New Crew on Tern

Welcome to our new crew on Tern!  The Kahana arrived on Monday with the new summer crew:  Summer Manager Meg Duhr Schultz, and volunteers Catherine Fox, Ryan Potter, and Megan Juran.  The new and old crew will work together over the next 10 days, passing the torch.  The winter crew will be leaving when the Kahana comes through on its return trip to Honolulu, and Meg will be taking over the blog.

Offloading supplies and getting new crew:  Left to right:  Dan Rapp, Ryan Potter, Morgan Gilmour, and Abram Fleishman.  Photo by Sarah Youngren.

Abram Fleishmman and Megan Juran stack milk in the food room.  All food must be labeled with date of arrival and stored in its proper place.  This food will last the crew -- plus folks from NOAA's seal and turtle crews this summer -- until October, when the next crew switch-out occurs.

Biologically, the honu (Hawaiian green sea turtles) are starting to show up in slightly higher numbers -- from 0-1 per day on Tern in mid-winter, to more than a dozen per day now.  (It will be more like 100/day on Tern later, and double that on East Island in peak season.)  We're seeing a few turtle 'rafts' or 'dog piles' -- a bunch of males vying for a female turtle's attention. 

Basking honu on Tern Island

'Old style' metal tag, #G692.  We were lucky to happen to see the first female turtle of the season digging high up on the beach, checking out good spots to nest later in the season.  She was last seen nesting in 1996 and 2002. 

 We also saw two red-footed boobies (ʻĀ wāwae) with signficant oiling in the past month.  One had about 15% of its body covered, and another had about 30%.  We've spotted a handful more with small (quarter-sized) spots.  The oil looked to be old, but we collected feather samples, just in case the oil needs to be analyzed. We'll be keeping a sharp eye out for additional oiling, and are starting to photograph the 'small spot' birds in order to assess how many birds have actually been affected.

Sarah Youngren finds a returned invasive -- sandbur -- under the clothesline.  It was probably accidentally reintroduced by people coming back from East Island, where the weed reappeared four years after 'eradication' -- perhaps due to old seed bank being exposed by record-breaking turtle nesting activity last summer.  Bird, seal and turtle crews will have to be particularly careful not to accidentally move these sticky seeds around more; right now we're hoping to keep re-eradicate the weed in the next several years.

The only bummer news for this week is that because Paula (the manager) has to go back to Honolulu to work in the office, and won't be staying or returning this summer, the benthic monitoring project we were planning to start this winter (but hadn't yet because we had no working boats) will not be carried out.  Of course Paula is very sad to miss out on all the summer actvities (particularly the benthic plate project, as well as helping out the turtle and seal crews), but Meg will be carrying the torch high and proud, and all the other activities will carry on under her guidance.

Dakshina Marlier (USFWS), Abram Fleishman (USFWS), and Morgan Gilmour (UCSC and USFWS) will also be sadly returning to Honolulu, but they have great plans after that!  Dakshina will be moving on to a summer biking position in Alaska, and Abram and Morgan have wildlife jobs in California.  Morgan may be entering graduate school, and if she gets the permits, returning to Tern next winter to continue tagging albatross and boobies, and working on her dissertation tagging great frigatebirds!

More good news is that Sarah and Dan will be staying on at Tern to work on Paula's data quality project, funded by the USFWS Inventory and Monitoring Project, so we can get some of the 30 years of bird monitoring data.  They'll also be able to complete their work on acoustics, plastics, burrowing seabird habitat, working alongside Meg, Megan, Catherine and Ryan.  Yeah!!!

Neighbors.  Snorkeling photos by Abram Fleishman.

Ka Hiapo, our eldest mōlī  (Laysan albatross) chick.  Notice his nice new 'wrist-bracelet' -- a flexible poultry band used to identify chicks.  Ka Hiapo, a.k.a. Goliath, is also the heaviest of our chicks, and part of Dan Rapp's study looking at the effects of plastics on chick growth.  Photo by Sarah Youngren.

Dakshina Marlier, enjoying the sunset.  Photo by Abram Fleishman.

Measurements before applying a geolcator tag to a red-footed booby ('a), as part of Scott Shaffer's (UCSC) study.  The tag will provide us with a map of where the booby goes to forage.  From left to right:  Abram Fleishman, Sarah Youngren, Morgan Gilmour.

Manu o Kū (white tern) feeding its chick.  Does anyone know if this is a mahi?

Albatross News -- STAL on Tern!!!

We're definitely in albatross season now!  Chicks are everywhere, and growing like mad.  And this morning, while I was writing this blog, Morgan Gilmour found a short-tailed albatross on Tern!!!!  These endangered birds have only been seen in FFS once in February 1994, and Februrary 2002 -- so this is a special sighting!

Short tailed albatross on Tern today!!  Photo by Dakshina Marlier (above), and Sarah Youngren (below). 
(We'll have better pictures later, but we dont want to disturb him/her.)

Along with our previous O'ahu moli visitor, and a current nesting moli on Tern, banded on Kaua’i in 2008 -- French Frigate Shoals is turning into quite the metropolitan place to nest!

Morgan Gilmour is working on a project tagging albatrosses at Tern Island, for the Tagging of Pacific Pelagics program (University of California, Santa Cruz).  She is using both satellite and GPS tracking to monitor where the adults find food during incubation and chick-rearing.  This will tell us something both interesting, and useful if we need to protect an area or resource, or if we are impacting these resources.

Below is a GPS track of a female ka’upu (black-footed albatross) that was originally banded as a nesting adult in 1998.  During her month-long foraging trip, she traveled very near to Vancouver Island and then Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlotte Island) in British Columbia.  Unlike the mōlī (Laysan albatross), that tend to forage more in the central Northern Pacific, ke ka’upu seem to prefer foraging up the West Coast of North America.  The amount of plastic floating around in these areas also shows up in their chicks – a lot more in the mōlī, who forage closer to the “garbage dump.”

Satellite track of a ka'upu (photo below) heading up the West Coast, looking for food before returning to its nest. 

It seems that this bird encountered stormy weather near Alaska, because when she arrived back on Tern, the GPS tag was water-logged.  Only the first half of the trip data was recorded, as you can see on the map.  What a long way to go just for dinner!!!   After she returns to the nest, her mate will take off on a similar foraging trip.  This long trip appears to have been successful because the egg hatched two weeks after the bird returned to Tern Island, and the chick is doing well.

This is the very bird who was tracked heading up the West Coast (above), with its chick.  Photo by Morgan Gilmour.

In addition to the satellite and GPS tracking, Scott Shaffer (UCSC) and David Hyrenbach (HPU) have agreed to let us combine part of our monitoring program efforts with part of theirs – so we can study where not only where the parent’s go, but how that affects chick growth.  We may also be able to match up the plastic ingested by chicks with where their parents’ foraged.   This kind of partner cooperation makes the whole much larger than the sum of its parts.  Thanks to David and Scott for agreeing to be so cooperative, and thanks to Morgan and Abram for getting the work done!  (It takes a team to do great science!)

Above:  Measuring the tarsus.  Below:  Drawing blood samples.  Abram Fleishman is holding the ka’upu.  Morgan Gilmour is taking measurements and samples.  This information will tell us a lot about the health of the bird.

And some other assorted news and photos:

Dan and Sarah saw a ka'upu with a 'streamer', and tracked it down.  The bird had a hand-braided nylon line wrapped twice around its uper leg, knotted twice, and with a bolen-loop on the other end.  It looked awfully like someone had tied this bird up, and it escaped.  Luckily the crew removed it before much damage was done -- the bird is scarred, but won't lose its leg.  Nice job, crew!

Female turtle on South Beach.  We see mostly males and juveniles in the winter, but there's always exceptions.

Tern Island 'new' runway from the East end.  We're glad to see birds nesting in this area.

Paula Hartzell and Dan Rapp releasing a small honu out of the double seawall.  Turtles get stuck behind the seawall after they washed over by high waves, then can't get back out.  This one was particularly tricky because it was swimming around in hip-deep water.  We waited for low tide so the waves wouldn't bash us, and so the turtle had time to calm down and go to sleep, then Sarah herded it to us.  We had to hand-pass the turtle to a wide enough opening, because the bottom of the wall is lined with broken rusty barrels facing up -- like tires on a football field, only rusty and jagged.  :-)  Everyone was careful, and the turtle was released healthy and unharmed.

Lānaʻi High School Students "Sail" to Tern Island

Tern Island is probably about 600 miles away from Lānaʻi High School, which is close to the southeastern end of the Hawaiian Islands archipelago.  On Tuesday, October 18th the two locations seemed a little closer to each other.

On that day 21 high school juniors & seniors and their teacher made a "virtual field trip" to Tern Island, with Barb Mayer (USFWS volunteer) and Wes Byers (NOAA's Outreach Specialist for the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument).

The virtual field trip to far-away Tern was made possible through a Powerpoint presentation, utilizing photos and this real-life video "The Searcher Departs from Honolulu":



After "setting sail" on the Searcher, the students imagined voyaging for 3 days to reach Tern Island where they were to start work as wildlife volunteers.  Therefore, at the conclusion of the Powerpoint, students were put to work in the classroom!  They were divided into small groups and rotated through several activities utilizing artifacts from Tern.

For example, here's an activity featuring actual marine animal eggs.  (They were infertile; they didn't hatch.  Therefore, it's possible for the US Fish and Wildlife Service to use them for education.  The eggs have been filled with plaster of paris, to strengthen them against accidental breakage.)

Most of the eggs are labeled with their birds' identifying, 4-letter code; two are not...or three, since you can't see the whole code for the egg on the right.  

Egg Challenge:  Of those three, which one belongs to the Laysan Albatross, Mōlī?  Which is the store-bought chicken egg?  ...and which one belongs to the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle, Honu?  (Hint: reptile eggs don't have [much] calcium in them).  Honor system: don't peek until you're ready, but the answers are at the end of this post.

THAT can't be a Laysan Albatross, a Mōlī?!  Your're right; it's a stuffed toy.  Imagine how much bigger the REAL albatross parents are who laid this egg?

JMacaulay took this picture of a pair of adult Mōlī.

 Here's an activity about the Great Frigatebird's wingspan-->

Challenge: Place the Great Frigatebird (GRFR; ʻIwa) skeleton and both sets of wing bones in the proper places to represent a living bird's actual wingspan!

The students have put the GRFR skeleton in the middle of the 7' long fabric strip.  Now, can they correctly arrange the wing bones?

YES THEY CAN!  The answer sheet, which was hidden under a paper taped to the classroom's front board, confirmed their effort.  Wow, that ʻiwa has a chicken-size body and a hang-glider wingspan!

Back at the end of May "A Busy Time at Kānemilohaʻi" was posted.  Mark Sullivan's photo shows a particularly disturbing example of a Honu with marine debris, a porthole, around its neck:

Here's the porthole again.  Now it's being used to help students make the mind and heart connection to what marine debris actually does to life in the ocean. 

How does it feel to be caught in marine debris? Well, how does it feel to have this rubber band around your hand?!

The class period ended with everyone feeling a little closer to Tern Island Field Station and the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.  Barb and Wes look forward to "bringing the place to the people" in other classrooms around the state of Hawaiʻi!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Egg Challenge Answers:

• Laysan Albatross -- the BIG one on the right
• Chicken -- in the top-right corner of the egg carton
• Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle -- bottom-left in the carton

Deadly debris

This week we all got a good reminder that no piece of debris is too small to kill or injure wildlife. First we found this Sooty Tern fledgling stumbling around the colonies one evening. Because the poor creature was unable to fly, we captured it easily by hand and it became quickly evident why it was hobbling around. Its left leg was completely non-functional because a small section of monofilament fishing line had become tightly wrapped around the upper part of it. It had been there for quite some time because tissue had actually grown over the line.

Though this bird was still quite lively and, true to Sooty form, still attempted to bite and jab its handler, you can see from the condition of this bird's feathers that its chances of surviving this are not good. With feathers this far gone and its first molt not due for quite some time, our poor, (de)-feathered friend will not be able to leave the island and forage on its own. This is what will ultimately kill the bird. And while we cannot say for sure that the leg injury caused the feather degradation, its easy to imagine how weeks of hobbling around a seabird colony dragging wings through dirt and guano led to the present condition.

Anybody care to guess how long the offending piece of fishing line was?  Make an estimate, then check the answer at the bottom of this post!* 

These poor little Honu were recently found on the island as well. Since they turned up aways inland, the likely scenario is that they hatched out on the beach and somewhere between the ocean and middle of the island got tangled in this section of net. This particular piece of netting measured only 17" long and 3" wide. Typical commercial fishing gillnets like this can be up to several miles long. If a section this small can kill two turtle hatchlings imagine the damage that a mile of this stuff could do. It's an ugly thought.

We make every effort we can to remove the trash that washes ashore or gets blown inland, but even though Tern is a small island, there's still a lot of ground to cover by three people. We also have to carefully weigh the impact of our increased presence in active bird colonies and monk seal habitat with the benefit gained from removing debris immediately. There are no easy answers and we're still figuring out what our best approach should be. One thing is for absolute certain: it's important that the US Fish and Wildlife Service maintains its year-round presence out on Tern Island. If there were no staff and volunteers out here to collect debris and watch out for the turtles, seals, and seabirds that call this place home, there would be far more deadly entanglement incidents like this.

Shameless subject change! On a completely unrelated, but far brighter note, check out this Red-tailed Tropicbird chick. Born and raised right under our front porch, we get to enjoy watching her grow every day! Their eyes aren't actually quite that big, but they have a thick, black eye ring. So when a tropicbird chick looks at you straight on, their eyes look exaggeratedly large, cartoonish, and ridiculously adorable. Really, is it possible to not smile when you see this face???

 

(*Answer: 13 inches, which is an exponentially tiny fraction of the amount of derelict fishing gear and other debris that's out there in this bird's ocean habitat.)

Hatchlings and Christmas Chicks

The honu are hatching now!  Every morning we walk along the runway, to find Hawaiian green sea turtle hatchlings that have lost their way during the night.

Honu hatchling.  Photo by Mark Sullivan

Because Tern Island is basically a man-made island with a lot of vegetation, structures, and other things that turtles wouldn't normally encounter on a sandy island -- and that they don't run into on any of the other islands in the atoll -- we have to make sure those that get waylaid along the way have a chance to get back out at sea.  Right now we check every morning, and release those hatchlings back into the sea.  Only about one in a thousand will make it all the way to being an adult turtle, but we figure if we save 1,000 hatchlings, that's kind of like saving one adult turtle.

This fall, after most of the seabirds have left, the crew will be moving a 12" PVC pipe to the inland side of the beach.  The pipe acts as a fence for the hatchlings, so should help more of lost ones find their way back to the sea, rather than get lost in Tern's vegetation.  This should further help the honu towards recovery.

Honu hatchling ponders the great moana.  Photo by Mark "Sissy" Sullivan.

The Christmas Shearwater (Puffinus nativitatis) chicks are also growing!  Most of them have some feathers now.  They are funny looking chicks, with a big fat body and little tiny head.  The adults are all dark brown to black, with a tube-nose for getting rid of salt.  They're about as big as both of your hands cupped together.  They arrive at Tern in February, and lay their eggs in March.  Its difficult to get good photos of them because they roost and nest in very dark areas under leafy bushes, and leave the island soon after it gets light.  They are very skittish, and will fly away if you come near them.

Christmas in a bush.  Photo from FWS file.

Christmases breed on islands throughout the central and south Pacific, although we don't know very much about how many there are or how they are doing as a species.  Christmases need good shade for roosting and nesting (on Tern, they sleep and nest only under healthy leafy bushes), and have no defense against rats, cats or other predators.   Christmases also breed on some of the small offshore islands in the Main Hawaiian Islands - so we have to be sure to keep those areas rat-free!

Mostly we see Christmas Shearwaters in the early morning, when they come out from under shrubs to bask in the morning light.  Although Christmases are never very numerous in one location, they are social in the morning, and usually sit in couples, 3s or 4s together, preening in the morning light.  After they warm up, they take off for a day of fishing before returning in the evening.

Merry Christmas!  Christmas Shearwaters are very affectionate with each other, and usually spend the early morning hours basking in the sun and preening each other.  Photo from FWS files.

Christmases are one of my favorite birds because they are so gentle with each other, and quiet when you catch them.  Although they kind of howl at night like Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, they only howl once or twice, and then quiet down -- They don't go on and on for hours, like Wedgies do.  When you catch a Christmas (as for banding), they peep rather pitifully, but don't try to peck your eyes out or bite you, as many birds do.

Seal pup REALLY close up....  Photo by Mark Sullivan.

Traditional Hawaiian cultural practitioner Leighton Tseu has been working with the seal crew these last two weeks.  Uncle has shared lots of stories with us, and reminded us why we are out here.  We will be in his debt for a long, long time.  Thank you, Uncle Leighton!!!  We have very much enjoyed having you here.  The seal crew has taken down their camp, and are getting ready to leave the atoll sometime next week.

Gratuitously cute seal pup photo, by Guess Who.  (yes, Mark Sullivan)

Swan Lake with Net.  Ben Cook and Mark Sullivan provide interpretive marine debris dance.

I will be leaving Tern Island this week (very sadly for me).  The good news is that the new Assistant Manager, Meg Duhr Schultz, will be taking over.  She will supply you with lots of good stories and news about the birds, seals, and turtles until my return to Tern in December.   Meg, Erin and Scott will continue here until that time -- Be safe, Meg, Erin, and Scott, and great adventures!

Paula before departure....

After Departure.... The vessel Searcher, taking Paula away.... and Life in the Atoll continues.

'Iolani School, Turtle Diggings and the Oscar Elton Sette

A busy couple of weeks!

We had a GREAT time skyping with JoAnn Stepien's class at 'Iolani School on O'ahu --  Thanks to 'Iolani School teacher JoAnn Stepien and FWS Volunteer Barb Mayer, joined by NOAA E&O Coordinator Wes Byers.  Take a look at pictures Wes put onto his Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument Facebook page.  And a most special thanks to the students!!!  'Iolani School's Marine Debris Awareness class welcomed us for a visit last week.  The visit included map study, dissection of albatross boluses, skyping with Tern volunteer Erin Kawakami, looking at marine debris collected off a turtle entrapped at French Frigate Shoals, and other activities.  

JoAnn Stepien's Marine Debris Awareness class at 'Iolani School on O'ahu, pays attention while FWS Tern Volunteer Barbar Mayer leads discussion on Tern Island.  Barbara brought albatross boluses, bones and eggs, as well as marine debris from entrapments, for the class to experience these firsthand.

Students skyped live with FWS Volunteer Erin Kawakami on Tern Island.    Erin is from the Big Island, and has wanted to visit the Northwestern islands her whole life.  One of these kids could be a volunteer, or perhaps the manager, not too long from now!!!

Our next big news at Kānemilohaʻi:  808 Nesting Honu on East Island alone!!!!  This has been a record breaking year, with more nesting turtles than ever recorded before -- the next best year was 589 nesting turtles.  

Honu 808!!!  This was the last of the nesting turtles identified by the turtle techs this field season.  If you look REALLY closely, you can see the '808' on her carapace, with a ying-yang for the '0'.  She is basking on Tern Island in this photo; you can see some turtle eggs she inadvertently dug up in the sand.  We'll expect another big nesting season in three or four years, with lower counts in between.

Balance in all things:  Unfortunately, with so many turtles digging, they have also dug up a large portion of the shrubs along the south side of  Tern Island.  This will probably speed up erosion along the south side, as well as eliminate a good deal of shrub habitat, of which we have none to spare.  (Note the boobies refusing to give up this bush!)  If the decision is ever made to permanently decommission the runway at Tern Island, we will plant shrubs in that area, providing a significant gain in shrub habitat.  Until then, we'll try to encourage both natural and propagated beach naupaka across the island.

More turtle digging means fewer Tristram's storm petrel burrows.  Turtle nest-building has removed a significant portion of the Tristram storm petrel area on Tern Island this year, moving all the way up into our reproductive monitoring plots.  We've been moving the nest boxes back onto solid ground several times this year, but the turtles keep digging further and further back, digging up burrows and tossing nesting boxes aside.  Tristram's usually return to the same burrow to nest; we hope to keep the pairs that were nesting in this area by increasing the number of artificial nest boxes.  Burrowing birds have a difficult time without shrubs to consolidate the soil, and protect the burrows from crushing by albatross, turtles, and humans.

As the turtle nesting season winds down, the turtle team wrapped up their field camp.  The whole gang pitched in to help them take down camp. They spent the next few days cleaning all the field gear, and packing it away for the next season.

The Amazing Summer Team at Tern gathers on the porch to show their muscle!  From top left to right:  Brendan Hurley,  Shawn Farry,  Ben Cook, Irene Nurzia Hamburg; second row:  Erin Kawakami, Scott Sturdivant, and Meg Duhr Shultz; bottom row:  Tyler Bogardus, Paula Hartzell, and Mark Sullivan.

The fall crew -- Scott Sturdivant, Erin Kawakami and Meg Duhr Schultz -- have started on their native plant propagation and planting projects, planning what they will be doing over the coming months.  So far they have created some additional catchment areas for fresh water for their plants, and outlined where they will be concentrating their efforts -- in addition to all of the regular bird monitoring they will be doing.  They've also been finding the first of the turtle hatchlings, and returning them to the sea.  (Some hatchlings get lost and confused in the vegetation.)  More from them in the coming months!

Above:  Erin Kawakami and Scott Sturdivant work on creating catchment for their native plant propagation projects. 

The summer crew splits up --  Erin, Meg and Scott (at right) get ready to say goodbye to Irene and Tyler (at left).  The crew arrived together in June.  While the turtle crew heads out until next year, the bird crew will stay on Tern until December.

Hugs goodbye.

One of the small boats off the NOAA Research Vessel Oscar Elton Sette arrives, bringing fuel for us to run our own boats.  Everything we use on Tern has to be delivered like this -- first on a large vessel from Honolulu, then on a tender from the ship to the island.  The Sette crew and scientists normally are performing marine research activities in the Monument; this time they are going up the Northwestern Island chain picking up the seal crews at the end of the field season.  The Sette will be back to Tern in a couple weeks to pick up our seal crew.  

Irene and Tyler leave with the NOAA Research Vessel Oscar Elton Sette crew.   They will ride up to Midway, and take a plane back to Honolulu.  Irene and Tyler worked some seriously long hours recording nesting sea turtles this year, and deserve such a great trip.  Thanks, crew!!!

So that's it for the news for now -- A hui hou, and see you next week! 

This week's gratuitous bird and sunset photos:

This is the life:  ʻĀ makaʻele (masked booby) chick relaxes on a coconut.  Masked boobies nest on open grounds, so do very well on all of the sandy islands in the atoll, as well as on Tern Island.  They have big fat wide feet, like people, for standing on the ground.

Gin Island spit.

Birds of Tern Island.

An ʻĀ wāwae (red-footed booby) chick.  This one has most of his feathers now -- although he retains his chick fuzz-hood.  Red-footed boobies nest in shrubs, and have red monkey-like hands (okay, feet really) which are agile and finger-like, for grasping branches.

La Perouse at sunset.