The Trip In

The new Tern crew loaded up -- along with SeeMore satellite technicians Konrad Schaad and Ralph Blancato, and Tern special volunteers Kathy Kawakami and Barbara Mayer -- on December 1st, for the three day trip out to French Frigate Shoals.

Women to Tern Island:  Morgan Gilmour, Sarah Youngren, Barbara Mayer, Dakshina Marlier, and Kathy Kawakami onboard the ship Kahana en route to French Frigate Shoals.

The first day at sea was pretty shaky, or at least most of the crew was. Things calmed down (both weatherwise and physically) after that, though. All of us enjoyed some great food onboard the ship Kahana, and some nice home-made music in the evening, courtesy of the Kahana's Nalu and our own volunteers.

A quiet moment as La Perouse comes into view. 

We arrived at Tern on Sunday, with a speedy offload due to good weather.   Come along on one of the small boat transfers from the good ship Kahana to the Island--



So much has changed since this summer!!!!  The crew on-island has built a tremendous amount of artificial habitat, experimenting with different materials and styles to see what the birds will accept for nesting.

Mōlī (above) and ka'upu nesting in runway.  Since some vegetation has returned to the runway, albatross are enjoying the extra room to nest.

The island is also green with winter.  As some vegetation starts to fill in the runway, both black-footed and Laysan albatross are moving nests into the green parts.  This will greatly expand their nesting area by about 30% -- a significant enlargement on one of two islands in the atoll that do not get washed over regularly.  The habitat is also important in that French Frigate Shoals is not as readily damaged by tsunami and storm waves as some other important seabird locations, such as Kure, Midway and Laysan, so provides an important refugia.

Albatross Love.  Photo by Ralph Blancato.

Manager Meg Duhr Schultz shows the crew around, and fills them in on all the rules.  We live happily on Tern Island -- but must always respect that this is the home of the wildlife first!

Manager Meg drills the troops (Dan Rapp, Dakshina Marlier, Barbara Mayer, and Abram Fleishman, L>R).

Meg leads the first entrapment walk -- All folks must participate in orientation when they arrive.  (Morgan Gilmour, Dakshina Marlier, Abram Fleishman, Meg Duhr Schultz)

Sarah Youngren and Abram Fleishman work on setting up acoustics equipment for monitoring seabirds at night.  Sarah is working with UCSC's Matthew McKown and Nexleaf in this first-ever deployment of this remote monitoring system totally-off-the-grid (as in no cell phone even).  This project is pretty exciting because if it works well, we can use it to monitor nocturnally active seabirds without tromping through their burrows.  It could also be used in remote places like Nihoa and other uninhabited islands, without people staying there.

Konrad Schaad repairing our satellite system....Yeesh!!!  We have him to thank for this blog being posted -- and for use of our turtle cam and email systems!

We also had our first off-island experience of the season, counting seabirds, seals and turtle while Konrad and Ralph worked on the turtle cam (East Island).  We were happy to see a whole lot of nesting albatross, as well as a lot of mostly healthy looking seals. 

First 'a maka'ele (masked booby) eggs of the season!!!  Photo by Sarah Youngren.

A juvenile 'iwa (great frigatebird) inspects Konrad's work at the top of a telephone pole.  Konrad is fixing the cameras used by sea turtle researcher George Balaz for monitoring East Island -- where roughly half of the entire species nests!  Konrad is a tall man:  check out how this young frigatebird's wingspan dwarfs him in perspective.  Photo by Ralph Blancato.

Silver bellied 'ilio o ke kai (Hawaiian monk seal) juvenile.  Photo by Paula Hartzell. 

We expect the Kahana to return from its trip up to Midway around December 13th.  We will have more bird and seal news coming all winter!

A mother-daughter team on Tern:  Kathy Kawakami and Erin Kawakami tackle native plant propagation on Tern Island.  We appreciate Kathy's experience and Erin's energy -- and the willingness of all our volunteers to give their time for wildlife conservation at this remote location.

A Busy Time at Kānemilohaʻi

Shew, the past couple weeks have been busy!!!

CORAL:  FWS Volunteer Lindsey Kramer prodded us all out in the water at the crack of dawn, boating over to Shark Island (a couple miles from Tern Island) for early morning snorkels.  She wanted to be the first person to witness cauliflower coral spawning in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.  And guess what?  It took a snorkeling a couple mornings in the frigid waters of April, and then a couple mornings in the warmer waters of May -- but she did it!!!  We were able to be the very first witnesses of cauliflower coral spawning on May 18th, with more spawning occurring on May 19th.  Way to go, Lindsey!!!

Photos by Paula L. Hartzell

SEALS:  We've had some gains and losses in the ʻilio o ke kai world...  Some new pups, and some pups are gone. One nice event occurred when one of the seal crew, Ben Cook, was camping out on Gin Island last week.  (The seal crew guys take turns staying out on the islands to watch out for the pups.)  A first time seal mom give birth – and then as the mom and pup failed to bond.  The pup wandered off looking for the mom, who was fairly unresponsive.  The pup then got caught and battered in the surf.  Ben was able to rescue the pop, and reunite the pair for the first nursing, which is the critical bonding period for these seals.  The new mom accepted the pup, and it looks like they’re doing well. The pup likely would have died without intervention, so we’re really glad Ben was out there.  

A new first-time mom (above) had problems bonding with her pup.  The pup got 'lost', when NMFS staff Ben Cook intervened, reuniting the pair.  The new mom accepted the pup, and it looks like they're doing well (below).  The pup would likely have died without the intervention, so we're really glad Ben was out there.   

Pups at Kānemilohaʻi face enormous challenges to make it through the first two years.  Insufficient forage for the moms mean less milk and shorter time to weaning for the pups.  The seal pups here are smaller as a consequence, even at birth: the biggest seal pup born here weighs less than the smallest pup born in the Main Hawaiian Islands -- Can you even imagine?!  They're also subject to high rates of shark predation over the past decade or so -- It may be that the sharks are also facing changes in forage, or perhaps they are attracted by the growing turtle population.  For whatever reason, we've already lost 4 of 10 pups so far, and its only the first month of the birthing season.  The seal team literally has to fight for the species one pup at a time!

OUTREACH:  We have to send out a special thanks to our new Education and Outreach Coordinator, Barbara Mayer, who has been working on curriculum for teachers to use this Fall.  An established curriculum and lesson plans will help teachers -- who are already overworked -- have an easier time working information on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and Kānemilohaʻi into their classrooms.  That should be great fun for the kids!  Barbara is also working with ʻIolani School for a Marine Debris class this summer -- so those of us on Tern are also busy collecting some marine debris, empty bird eggs, and the like to send back for the class.   She's also the one responsible for making the blog more organized and functional.  Mahalo nui e Barb!

This turtle had a ring of plastic -- waste from a boat -- caught around its neck.  The seal crew were able to catch the turtle, remove the ring, and release the turtle unharmed.  We saved the ring, which will be sent back to Honolulu on the next ship, for use in education and outreach.  Photo by Mark Sullivan.

TURTLES:  We counted 412 basking turtles on East Island this week!!!   This is fantastic -- and pretty amazing, considering the whole island is about 200 meters (650 feet) long!  

Honu on East Island.  We counted a remarkable 412 basking turtles at one time on East Island on Thursday this week.  Photo by Paula L. Hartzell.

Over 90% of the honu reproductive effort occurring at French Frigate Shoals.  The health of any species is dependent by many factors, and good management requires multi-faceted action.  The honu have benefited from very effective management in reducing fisheries-related mortality, some great luck (for the turtles anyway) in the increase in invasive algae species in Hawaiʻi, strong public support and wide emergency response in the Main Hawaiian Islands, along with the benefit of a totally protected nesting ground in the Monument – this threatened species’ population has been steadily increasing since 1973.  

BIRDS:  

We completed our first estimate of the ʻewaʻewa (sooty terns) on Tern Island.  There are about 133,000 adults and 32,500 eggs on island now -- That is one big bunch of ankle biters.

ʻEwaʻewa (sooty tern).   Now multiply this by 133,000 on an island a half mile long by a quarter mile wide.  Now imagine each and every one pecking your head and ankles.  :-)  Photo by Paula L. Hartzell.

How much effort do we spend monitoring birds on Tern Island?  We closely monitor about 1,500 individual nests each week!  That's in addition to all of the island-wide surveys, banding, entrapment walks, and special projects.

The last Tristram’s storm petrel fledged from artificial nest boxes this week!  FWS Volunteer Sarah Youngren has documented a strong relationship in patterns in weight gain and loss immediately prior to fledging, allowing us to accurately identify when a chick is ready to fledge.  We have made enormous strides in development of consistent, replicable, quantitative method for monitoring TRSP; we have vastly reduced the number of human-crushed burrows; and look forward to development of adult population monitoring next year, thanks to Sarah’s hard work over then last two years – and on into next year.  Good work, Sarah!


BUILDING NEWS:  FWS Volunteer has constructed a new shade-house on the back-porch, and is adding a roof to our front porch.  The shade-house will be used to grow native plants, which is sorely needed to give a boost to the shrubs on Tern Island.  Birds need the shrubs for nesting habitat, shade, and to consolidate soil around burrows.  Thanks, Curt, for getting all this built!

TEAM TERN:

While the bosses were away on the outer islands, the crew found a large rope mass floating in the water near the southeast end of Tern.  It took everyone working together to get it out.  (Apparently they all missed the memo that youʻre supposed to slack when the bosses are gone.)  From left to right:  Brendan Hurley (NMFS), James Macaulay (FWS), Kristina Dickson (FWS), Shawn Sullivan (NMFS), and Ben Cook (NMFS).  Photo by Sarah Youngren (FWS).

GRATUITOUS PRETTY (OR SILLY) PHOTOS

ʻĀ (red-footed booby) chick and its parent squash in for room on the nest.  Photo by Sarah Youngren.

Photo by Paula L. Hartzell.

Laughing kaʻupu.  (Black-footed albatross.)  The chicks have their  adult feathers on their bodies now, and getting some pretty funny hairstyles up top.  

Brown booby contemplates a fine day off of East Island.  Photo by Mark Sullivan.

Lindsey Kramer (top) and Mark Sullivan (bottom) waiting for coral to spawn.  

Sometimes you just have to step on your family..... An adult masked booby protects its chick.  Some might say masked boobies are a little overprotective -- A snowsuit in the tropics?!  Photo by Paula L. Hartzell.

THANKS to all of our readers, to the staff in Honolulu, and to our family and friends who support us.  We are very proud to be able to watch and protect these special resources, that belong to each and every one of us.

Tiger Sharks, Seaturtles, and Birds

Aloha kakahiaka kākou!

This has been an exciting week at Tern Island!  (And please forgive all the formatting errors in this post -- Its giving me fits, but takes hours to upload.)

We witnessed four tiger sharks eating a sea turtle in the lagoon behind the barracks one morning this week.  We do not know if the turtle was alive or dead when it was attacked, but the sharks showed no interest at all in healthy turtles swimming by, nor in albatross sitting on the water nearby -- even "Bob," a turtle with no front fins at all was fine nearby -- so we're guessing the turtle was probably dead to start off with.   Although it may seem cruel on the sharks' part, they have to eat too.... That's their job.

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Still, it was pretty exciting to see some big sharks so excited in the water nearby.  It was a bit of a relief to me see that the sharks really weren't interested in the live, healthy stuff -- and to know that they really must not be all that interested in us, or we would definitely be seeing more of them if they were.

Tiger sharks trying to break open a sea turtle carapace.  The turtle was probably dead when they found it (although we don't know for sure), as the sharks were completely uninterested in the live turtles swimming around -- One turtle swam by within 20m of the sharks milling around, fully within sight and smell, and the sharks were not the least bit interested.  They were definitely interested in the dead one, though!!!

The crew watched four tiger sharks (and a curious white-tipped reef shark) from the roof of the barracks.  We could have gotten better photos in the water, but strangely, no one offered to go diving that morning....  (The dark spot in the lower left is a turtle swimming by.  The four dark spots in the middle are the tiger sharks.)

Team Tern watches from the roof.  Its really nice to have compatriots to share these experiences with.  (And you can see all the hard work that Curt has gone to fixing our roof!!!)

Lindsey Kramer and Sarah Youngren team up to band a Black-footed Albatross chick.  A light cloth over the chick's eyes keeps it calmer.  The hearing protection is necessary because of the ʻewaʻewa (sooty terns).

Bird with an attitude.  ʻewaʻewa (sooty tern) are currently at about 2.5 birds per square meter on Tern -- very roughly about 115,000 ʻewaʻewa on island -- hence why hearing protection is needed.  Photo by Paula L. Hartzell.

 More on a turtle rescue....when the internet allows!

Rain, rain, rain...

The weather has been rain, rain, rain, but the Termites have been accomplishing a lot this week – both humans, birds and seals.

French Frigate Shoals was highlighted in newspaper articles from Honolulu to New York, after the release of information of the discovery of the Nantucket whaling ship Two Brothers by NOAA in 2008.  The ship wrecked off of Shark Island on February 11, 1812.  News reports are at these websites:

• The Honolulu Star-Advertiser: "1800s whaling ship found in isle waters"
• The New York Times: "No 'Moby-Dick': A Real Captain, Twice Doomed"
• Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument: article = "Lost Whaling Shipwreck..."and close-captioned video = "Two Brothers - Maritime Heritage"

A vagrant gull we’ve seen the past few weeks was identified by Peter Pyle/Bishop Museum as a Herring Gull, probably the Larus argentatus vegae subspecies from Siberia.  They will be using photos that Sarah Youngren took, with credit to FWS, for the Museum’s Herring Gull webpage.  This subspecies has been documented several times at Kure, Midway, and French Frigate Shoals in the past.  Go Sarah!

 

Fifteen seals were observed during this week’s seal walk.   This week’s identified seals were 1, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12 years old – a really young age spread for FFS, which we’re delighted to see.

Gratuitous 'ilio holo i ka uaua photo

We finished checking the 2011 adult albatross monitoring data, and here’s what we got:  5,092 black-footed albatross nesters, 5, 166 Laysan albatross nesters, and 13,290 adult albatross total!!!  Considering we read each albatross' band twice, that was quite an effort.  This is good news; both species had modest increases in nesting attempts since last year.  Both species have been slowly increasing in numbers on Tern since the mid-1990s, albeit Laysan numbers are much more erratic from year to year than BFALs. 

 Okay, seriously – Try to deny this Laysan Albatross is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.

The result of albatross nesting -- The albatross chicks are big enough that the parents are leaving them alone for short periods of time.  These little guys just hatched a month ago, and this little moli is sitting up 20 cm (8”) high already. 

A red-tailed tropicbird (koaʻe o Kū, or bird of Kū) on Tern Island.  Sufficiently shady nesting habitat has been reporting as the limiting factor for tropicbirds at other locations.  This species’ reproductive effort has dropped drastically over the past decade, perhaps due to reduced nesting sites as shrubs die off on Tern.  We’re currently working to increase the shrub cover on Tern.  (Photo by FWS Volunteer Sarah Youngren.)

Wednesday was ‘Cut Wires Day’ on Tern.  Once a month, we go around the island, cutting and removing wires that erode from the shoreline, removing entanglement hazards for wildlife.  The crew collected roughly 100 pounds of wire and related debris.  Among other things, the crew came back with the biggest, brassiest insulator we’ve ever seen.  Anyone know what this was used for? 

Kristina Dickson, with assistance from Jimmy Macaulay, painted some beautiful murals on the bedroom walls here at Tern -- The last person to do great wildlife murals here like this was Patrick Ching, when he served as a Tern volunteer.  Kristina has been fixing up the barracks rooms before additional volunteers arrive; her efforts are greatly appreciated by those living on Tern.  Of course, now we all want a mural in our rooms... They are truly amazing.

painting by Kristina Dickson

painting by Kristina Dickson

Kristina Dickson painting humu mural.  Photo by Melinda Conners.

Safety First!  Melinda taught us how to operate the HF radio, and then Team Tern practiced with the Miller Board.  I must say, they seem to be enjoying this a bit too much…   Clockwise from bottom left:  FWS Volunteers Melinda Conners, Kristina Dickson, James Macaulay, Sarah Youngren, and Dan Rapp.  FWS staff member Paula Hartzell tied to board.

Life on Tern. 

Lightening Strikes at Tern

There was a huge lightening strike last Wednesday, and the barracks was directly hit at least once, and maybe twice.  Besides scaring the begeezus out of me, which it did, it also knocked out our solar powered 110V electricity source...

The burnt out electronic compontent in our solar power inverters.

Well, the long and the short of it is that we all know quite a bit more about our solar power system than we did before the lightening strike.  :-)  We've replaced one of the inverters, and have our 110V system back online... Yeah!!!

Our other big news this week is finishing the first of the black-footed albatross sweeps.  We had more than 2,400 nesting black-footed albatross (meaning at least that many nests), as well as several hundred walkers. 

This week, weather permitting, we will start the first of the Laysan albatross sweeps.  We are also keeping our fingers crossed that the plane bringing new volunteers and returning Trish home will be able to take off soon - but the runway must be dry and safe before that happens, so we wait with bated (and perhaps baited) breath...