Shipping out

Dear reader, tonight I leave for Tern Island! Sadly the internet connection on the island is not working at the moment so this may be the last blog for a few days/weeks/months/the entire time I am out there, depending on how easy it is to fix. So if I don't write anything or reply to your e-mails for a while please don't be offended, or worry that I have been pecked to death by albatrosses. You will once again be subjected to my tedious ramblings just as soon as it is humanly possible.

Terrifying American foodstuff #2

Canned whole chicken

That's a whole chicken. In a can. I'm not making this up.

Hangin' around

The boat to Tern Island has been delayed due to high seas- a 20 foot swell which turns into a 50 foot surf when it hits a piece of land. Great for Hawaiian surfers, not so great for transporting large loads of food and equipment from a big boat to a small boat to a small island. All of our stuff has now been loaded so we are just hanging around waiting to go- our current departure date is Monday 7th. The ship we will be travelling on is called the Kahana. Fans of the TV show Lost might recognise it as both the ship and the crew were used during filming. It is a 180 foot cargo ship which regularly travels the length of the Hawaiian Island chain delivering supplies to the remote outposts. The trip to Tern should take 2 days, however if the sea is too wild for us to land at Tern then we will have to stay on all the way to Midway Atoll, which is so far away it is in a different time zone, and then get dropped off at Tern on the way back, a round trip of about 16 days. Given that various people have described travelling on the Kahana as 'a bit like being in prison' and 'you'll definately be throwing up the whole way', then that is not a prospect which fills me with joy.

Papahānaumokuākea

On Tuesday we had a cultural briefing by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, so that we understand the spiritual significance of the NW Hawaiian Island to native Hawaiians. This included an introduction to Hawaiian mythology. Legend has it that the Hawaiian Islands are the children of Papahanaumoku (the Earth Mother) and Wakea (the Sky Father). In honour of this, the NW Hawaiian Islands, of which Tern Island is one, have been designated the Papahaunaumokuakea Marine National Monument (try saying that after a couple of beers, or even stone-cold sober). The main islands of the archipelago, as far west as Necker Island (a.k.a. Mokumanamana) are located in 'Ao'- the light, the world of the living. The islands further west of Necker are in 'Po'- the darkness, the spirit world. Po is the source of all souls and the place to which all souls return after death. So I am quite literally going to Hawaiian heaven.


Another myth that we learned about was 'aumakua'. By performing a special ceremony, the soul of a recently deceased person can be transformed into an animal to make the journey to the spirit world, and this animal is the aumakua. Therefore any of the creatures we encounter on Tern Island might be the deceased ancestors of native Hawaiians. Sharks are a popular choice for aumakua, and aumakua are often regarded as protectors or guardian angels. So having a huge shark hanging around when you are swimming is a good sign, since it might be looking out for your wellbeing. It's nice to see sharks getting some good press for a change, however there is a caveat- not all sharks are necessarily aumakua, some of them are just sharks. They may simply be sizing you up for a quick snack.

Team Tern

All of my fellow castaways have arrived now and apart from Pete the island manager it is an all girl crew. I guess girls are just better.

This is Pete. He's the boss. That's why he gets to wear a special hat.



From left to right Sarah, Caitlin and Melinda. Sarah and Caitlin are both graduates who have been working on various field projects for the last few years, including other seabird projects. Melinda is a PhD student studying albatross foraging ecology.

Terrifying American foodstuff #1

Jet-puffed marshmallow creme
There are three large jars of this stuff in the cupboard at the bunkhouse. I am too scared to open it but I think it is essentially spreadable marshmallow paste. A food which both looks like, and causes, atherosclerotic plaques.

Six months worth of breakfast

I arrived in Honolulu on November 17th, but our boat to Tern Island does not leave until December 2nd, so in the mean time I am helping out with whatever jobs I can at the office. So far this has mainly involved shopping. Shopping on a grand scale however- six months worth of food is shipped out to Tern Island all in one go, so you need a fork-lift truck to pick it up rather than a shopping bag. On Friday I drove to a massive warehouse on the outskirts of Honolulu with two of the NW Hawaiian Islands support staff (Cindy and Maylanie) to pick up the first consignment (dried and canned goods). This vast, two-storey building was packed from floor to ceiling with bulk containers of food. It reminded me of the warehouse at the end of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', except instead of being filled with crates of mysterious ancient artifacts it was fillled with crates of apple pie filling and tinned chilli. Once our two pallets of food were loaded onto the truck and we had checked that everything was present and correct (72 tins of sweetcorn- check, 72 tins of carrots- check, 36 boxes of cereal- check), we drove back to the 'staging area'- Kapahulu bunkhouse, which is also where I am living at the moment. It then fell upon me to pack all the food into huge sturdy plastic containers (about 4'x4'x3') ready to be loaded onto the ship. As some of you may know, I am a little bit OCD when it comes to fitting lots of differently shaped boxes into one big box, so I spent a happy afternoon making sure that every last molecule of space in the containers was occupied. I filled two and a half containers and was rather pleased with the results- see below.

Everyone at USFWS has been very friendly and welcoming to me so far. On Saturday two of the guys from the office took me diving (I say 'guys from the office', but actually one of them is in charge of all the US Pacific Islands, covering some 57 million sq. km. of ocean). I'm not going to bang on about the diving for fear of sounding smug, but at one point a gigantic turtle got so close to me that I thought it was going to smack me in the face with its flipper. Oh, and there were spinner dolphins too. Sorry.

My brand new blog

Dear Reader,

Welcome to this blog about my time on Tern Island, Hawaii, where I am volunteering for the US Fish & Wildlife Service from December 2009 until June 2010. Whether the blog ends up ‘creating a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all’ as Richard Wright would like (see Friday 13th entry), or simply becomes a collection of hilarious anecdotes about me getting pooed on by albatrosses, remains to be seen. But whichever it is, I hope that you will find something of interest here.

To begin with, I’m sure you have some burning questions about Tern Island (probably along the lines of “where the hell is Tern Island anyway?” and “why in God’s name would you want to go there for six months?”) so I will begin with a brief description and history of the place.

Tern Island is part of the French Frigate Shoals, a coral atoll located in the North-western Hawaiian Islands, about 500 miles WNW of Honolulu (see the link on the left - Where are the French Frigate Shoals anyway?). The atoll comprises a roughly 20 mile long crescent shaped reef, 12 small sand islands and a 120 foot high rocky stack, La Perouse pinnacle, which is the only remnant of the atoll’s volcanic origin. To say that the protruding islands are small is something of an understatement. The total land area of the French Frigate Shoals is around 70 acres, whilst the surrounding reef covers 232,000 acres (see the link on the left - The French Frigate Shoals).

During World War II the French Frigate Shoals were occupied by the US military, and Tern Island was used as a stopover and refuelling point for military aircraft. The island was enlarged to accommodate a 1000m landing strip, leaving it with dimensions similar to those of an aircraft carrier (as you can see from the photo on the left). After a stint as a US Coastguard station, Tern Island was handed over to the US Fish & Wildlife Service in 1979, and they have since been working to protect and restore wildlife populations on the island.

Which brings us to why in God’s name I want to go there for six months. The atoll is a breeding site for two albatross species, the Black-footed and the Laysan albatross. Since completing my PhD on pelagic seabirds in 2008, I have had an overwhelming desire to see, study and manhandle albatrosses, and what better opportunity than living on an island where thousands of them breed? As well as albatrosses, the Shoals are a breeding station for 16 other species of seabird, the endangered Hawaiian Monk Seal and the threatened Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle. The French Frigate Shoals are literally a zoologist’s paradise, and given their remote location and restricted access (the islands are closed to the public) I feel extraordinarily privileged to have the opportunity to go there.

Saying that, when I arrive on Tern Island in a few weeks time, me and my fellow islanders will be the only human population for 500 miles in any direction. That’s a whole lot of shark-infested ocean between me and anything resembling civilization...

To begin: a slightly pretentious quote that could be about blogging, but probably isn't.

'I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.'

Richard Wright 1977