Cover Your Nose Please

Here's a video of a monk seal sneeze (0:15) at French Frigate Shoals. They are impressive, and hilarious. I suggest turning the volume up!

Sacrilific

Photo Update

Lately the days have been going by pretty quickly. The Sooty tern chicks are hatching and the albatross are starting to fledge. Unfortunately we had another pup get bitten by a shark yesterday and the wounds are fatal. Hopefully it dies quickly. In other news we had a strange visitor. A short eared owl has shown up on Tern island, and the other birds don't like it much as they have been giving it a strong hazing. Well that's about it. I decided just to put up a bunch of photos. Hope you enjoy.

A red-tailed tropic bird on Trig island.

The eye of a masked boobie. These loud bastards wake up the seals every time you need to get close to get a tag number, but I still really like them. 

A Laysan albatross one day closer to full flight. A monk seal mom and pup rest in the background.

I occasionally forget to photograph the turtles because they tend to get in my way while doing seal surveys, but they really are interesting animals. Here a good size group of green sea turtles is gathered on East island.

Green sea turtles on Trig island.

A white tern on the wing.

 Monk seal moms are strange. They haul out right next to each other then get angry because they are too close. This is more of a mock fight, and no harm was done to either animal. Unfortunately the pup to the right was fatally bitten by a shark yesterday.

 

A monk seal pup sleeps on its mother.

A short eared owl makes an appearance. It seems to be a little lost.

 

A sooty tern chick.

 

This sooty tern chick seems confused about who its mother is. It stands under a black footed albatross who doesn't seem to mind the company.

 The lagoon at Little Gin island, and our 17' Boston Whaler.

 A male monk seal plotting to wake up all of the females I'm trying to get tag numbers on.

A brown boobie looks on.

Research At French Frigate Shoals

 My plan was initially to post nice photos from French Frigate Shoals, and I will be doing more of that. However, I think it is important to give some background on the research that we are working on while here. The Hawaiian monk seal is federally listed as a critically endangered species; the population is roughly one thousand individuals. The Northwest Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) is habitat for the majority of the population, with French Frigate Shoals being the site of the largest breeding population.

Figure 1: Map of Hawaiian Archipelago. The area marked as the NWHI are part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (Baker et al. 2010). Please forgive my lack of diacritical usage, I haven't figured out how to do it on the blog writer.

The population at French Frigate Shoals, and in the NWHI as a whole is in steep decline. Although the main Hawaiian Island (MHI) population is currently increasing the overall population has declined by 4%/yr since 2008 when the population was estimated at 1,161 (Baker et al. 2010). In the NWHI the decline is driven by low pup and sub-adult survivability. The cause of high mortality amongst pups and sub-adults is multifaceted, although starvation is a large contributor.  Starvation seems counter intuitive on the surface because of the abundance of food in the NWHI, but competition with young seals by top predators such as Ulua, and sharks is thought to drive this mechanism.  Other factors include entrapment in marine debris, and shark predation. 
 

 

 Figure 2: Survivability curves for 6 NWHI populations represented by solid lines, and MHI population represented by the dotted line (Baker et al. 2010).

Figure 2 demonstrates that the vast majority of seals born in the NWHI do not survive to four years of age. This problem compounds survivability problems because the monk seals in the NWHI do not reach reproductive age until after the age of four.

 

 Figure 3: Female monk seal size by age.  FFS-French Frigate Shoals, LAY-Laysan Island, LIS-Lisianski Island, PMK-Pearl and Hermes Midway and Kure combined, MHI-Main Hawaiian Islands (Baker et al. 2010).

In the NWHI low sub-adult survivability (fig. 2) and a slow growth rate to sexual maturity (fig. 3) place the Hawaiian monk seal on the razors edge of extinction, and give little reassurance for the future of the species.  A tentative glimmer of hope for the population lies in increases in the NWHI at Laysan Island, and a general trend towards growth in the MHI. However, this view must be tempered with the reality that the population is extremely  similar genetically meaning that other factors, specifically disease, could quickly destroy all progress on these fronts.

 A yearling monk seal has lost the fat layer from mothers milk and must learn to forage well or starve.

 A monk seal pup with a fatal shark bite likely from a Galapagos shark. She died two days ago.

Baker J.D., Harting A.L., Wurth T.A., Johanos T.C. 2010. Dramatic shifts in Hawaiian monk seal distribution
predicted from divergent regional trends. Marine Mammal Science. DOI:10.1111/j.1748-7692.2010.00395.x

All photos by Darren Roberts. 

As a sidenote, I pulled strongly from one paper and personal knowledge due to lack of resources out here, as well as the fact that Baker et al. 2010 is up to date concerning a dynamic population.

Lost and Found

I arrived at French Frigate Shoals a couple of weeks ago now. As I get settled in I will be posting updates on our research here, and just general fun photos and things.

As of right now, I'm not sure how fast pictures are going to upload so I will use this blog to put up a couple photos so I can get an idea of how in depth this blog can be while I am out here. I will right more about the actual research in future updates.

Here are some photos from the first couple of weeks.

Mark, a member of the monk seal team, walks to the tractor shed. Population is about at 10 now, getting big!

There are loads of great birds out on Tern, I think my favorite so far are the boobies and the albatross.

 A red footed boobie on Tern island.

Two Laysan albatross

 A great frigate chick, doing what they do.

A great frigate during a Tern island sunset.

Well this blog is just test to see what the upload time is like. If everything goes well on this end I will post more photos with more in depth information on the research and general biology of the area. Hope you enjoy.

Trip to Nihoa

After a month of training and not blogging much we are finally underway to the Northwest Hawaiian Islands on board the NOAA vessel Oscar Elton Sette. We left Pearl Harbor Thursday the 13th in route to Nihoa island.

NOAA Vessel Oscar Elton Sette

Nihoa from the ship

At Nihoa a team was put ashore to photograph seals, as well as look for any pups. The science team was able to find 27 seals before being called off the island. While the team was ashore I photographed birds from the ship. Nihoa is a highly active nesting island for many birds. There were a lot of birds foraging around Nihoa; sightings for the day included wedge tailed sheerwaters, Bulwer's petrels, blue-grey noddies, sooty terns, red footed boobies, brown boobies, masked boobies, white terns, red tailed tropic birds, and great frigates.

Masked boobies

Two female great frigate birds from the Sette

Operations on Nihoa were called off early due to a medical emergency aboard the ship. We brought the team back to the ship, and set course for Kauai. The navy was involved in active training in the Barking sands training area. A helicopter evacuation of the patient was arranged by the navy due to their proximity to our ship. A navy destroyer approached at a distance and deployed a  SH-60B helicopter to attempt a rescue, in turn a C-130 airplane circled the ship assessing the scene. The afterdeck of the Sette is unusually cluttered due to the amount of scientific equipment aboard so the rescue was attempted from the bow. The bow of the ship proved to be a small target given the conditions. The SH-60 struggled to get the rescue swimmer on the deck of the ship for nearly 2 hours. At that point it was decided to cancel the helicopter rescue. Several hours later a second attempt was made by the US Coast Guard using the H-65 "Dolphin" helicopter. This attempt was successful even though winds had reached 27 knots, with rain, and building seas. The Coast Guard had a swimmer on board to set up the rescue litter, and had evacuated the patient within 30 minutes. It was very impressive to watch these professionals work. The USCG did a fantastic job, working with almost surgical precision.

SH-60B "Sea Hawk"

H-65 "Dolphin"

Bow of the Oscar Elton Sette

After the successful rescue operation, we set course for Pearl Harbor to pick up a new crew member so that the ship is at operating capacity in regards to crew. We will be heading back to sea on Monday.

Oscar Elton Sette photo credit: http://www.moc.noaa.gov/os/
Helicopter photo credit:
SH-60: http://www.navysite.de/planes/sh60.htm
H-65: http://www.uscg.mil/datasheet/hh-65.asp

Bird of the Week

The superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) might win the prize for the coolest bird ever. This is a must watch!