Happy National Bird Day!
Here is Isabelle’s Hōlanikū Blog for the week:
5 January (74 days on island)
This week we treated 47.25 acres (in four days)! We are now seeing parts of the island for the third time as we begin our third rotation through the 44 GRAs (greater restoration areas) that parcel up the island. We are staying ahead of the weed eradication schedule, even though this month we also had to deal with a lot of guzzler and seep work for the Laysan ducks, along with completing the annual albatross nest count. On top of that, we also dealt with an incredible number of burrows which riddle the island’s sandy soil, and an ever-increasing naupaka cover – aka, huge amounts of bushwhacking. Despite all of this, and despite getting on with maintenance tasks at camp, as well as having holidays off, we still managed to finish our rotation for treatment of the entire island in less than a month – no mean feat, and one that requires commitment, tenacity, and mental fortitude. We are happy with our progress, but there’s no time to get complacent here – as soon as we finish, we start all over again, looking for new sprouts.
Now well into our third month on the atoll, we have a routine and a rhythm. However my mindset, the way I think about the island, the way I think about myself in the context of the island also of a much bigger picture, is always shifting. This is partly because I am to a large extent a reflection of what I observe, and since what I observe is always changing here, I am constantly learning, thinking, reflecting, processing, applying. Events like the human ‘New Year’ also throw more emotions and considerations into the mix. In the last few weeks for instance I have been reading Carl Safina’s Eye of the Albatross, and now Pamela Frierson’s The Last Atoll. Whilst I had of course read up on the island before I arrived here, I had explicitly not read those books before getting here, because I wanted to read them whilst in place. Going through those books is a rich experience whilst camped out in the very place they describe at times, and more broadly whilst being in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. I have learned much about this place from such books, and aspects I found most disturbing were the ways in which humans have treated these islands historically, the plundering, and specifically the murder of so many albatross here. As I walk around the island, going about my life and tasks, watching the birds, I think of the ghosts of who was here before, and what they did. It makes me even more determined to see out my time here as productively as possible, to make a difference to the island, and to make my mark. Passing the New Year here offers yet more opportunity for introspection – what have I learned so far? How can I apply it to ‘real life’, aka where I will return to in May? What more can I learn, and is there a specific thing I could do or action I could take that might make a special difference here? What lessons are there in the things that I see – an albatross’ tenacity in brooding its egg in the face of sand, wind, rain, wave, heat, hunger, thirst, and fear; the way sunset colours often emerge brightest and most impressive after the sun itself has set; how albatross get on with fixing up their nests on a rainy day; the way moonlight, the opposite of sunlight, casts its own beautiful light and opens my eyes to different sights and perspectives; how the island itself, though it sometimes feels so removed and isolated, is collecting the effects of human pollution and actions thousands of miles away, and thus profoundly connected; how the birds here go all in every breeding season, not thinking (to our knowledge, or in a way that impacts future attempts) of previous failures or sorrows (yes, I do believe albatross feel a sadness in their own way when their chick or partner dies), but instead facing each new year and challenge with 100% conviction and effort, as though they had never failed before? What allegories, moreover, does this place contain for human existence, and for the ways in which humans should see the world?
These thoughts and many more run through my head each day. But now for the part of my blog that gives you a few of my natural history observations. One part of the week that I enjoyed was seeing the Tristram’s storm petrel eggs. Whilst I of course knew about the extremely large size of procellariiform eggs relative to body size, this did not prepare me for the shock I had in seeing the size of a Tristram’s egg compared to the size of the tiny bird itself. When out treating, I accidentally stepped down on the entrance to a small grassy burrow hidden in a clump of kawelu. When I dug this out, I stuck my hand down to see if the burrow was active, and felt a Tristram and its egg. I took the egg out just to make sure there was no damage, and it was bigger than a quail’s egg! The Tristrams are much smaller than quails.
Another interesting event was when I collected some Portuguese man o’wars off the beach to look at under my dissecting microscope, which was my dad’s for many years and which I proudly brought to the island with me. I did this on Friday afternoon after a big day of work, and got totally lost in observing the ways in which the tentacles moved elegantly in the water, their minute suction cups, how the ‘blue’ seam on the air bladder is not actually blue but in fact made up of iridescent streaks of purple, blue and green; how the air-sac membrane is in fact made up of thousands upon thousands of striations, which catch the light like blown glass. Growing up, my dad – a doctor, but a zoologist and ecologist at heart – had brought this microscope out with us on family holidays. I have fond memories of being on the beach with him on the west coast of Canada, looking at marine invertebrates we’d collected from rock pools. He would get the microscope set up for me, a little child, and then hoist me up so I could look down at this incredible world that goes unnoticed by us large organisms. Barnacle tentacles, anemones, snails, algae, jellies – how amazing they are when you look at them up close, their mechanisms, how profoundly intricate they are, just like us, but on a minute scale. And how it makes you wonder about life, how it all began, how it evolved, the miracle of it all. I think my penchant for natural history observation, and the way in which I can so easily become absolutely, totally, completely, absorbed in the natural world comes from him and from these early interactions and lessons ‘in the field’. That is where the real learning happens – not behind computers and in offices.
Another moment worth mentioning which affected me profoundly came in the wake of the huge swells we experienced here over these past days. Many albatross nests had been washed out along the shoreline, and as I ran around shoring nests up – since even a little help building up the walls of a nest bowl might represent the difference between an albatross successfully managing to clamp down on its egg, and failure to do this, with the egg rolling away – I noticed a black-footed albatross incubating and talking to a strangely shaped egg. As I approached, curious, I realised it was not an egg at all, but a plastic water bottle. This shook me to my core, and is an image that I have been replaying in my head over and over again – like the hanging albatross on the heliotrope from weeks ago. Judging by the look of the nest bowl and the bird, this albatross had lost an egg in the waves, with their egg being replaced in some random current of a high wave by a drifting water bottle. My sorrow at this, and the shame I felt watching it, was acute. Human actions, and irresponsibility, manage to reach their prying, slimy fingers down into even the intimate, close realm between an albatross brood pouch and the sand, on this atoll, thousands of miles away. Whilst I appreciate that human actions did not directly or necessarily take the egg away – large swells have existed since time immemorial, and these birds nest on low shorelines – human action was resulting in rising sea levels, which would result in ever more eggs washing into the sea. And now, as if twisting the knife, the lovely egg to be replaced by human trash. The heart-rending symbolism in this moment took my breath away, and made me for a moment really question what I was doing here. This was the second time I’d seen a black-foot incubating trash, the first time being a few weeks after I got here, when I saw several attempting to incubate a beige plastic fishing buoy about the size of a real egg. What could I do, one small woman, against such recklessness, such gigantic irresponsibility? Was this all a lost cause? I was dedicating my life to albatross, but would I live to see the end of them? I knelt there beside the trash-incubating bird, and gently removed the bottle from underneath it. It may all be for a lost cause, I told myself – it may be. But hope is extremely powerful, and so can be single individuals in the stories they tell and the way they can move others. Think of David Attenborough; of Jane Goodall; of those scientists and communicators who almost single-handedly, through extreme toil, willpower, and ability to story-tell – saved species, made huge impacts. And even all of that notwithstanding – how would I feel if I gave up? How would I feel if one day on my own deathbed, I looked back and knew that I had not done everything I could in my power to save the albatross? If I knew that I had not used my time on this earth for good, or, like my dad says, to tackle the ‘big stuff’? How would I feel if I knew that I had shied away from standing up, and being counted, simply because I could not personally withstand the loss and heartbreak inherent in this path? What then the desperation, how then the acuteness of sorrow? I shed a few tears there, alone on the beach, but came away with renewed resolve, strengthened and tempered yet further through contact with such an ugly experience.
That’s all for now, and again, if my writing has moved you at all, consider how you yourself might help the albatross and/or any other wild oceanic species. Might you write a letter to your political representative about how trash is handled in your area? Perhaps if you have the means, you could donate to a marine debris removal organization like PMDP (Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project) or to a conservation program like Kure Atoll Conservancy, or another in your area? Perhaps you can yourself retell this story to others, your friends, your family, send them this writing or even your own rendition of it? Maybe you could even consider volunteering your time for non-profit organizations in your area (or further afield) which work to save and conserve the ocean. Maybe you could start doing some reading on whether the fish you are eating is really fished in a ‘sustainable’ way – is the tuna in your can caught by hooks that hook albatross, dragging them down to the crushing black depths to drown? Self-reflection is at the root of all change. It all helps.
Aloha,
Isabelle Beaudoin