Our first day of diving

The internet is painfully slow this year. I delete emails and they re-appear since the "delete" doesn’t go through. I was able to blog last night, but only after 11 pm when most of the 13 people on the island have gone to bed. I will keep trying, but this could put a crimp in my goal of posting a daily blog entry.

Ana had a minor ear problem, so she sat out the dive today and worked with Jack to get the freezer set up for drying our settlement tiles that will be going back with us to the mainland for further analysis.

Tim and I dove on FR3 since there wasn’t a strong current, but there was a pretty good swell which makes it challenging to stay at one spot to work. This is how I remember work at FR3 in previous years — big swells and strong currents. We spent our first dive checking out our gear and then flagging almost all of the caged tiles. On our second dive we collected three tiles from the deep FR3 transect. We also grabbed one uncaged tile from the mid FR3 transect since it was loose and on its side.

loose uncaged tile 164 from FR3 middle transect

One tile broke as I was trying to put it on the metal stand for transport. My goal was only to collect 4 to 6 tiles on the first day since processing would be slow until we got our routines down. Tomorrow our plan is to collect the remaining tiles on the deep FR3 transect.

No baby corals were found on any of the tiles we brought back, but one had many large corallimorphs. Corallimorphs are marine cnidarians closely related to stony or reef building corals. The species on Palmyra is Rhodactis howesii, and it is native. The population exploded around some old ship wrecks, so they decided to remove the ship wrecks since they believed iron leaching from the wrecks was contributing to the unnaturally high numbers. Normally this is a rare species on Palmyra.

tile160 from the deep FR3 transect with 8 corallimorphs
Rhodactis howesii 

What happens when you put three scientists in an empty room

As I mentioned earlier, the Stanford team is the only group of scientists working on Palmyra over the next two and a half weeks. The staff is using their free time to take on several maintenance projects that are normally left to do in winter when there is only staff on the island.

In addition to all of us having our own individual cabins, we have the whole dry lab space to ourselves. So guess what? Have an empty space and it gets filled up. We have spread out everywhere.

totally filling up the dry lab with gear

Very busy first day

Here is the Stanford team about to board our two and a half hour flight from Honolulu to Palmyra Atoll. 

Tim, Ana, Joe ready to board Falcon50 flight to Palmyra Atoll

One of the first things you see when you land is the new wind generator that is right by the air strip.

wind power generator side view

wind power generator head-on view

We are the only science team on Palmyra. However, there are a number of other people out here with us besides the "standard" staff. There is a recent high school graduate, Rex, who will be attending Harvard but is taking a year off before starting college. There is Tim who is working with Sarah on upgrading the marsh area used for sewage treatment. The good news is the number of people is low enough that everyone gets their own cabin and don't have to share. I was really hoping for this as I lucked out and had my own cabin the previous two trips. I am in cabin #3 which is even closer to the water than #4 where I stayed my previous two trips. 

my waterfront cabin, #3

Falcon50 vs. Gulf Stream

I am writing this on board our flight to Palmyra. After not being able to land in 2014 because of rain, I will only be completely relaxed when we have actually landed.

There are three additional passengers on our flight besides the Stanford group.  Sarah is an environmental engineer who is volunteering with TNC and will be looking at the marsh that was established many years ago to handle waste water treatment on Palmyra. She is going to be on the island for 3 months. Jarrett is coming out to train as the diving safety officer and boat captain.  He will be flying back with us in two and a half weeks to return in the fall for a 3 month stint. The third person is Theran who is coming out just for the day. He is flying out to look at the WiFi internet set up. He will return in the fall to upgrade the system to provide an increased bandwidth.

I have to say the Gulf Stream jets I flew the previous trips we more spacious and luxurious than the Falcon50. Of course part of the issue is we are bringing LOTS of cargo and this plane probably has less cargo space. On my past flights all our gear fit in the cargo hold except maybe a few bags that were stored in the very large bathroom area. We only had our personal backpacks with us in the cabin of the Gulf Streams. On this flight we had a lot of gear in the plane's cabin as you can see from the photo below. Compare this to photos on the blog entries for my previous two trips.

Falcon50 with seven passengers + one empty seat and lots of gear

On our way

Tim picked me up at 3 am, and we headed to the airport shuttle bus stop driving through the deserted streets of PG and Monterey.

It really is a small world. The driver of the shuttle has a relative that worked for The Nature Conservancy, and one of the passengers said his sister worked on Palmyra. It turns out his sister is Chelsea Wood, a former HMS graduate student who I helped track down historic photos of Palmyra for her research and also helped her obtain lots of books on parasites.

I am composing this on the plane, and realize I forgot to take a photo of the ice chest I used as my checked bag. I wanted a photo just in case it got lost.  I was too wrapped up re-packing it in order to get Tim's checked bag below the 50 lb weight limit.

LATER TODAY.

Tim and I made it to Hawaii with all our gear and met up with Ana who had arrived earlier on a flight from LAX.  After grabbing some lunch, we are in our hotel's business center waiting for our room to be cleaned.

ice chest that went with checked luggage along with my carry-on bag

We get to "sleep-in" tomorrow compared to today. Our shuttle picks us up at 6 am to leave for Signature Air where we will load all our gear and then wait to hear from the station manager on Palmyra for his weather report so we know when to depart. Last time, you may remember, it was raining so hard we couldn't land.

Packing for 3 am departure

I am busy packing for my 3 am pick-up tomorrow morning. Tim and I are taking the 3:30 am airport shuttle from Monterey to SFO for our 7:30 am flight to Honolulu. The good news is we both got TSA Pre-check, so we don't have to undress and un-pack everything to go through security screening.

Packing for Palmyra is always a challenge. First and foremost are the weight restrictions for the flight from Honolulu to Palmyra. In the past we flew on Gulf Stream jets, but the new contract The Nature Conservancy negotiated has us flying on a Falcon50. The Gulf Stream is a two engine private plane while the Falcon50 has a third jet in the tail in addition to the ones on the wings. The other difference is the Falcon50 holds a slightly smaller number of passengers. While the interior is luxurious compared to most first class accommodations on commercial flights, there is no room for large carry-on bags. You are restricted to a small backpack weighing no more than 10 lbs. My backpack will have things like my passport, laptop computer, iPad, underwater & terrestrial camera, critical papers, etc.

items going in my backpack not including my laptop

For my carry-on I am packing a lot of items that would be difficult to replace should my checked bag get lost. It includes cameras for the microscope and photo stand, a GoPro camera for filming fish interacting with the settlement tiles in situ, various cables, batteries, an external hard drive for backup, data sheets, some personal dive gear, and a minimal amount of clothes. You don't need much in the way of clothes since the staff does your laundry for you daily except on Sunday. I live in swim trunks and t-shirts on Palmyra. The weight limit for "personal gear" is 30 lbs.

items going in my carry-on bag

Fish & Wildlife has been beefing up the biohazard protocols to prevent foreign seeds and insects from invading the atoll. Clothes worn on Cooper Island where the marine station is located must be washed in hot water, dried with high heat, packed in zip-lock bags and then frozen for 48 hours. If you want to go on any of the other island, you must have brand new clothes, shoes, backpack, etc. that are placed in zip-lock bags and frozen for 48 hours.

This year I am bringing more gear than I did in 2014, and we will also be bringing back all the settlement tiles with us on our return flights. Therefore, my checked bag this year is a large ice chest. Our original plan was to use the generator room on Palmyra to dry our settlement tiles before placing them in individual zip-lock bags, wrapping them in bubble-wrap, and then stacking them in ice chests. The problem was Palmyra has gone "green" using solar and wind to power the island the majority of the time. The generator serves as backup and is used infrequently. This is a good thing, but it meant we had to come up with an alternate plan to dry the tiles. There is an old, non-functioning freezer that we are planning to use in combination with either heat lamps or a space heater. Those are some of the things that are going in the ice chest. We are allowed 25 lbs of "additional gear".

items going in a large ice chest

I will be re-packing everything once I am in Hawaii as the risks are different for the two flights. The risk on the flight from SFO to HNL is having the bag lost and not found until the next day which is too late since I will already have left for Palmyra. I put things in the ice chest that, should it get lost, could potentially be replaced with a mad shopping spree in the half day we have in Waikiki. However, that carry-on bag with all the fragile gear has to go in the cargo hold on the flight the next morning on the Falcon50 since there is no overhead storage in the plane's cabin. Here there is no risk of the luggage getting lost. Rather the concern is damage to the fragile equipment. So some things will come out of the ice chest and go in my soft-sided carry-on to make room in the ice chest for cameras, etc.

The 2016 Stanford Team

Last year Fio Micheli was schedule to lead our team on Palmyra Atoll. When the trip fell through and we had to postpone our trip a year, Fio was not able to work the new dates into her busy schedule. I am bummed as I was looking forward to spending time with her in the field and letting her assume the role of lead scientist. That said, I have a very experienced pair of graduate students that will accompany me when we leave a little over a month from now.

Ana Guerra has been to Palmyra several times. As a Stanford undergraduate she travelled to the atoll to help with a Hopkins graduate student's project before obtaining her own funding to return to Palmyra and conduct her own project studying the vulnerable bristle-thighed curlew.

bristle-thighed curlew on Palmyra Atoll
Numenius tahitiensis

During my 2014 stint on Palmyra Ana was there too, working on a project tagging manta rays. After that she spent a year diving around the world as the 2014 North American Rolex Scholar which included a two week stint serving as the acting refuge manager on Palmyra. Read more about Ana's adventurous life on her web page:

http://www.anasofiaguerra.com/#!about-me/zl55c

This fall Ana will start as a graduate student in Doug McCauley's lab at UC Santa Barbara. For those of you who have been following this blog, you might remember that Doug is one of the PIs on this project and was the lead scientist during my first field season on Palmyra in 2013.

The second member of the team is Tim White. Tim is a graduate student in the De Leo & Micheli labs at Hopkins Marine Station and another avid diver with experience working on Palmyra Atoll. But what impressed me most was when I heard him talk about the time he spend on Teraina also known at Washington Island. A barge dropped him off on this tiny atoll where there were only few people who spoke a bit of English. There was no communication to the outside world, and Tim just had to hope the barge returned in three months. He was there to study shark-finning practices. If you want to read more about this fascinating story, check out an interview he did at:

http://protecttheoceans.org/wordpress/?p=1598

Tim White building his own shelter on Washington Island

Tim is hoping to do some of his Ph.D. research on Palmyra and is off to a good start with some preliminary funding to study coconut crabs on Palmyra while we are out there this summer.