porcupine fish and eels!

Porcupine fish

The Kahana arrived last week bringing our mail and a few goodies. The Kahana returns tomorrow on its way back from Midway and will hopefully drop off our produce...yay fresh food! Thank you to our family's for the care packages, they have brought much enjoyment. Here are some recent snorkeling pictures, enjoy!

Honu Video

Jimmy and Kristina onTrig Island

Sarah, Melinda, and Kristina

Our boat, La Perouse in the background

Large Male Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle (Honu)

Turtles basking on the beach

We had a chance to take the boat out today to survey a neighboring island called Trig. There were around 12 large turtles basking on the beach, 7 seals and a few feisty albatross chicks that saw their first humans today. A snorkel revealed lovely undererwater reef structures but not many fish. We did however see a few extremely large male green sea turtles. You can tell they are males because of the long tail.  I was lucky to get a video of one swimming.

Tsunami

We are all safe! We heard about the Tsunami at about 11:30 pm last night and stayed up until. 1:30am waiting to find out how big the wave would be once it hit Midway. Midway recorded waves at about 2ft so we figured it would be alright to go to bed. At 3:30 am we were all woken up because the Tsunami had been larger on Laysan than anticipated and almost reached their shelter. It was difficult not being able to see what was coming, but we climbed to the top of the warehouse (see picture) and spent the night there. We were pretty safe on the roof, and the water did not flow over the island at all.  We have emergency action plans for tsunami's so there is no need to worry. We were equipped with life jackets, food, water, and plenty of blankets. We were very blessed, it couldn't have been a better night to sleep on the roof. The sky was clear and there wasn't too much wind. We even saw several shooting stars. It was very dark so we were not able to see the waves but the island was very dry this morning.  Thank you for all of your prayers. We are sorry to have caused so much stress!

First Red-Footed Booby Egg!

The First Red-Footed Booby Egg

Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle taking a breath

Jimmy during Red-Tailed Tropic Bird Mark Recapture

Kristina during RTTR Mark Recapture 

"Thistle Teach'em" - What Jimmy says when pulling thistle, an extremely invasive plant found on the island. 

Male Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle basking in the warm sun

The red-footed boobies have finally started laying their eggs. They have been building up their nests for the past several weeks, fighting with frigate birds over the perfect sticks. Frigates are constantly flying overhead waiting for a booby to leave its nest so they can swoop down and steal parts from the nest. The seaturtles are becoming more active and we have recently seen a few large, male turtles up on the beach basking in the sun. It is unique to Hawaii that male Hawaiian green sea turtles come up onto the beach to bask. Usually the only sea turtles ever found on the beach are females during the nesting season. Yesterday was Mardi Gras and Jimmy and I made cinnamon brown sugar pecan king cake. It was delicious! The Kahana (the large boat bringing us supplies) leaves Honolulu the 16th and gets here the 18th. We are excited to have fresh food again- at least for a week or two. The Kahana also brings us 2 new volunteers and 2 boats. Our boats have been broken so we have not been able to check up on the other islands in the atoll. March is going to be a very busy month! Let us know if there is anything in particular anyone would like to know or see a picture of!