This week again has been a wonderfully busy blur. This weekend I was able to snorkel with turtles, sharks, and manta rays. The shark was probably the most startling part. One of the guys I work with, C, was already in the water snorkeling. I was standing calf deep in water when out of nowhere between us came Mr. Shark. I still have no clue what kind it was. It was about five and a half feet long, so it could have been about anything. The rest of the snorkeling was pretty cool too, as a few large green sea turtles came swimming by near me.
Monday, I spent the day snorkeling on the reef and cleaning up marine trash (i.e. marine debris). In general, that could have meant I was cleaning up plastics, fishing floats, old birthday-ballons, or abandoned fishing gear. On Monday, the project was removing a 200-pound net that was entangled on the reef. The net was only about seven to ten feet under water, however with only snorkel gear to work with, the net did not extricate itself easy. Alternating dives, six of use dove down and slowly freed the net, using a knife cut here and there. I swallowed perhaps a gallon of water, but the working conditions were glorious. How often can a guy, go to work and snorkel with reef fish. The tragedy of the day was that the fishing net had already done quite a bit of damage and had already tore from the reef a few large coral heads. After about an hour we finally got the net to the boat. Still, it took some very concentrated effort to get the net in the boat. The net itself was heavy, but with the added weight of water and coral, the net was unwieldy and obtuse. With the large net in the boat, it was time to use our knives to cut free some of the smaller pieces of net that was still attached to coral. That task probably took another hour and a half. In the process though I could slow down a bit more and look at the amazing reef life around me. The sensory highlights were seeing a small eel that tried to bite me, some gorgeous corals, and a wide diversity of reef fish. I’m currently learning more of the names of the reef fish, so until I know more, people will have to be patient.
After our snorkel work on Monday, we stopped at Eastern Island, the second largest island on Midway Atoll. Although the island no longer has any permanent human presence, during the Battle of Midway, the principle island on Midway was Eastern. As such, we were able to see some remaining artifacts on the island and also some Midway memorial markers. As a result of the decreased human use of the island, the avefauna on Eastern is even more tremendous that Sand Island (the island that I am on). As such there were moments where I was surrounded by hundreds of sooty and grey-backed terns. I was earily reminded that I could have been starring in a Hitchcockian thriller. Thankfully, although the birds were anxious by our presence they were all squawk and no bite. Other birds I saw were red-footed boobies, least terns, and black noddies. Besides birds though I saw numerous endangered Hawaiian Monk Seals. They seals were curious about our boat and approached pretty close. One even swam under our boat.
(Two male monk seals in a territorial dispute.)
(Red-footed booby. Unfortunately I missed taking a good pic of their feet.)
(Me, Myself, and I surrounded by flying and nesting terns. The terns would scream at you from the air and the ground. The big challenge was not acccidentally stepping on any birds or bird eggs. I thankfully succeeded.)Although I am only through Monday, I’ll blog soon about the rest of the week. Thanks for the patience. The biggest challenge I faced was learning how to band albatross and avoid being bit in the process! Although it is a lot of fun to tag birds, I definitely was snapped at by all the birds and one red-tailed tropic bird definitely marked me with guano. In the meantime, here are a few more pics from the beginning of the week.
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