Midway Day 6 - Laysan Ducks: by Trevor Atkins

Birds don’t interest me. I’m not sure why, but I suppose that for every passion we have, there is something else to which we are ambivalent. My passion is plants. I was raised to love them. I grew up growing them up. I think our loves often develop when we are very young. My ambivalence is birds. I can appreciate the big ones, because I grew up with them: pueo (owl) and `io (hawk). But the rest are all the same to me: feathers, beaks, brittle bones, and little legs. I can’t see them the way Jeff sees them, the way Ron and Karen see them.

But after hearing the story of Laysan ducks from the one and only John Klavitter (Wildlife Biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), I can appreciate their presence here. They are one of only three native ducks/geese left in Hawai`i, along with koloa and nene. Eight other species have gone extinct and the Laysan duck was casted to be the ninth. It came one animal away from extinction!

Once found throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago, the ducks were reduced to a single colony on Laysan island: 10 males, 1 female. Huge efforts went in to habitat restoration, monitoring, and medical intervention. The population quickly flourished and Laysan was soon full to capacity with them. So, in order to diversify their distribution, researchers created new habitats on Midway. They dug a few feet down through the concrete and coral to the water table, creating wetlands from freshwater seeps, landscaped with makaloa and native bunch grass. Eventually, 21 ducks were brought in and all survived the translocation. To everyone’s surprise, the one-year old ducks reproduced offspring that spring. Each year since then, the population has doubled.

Now they face a new challenge. Avian botulism, a disease caused by toxins from warm-water bacteria, broke out in the hot summer of 2008. The disease attacks the nervous system and causes an inability for the ducks to lift their heads. Many drown. Nearly half the Midway population was lost last summer. Then, this past Saturday, as summer temperatures rose, the first case in 2009 was reported.

This afternoon, John Klavitter treated one duck with a vaccine. Meanwhile, the “dead albatross undertaker” and others are collecting albatross fledgling corpses across the island to prevent the possibility of maggots carrying the now isolated disease around the island.

I still can’t tell the difference between all these terns and noddies and shearwaters, but the Laysan duck has captured my heart.

Photo credit: Dani Carter

Midway Day 6 - Eastern Island: by Ron Hirschi

Okay. It was a day of dolphins streaming past our boats, Sooty Terns, Iwa and Redfooted Boobies, and life-listing birds for Jeff….Christmas Shearwaters glistening black just above the rubble where a huge school of Aholehole linger. Gray-backed Terns at their “nests” – a simple drop upon the ground. Noddies as if painted by chocolate bars.

We were treated by Matt Brown, to the most hopeful of sites --- Short tailed Albatross decoys standing in wait. This past year a mated pair scooped out a nest bowl. Matt’s positive smile confirms: They will come back to lay eggs and raise young next year; this, one of the rarest of the rare. Then too, Matt shared with deserved pride, how the Laysan Ducks have rebounded here thanks to habitat restoration. Their pond was alive with ducks when we were honored to visit.

But now that we are back on the “Big Island of Sand”, all hearts go out to our friend and partner in this adventure, Meg who cut her knee in a fall! The entire town came out to help and wish her well when she fell. Carlie quick with the flush of water, Jeff with a first aid kit handy, and Darius the cobbler repairing the blown out flip flop. Then off island and to stitchery quick. All hands deserve many thanks and all hands give Meg a big Aloha.

We can only wish that Meg will get to take a ride with John Miller out to see the dolphins.

Photo credits: Dani Carter

Midway Day 5 - Marine Research: by Trevor Atkins

I’m warm and I’m home. Captain Charlie Barracks is my residence. Jeff, Ron, Carlie, and Dani are my family. My body is worn from adventure today. I awoke at 5:30 am and went southeast to wake the sun. I bumped along the southern shore and across the vast runway to the most desolate point on the island. The terns and shearwaters, guarding their eggs, attacked me, the ignorant intruder. I pedaled home hard and found Radio Hill as the sun peaked over the many ironwoods in Midway town. In the Radio Hill ruins I found Laysan ducks and again I felt invasive. We men are nothing but destruction. We leave no rock unturned. My bike to them is an F-16 fighter jet flying low over a small town. I’m sorry. Humans don’t deserve to see this. We only ruin it. Can anything exist without us interrogating? Can a tree fall in a forest unquestioned? Silly humans. We’ll be gone soon and the albatross will live on.

I’m still saturated in salt from this morning. My hair is deliciously knotted into bunches from today’s perfect sequence of events. We motored out to the far side of the emergent reef and snorkeled around Reef Hotel. The corals were purple, the fishes were blue, and the rusty rubbish was everywhere as always. I wanted to stay longer. I wanted to wander the whole atoll, circumnavigate it with my eyes underwater. But we had work to do. Or Kate did anyway. She’s a researcher from Santa Cruz looking at how marine life responds to different levels of sedimentation in various locations around the atoll.

We found our GPS location to within a few meters. The sea was choppy, even inside the atoll. Darius, Terry, and Ann jumped in with Kate and dove down to sample the sea floor. Karen and I stayed onboard and got a little seasick in the rough swells. Our anchor got stuck as we tried to leave, but we survived. Then we motored out of Wells’ Harbor, the atoll’s natural opening. Outside the reef, the waves were 3-5 feet swells, crashing hard into the emergent reef. We must have been going 30 knots, slapping the water with our bow. It was rough and wet. We came back past Sand Island and zoomed out the artificial south channel to see Eastern Island, the rusty barge and more birds feeding on the water. When our spines were sufficiently compressed, we returned for lunch.

photo credit: Dani Carter