Coast Guard

We had more visitors this week.  The US Coast Guard Cutter Kukui came in for 5 days to work on the buoys marking our channel.  We also had some Coast Guard visitors fly in on a C-130 for a meeting and a tour.  The days are still fairly quiet around here without the albatross around, but the Bonin petrels are back and are fairly loud at night.  Work is winding down on our lead paint remediation project for this year and we've got a lot of people leaving on the plane this week, so I took them out for a snorkel trip this afternoon. It was great as usual.   

 Here's a photo of the USCG Cutter Kukui. 

 Here's the C-130 landing with our visitors with the Kukui working on a buoy in the background.

You might recognize Jan Vozenilek as one of the people filming the Midway movie with Chris Jordan.  He's out here on a separate project for the Smithsonian Institution.  He also helped me check Eastern Island seeps for sick or dead Laysan ducks. So far we haven't had any new sick or dead since our big outbreak last week.

 There were a lot of Laysan ducklings this year, so we've got a lot of them in the seeps right now.  It's great to see an endangered species doing well.

The Wedge-tailed shearwater chicks are still fluffy but getting pretty big.



 The White terns were flocking around me today, and I managed to get one or two in focus photos.  It's not easy though.
 

 The lagoon was looking the same as usual this afternoon.  You have to like blue to live out here.

Here's a Moorish idol swimming around the coral.  These are difficult to get pictures of because they are kind of shy.