12 January (81 days on island)
We treated 52 acres this week whilst still accomplishing a myriad of other important tasks. We found verb sprouts and tore up more beds of Cassytha, amongst other weeds, and made sure we put our best foot forward with respect to treatment. We are keeping pace with the weeds, and again found no dropped-seed verbs this week. We hope for a dropped-seed free scheduler, but we still have many Greater Restoration Areas (GRAs) left to treat before the end of the month. We will see.
I have been particularly missing avocado this week, and fresh fruit. I’d just love to sink my teeth into a big, crunchy apple right now, or to have avocado and fresh cherry tomatoes on toast with cracked black pepper. We have plenty of food here, and we live well, but sometimes you do just miss fresh produce.
My mind has been heavy with thought this past week, mulling over many of the things I spoke about in my last entry. I have also been thinking a lot about the deaths of albatross out at sea on long-line hooks, and this has been causing me anguish. Whilst being here is highly enjoyable for me, when I look at albatross (which is all day), my thoughts cannot help but be stalked by the shadows of long-liners, of plastics, of death. I guess when you really, really care about someone, when you look at them, you not only feel love but also a fear for them and a wish to protect them. It hurts that I cannot, and leaves me bewildered. I’ve been attempting to patch this hole so to speak by going out on ‘HELFOE destruction missions’ – this is where I go over to the other side of the island and chop down dead heliotrope (HELFOE) trees, of the kind that speared my Laysan albatross friend last month. I go at these large trees for hours with just a handsaw after we treat, and although it is painful and tough work, I feel a sense of relief every time I see a huge branch come down, because it feels like I am directly removing threats to albatross. Although I am not removing long-liners from the ocean, I feel more like I am doing something that has an immediate effect for them here. Every time I chop down a tree, and I did 10 this week, I go and leave a shell or piece of coral on the grave of my friend and tell them about what I did that day. I appreciate this might seem strange to you, but it helps me cope out here. I hope that by the time I leave this island, there will be a great deal fewer dangerous heliotropes standing on that east side of the island where the albatross fly thick and fast up and down the thin shoreline, and that the grave will be piled high with shells and corals. When I leave this place in May, I want to feel like my being here really made a difference in some way. Whilst I am sawing, I also get to observe the life of the island on that side. Tropicbirds wheeling in their strange ferris wheel formations, albatross flying, and this week, humpback whales beyond the reef! It was pretty awesome to see their blows spouting high over the waves as they meandered down the reef towards south point.
Beyond the general HELFOE missions this week (which Tlell and Jacob girdled 35 trees as well), some special moments included the sunset on Thursday night, which was absolutely stunning. There were many clouds, which can sometimes mean the sunset will be ‘meh’ – but this time, the light show really began in the moments after the sun sank below the horizon. The sky was lit up in nearly its entirety in reds, pinks, lavenders, blues, and yellows, with the lagoon a bright turquoise below, almost as if the water in this lagoon had become condensed, with its pigmentation intensified. Like an infinity pool in the centre of the ocean. I felt totally saturated in colour – the beach even was a pinkish-golden colour, and my skin had turned a rich reddish colour. The BFAL feathers were a burnished, deep bronze, their eyes a chocolate brown colour when turned towards the light. Another time, on my walk back from HELFOE destruction, I spotted a Laysan with a big nohu seed in its foot which Ryan and I managed to get out. The poor albatross’ pad was big and swollen, with the nohu seed embedded all the way into it, several millimetres deep. It seemed relieved when we got it out. On Sunday afternoon last weekend, the winds were still picking up, and I got to observe the albatross sitting tight on their eggs in 40mph+ winds down on the beach. This was a remarkable sight, especially as I watched their eyes and nares get clogged with sand and their wings being almost pried open by the winds. I was once again astonished at their bravery, tenacity, and steadfastness. A white tern is currently incubating its classically precariously-placed egg on a HELFOE branch along the bunkhouse beach path. Seeing this made me wonder: how does the white tern chick not fall off the branch when it hatches? In that fundamental and messy transition from egg to outside world, how does the chick not tumble off the branch, a fate that guarantees death at that age? How, evolutionarily, has this become this species’ strategy? What advantages has it offered over evolutionary time, when it seemingly creates so much opportunity for fatal failure? I hope to be at the right place at the right time to observe this one hatching, and to answer my own questions.
It was fascinating this week to see the impact of last week’s big storm on the east-side beach, which suffered from some erosion, but not as much as I had expected. I noticed this week that the areas were naupaka had a good foothold remained more intact, and whilst you could see their exposed root tendrils, with many having been ripped out, the dunes under these bushes remained, whilst the area under the HELFOE was flat and washed out. Yet more reasons for me to cut them down, and for us to also work on girdling and killing the big live ones so that they could also be cut down. We will replace them with outplanted naupaka, which Nadia has taken on has her special project so to speak. I was chopping ‘em down, Tlell and Jacob were girdling them, and Nadia would be planting out. Teamwork!
A lovely moment for me came last night. I was lying down on the beach after sunset, closer to the water than to the albatross nests, and staring up at the sky which was slowly turning from a rich mauve to a deep blue-indigo, with Venus blinking brightly at me from straight above. Suddenly, I heard a quiet ‘whoosh!’ and a soft shuffling sound. I looked over to my left, and there stood a black-footed albatross, curiously looking down at me from a few feet away. I lay totally still, and we looked at each other. Then, the bird started doing its low, hunched walk around me, down towards my feet, and then up along my right side. It stopped. I slowly raised my hand and wiggled my fingers. This was seemingly very interesting to the bird, and he approached me then, and started nibbling gently on my fingers! He did this for about 10 seconds, then moved away from my fingers, but still stood there. I then started wiggling my toes, and he went down and nibbled my toes too, then decided to try and tug off one of my flip-flops! He soon bored of this however, and, suddenly standing up straight, he looked towards the glow on the western horizon, and took off into the fading light. I think that is one of those moments which will encapsulate Kure for me, for years to come.
The albatross chicks will be coming soon. Sometime this week or next we are expecting our first ones, and we plan on having a ‘first hatching day’ party. Tlell said she would bake a cake. I enjoy marking the passage of time by natural phenomena here – the moon phases, the seasons, the life-history stages of the animals that surround us. Although many, many of us have forgotten it, us humans are indelibly tied to these events and cycles, and deep within our brains and instincts lies a yearning to find those long-lost connections once more.
Aloha,
Isabelle Beaudoin