrast, you can see it a little better.

The water was a lot clearer 2 weeks ago when I took this picture of some teardrop butterflyfish, threadfin butterflyfish, a moorish idol, a saddle wrasse, and a female spectacled parrotfish.

We had another ship this week.  The NOAA ship "Oscar Elton Sette" came through on their way to pick up the monk seal crews from the other islands.  They usually stay over night to give the crew a break, but this time they were only here for the day on Friday.  A few of the people from the ship are flying out on our next plane, so they will help us out on the island until Thursday.  Julia, Nicky, Naomi, and Ilana were on Kure Atoll.  Nicky was a volunteer here a few months ago, so it's nice to have her back for a few days.  Irene and Tyler were the turtle techs at French Frigate Shoals this summer.  They counted and marked over 800 nesting females this year which was the most ever recorded since they started the program a few decades ago.  I worked with Irene a couple of years ago, so I think I may have a photo or two of her on my Tern Island blog.

I went out snorkeling again today, with our new visitors.  We were going to take the boat out, but the weather wasn't so great, so we just went out from shore.  There isn't much coral at all, but there are still some good fish to see.  My photos from last week are better so I'll show you those, instead of the not so great ones I got today.

 Our new helpers are waving goodbye to the Sette.  This is Naomi, Tyler, Irene, Ilana, and Nicky.

 Irene, Tyler, David, and Greg are planting bunchgrass near the cargo pier with the Sette in the background.

 Amelia, Eryn, and David are collecting some short-tailed albatross decoys that we'll be cleaning up.

 Here are some of last weeks pictures.  Derek and Kristin are picking up some net and rope stuck on some coral.  Derek is working on a water tank painting project on island.

 This is a Blackside hawkfish in some nice purple coral.

 This is a Blackspot sergeant and a Surge wrasse.

 This is a little closer view of the surge wrasse.  They are a bit more colorful than the photo shows.

This is Kristin swimming above some nice coral.

Hi'ialakai

We had some visitors this weekend.  The NOAA ship Hi'ialakai was in the neighborhood doing coral reef studies, so they pulled up to the pier Friday and left today.  It was nice to have them here and hear what they are working on. 

We had a couple more sick Laysan ducks with botulism this week.  But we got them all fixed up and back out in the field.  

I don't have a lot more to tell you this week since I spent most of the time in the office.  Don't feel too sorry for me, because I at least got out snorkeling today and got a few pictures (Thanks for the camera loan, Kristin!)

The Hi'ialakai brought beautiful weather with them when the pulled up to the cargo pier.

Here are two of our volunteers, Amelia and Eryn, pulling out weeds near the Parade Field seep so we can locate sick or dead Laysan ducks.

This white tern is waiting to feed this fish to its chick.

Now for some snorkeling pictures.  This is the reef on the east side of the atoll.  There is some really nice coral over there.

 This is the emergent reef on the east side.  This looks volcanic, but is actually just long dead coral.  A few of the albatross chicks take a rest on the reef before they fly off for a few years.

 I got a lot of good pictures with Kristin's camera today, but I'll just show you some of the butterflyfish that we have around here.  This is an ornate butterflyfish.

 This is a threadfin Butterflyfish.  You can see the "threadfin" near the black spot above the caudal fin (tail).

 These are teardrop butterflyfish.  There were a lot of them around, but I hadn't seen them at Midway before.

 Here's an oval butterflyfish, with some convict tangs in the back.  Both of these species are fairly common around here.

These are milletseed butterflyfish.  I saw some other species of butterflyfish, but didn't get great pictures of them.  Next week I'll show a few more random underwater shots.

Another Medevac

Aside from the normal things going on this week, we also had a medical evacuation.  Someone needed to be evacuated from a container ship that was passing by.  We've also had a few more Laysan ducks become sick from botulism.  So far we've been able to cure them all with antitoxin and food.  We have to check for sick and dead ducks daily, since botulism can spread through maggots from an infected carcass. 
It's the quiet season around here now, until the albatrosses come back in October.  It's quite a bit easier to get around the island now that the birds aren't blocking the roads.  The birds are great, but it's nice to have a little break.  Just like with the seasons, you appreciate the summer a bit more after the winter.

 We're pulling away from the ship after picking up the patient.  It was a bit rough, but at least they had steps for the person to get down to our boat.

 Our fancy state of the art ambulance.

 There are few enough birds around now that the planes can land in the daytime.  The Coast Guard was nice enough to bring us a few supplies when they came.

 The heat waves coming off of the runway give a kind of cool effect on the photo.  You'll have to double click on the picture to make it bigger to see that.

 The brown noddy chicks are starting to hatch.

 Here's a convex crab I found out on the beach. These usually aren't out on land.

This Laysan albatross climbed up on a pile of marine debris.  Maybe it's climbing out of the verbesina to try to catch the wind.

This is the parade field now.  There are only a couple of albatrosses out there.

This was from almost the same spot back in April.

Links

This week we did a little bit of good.  The volunteers did a great job of getting rid of a lot of invasive plants, planting some native ones, finding two ducks sick with botulism (which we rehabilitated with antitoxin and food), and a few random other things.

I've got a few good links for you too. There's a great article about the tsunami, written by one of our vistitors that was here during the tsunami (Connie Toops).  I had a photo of her digging out an albatross back in March, and she put a picture of me with an albatross that I had just dug out.  Here's the link for the article in National Wildlife Magazine:

http://www.nwf.org/news-and-magazines/national-wildlife/birds/archives/2011/seabird-rescue-midway.aspx

Chris Jordan and his crew (Jim & Joe) are back on Midway working on their film about Midway and taking some photos.  Chris is just back from Kenya after winning a prestigious photography award, the "Prix Pictet Commission", which sent him to Kenya to photograph sustainability issues in local Africa populations.  They have a new trailer for the film at http://midwayfilm.com/  I wish I could see it, but our internet is way too slow out here.  From the first 9 seconds of music I can hear, it sounds great!  If you didn't check out their blog site before, that's worth a look too:  http://www.midwayjourney.com/  And the last thing I'll mention is Chris' gallery page.  This is a direct link to his Midway photos, but that is only a small part of his portfolio:  http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24 

The verbesina is going crazy on Eastern Isalnd after the tsunami spread the seeds around.  It killed all of the live plants, but it looks like it also germinated the seeds.

 A Laysan duck and her 4 ducklings are swimming in one of the seeps on Eastern Island. 

 This is another Laysan duck female with 2 ducklings on Eastern Island.  The other one is a bit out of frame.

Here's a photo for those who like to see some of the historical things.  This is the old gun emplacement next to the cemetery.

This is the cemetery.  Most of the graves are for doctors who died on Midway.  What I was told is that the doctors would normally be the ones who embalmed any bodies or those who died, but if the doctor died, no one was around to embalm them, so they were buried here.  The gun emplacement in the previous photo is just in back of the shrubs behind the cemetery.