In memory of Jose (1942-2011)

Moving on

Although I find this difficult, I am finally able to come back to Turtle Trax and try to move things along.

Prior to losing perhaps the best friend I will ever have, I was already finding it hard to make changes here. I’d look at the site and feel overwhelmed, there is so much that needs to be done. The feeling hasn’t left, but so much has happened that I absolutely must do something here. I know many people arrive looking for information and current material, but it’s not easy to find here now. I do intend to fix this, but I have no idea when. As another dear friend commented recently, you pick something you can get done and do that, then repeat. Seems obvious, but so hard to do sometimes. At any rate, one thing I can do is post some of the recent good things that have happened.

5690 provides joy and thrills

This honu is known by many names to others but by her original tag number 5690 to us. The Maui News refers to her as Maui Girl, and their story Maui Girl returns (July 26, 2011) describes how she is back nesting again this summer after skipping a year.

Although we weren’t on Maui during her normal nesting time last year, we don’t think she waited until we showed up. As we’ve described here a few times, there is less and less of the algae that honu feed everywhere we’ve looked along the West Maui coast, and our theory is that she simply took longer to build up the energy reserves that she needs to lay eggs. We know she doesn’t make the 800 kilometer migration to nest, but she’s the result of millions of years of evolution, and her body has evolved to prepare her for that trip.

Her first reported nest was made the night of July 9. Although we were already on Maui by then, we hadn’t been watching for her because she normally begins nesting in mid-May, and no one had reported any nests yet. We therefore only learned of this nest after the fact. Since we now had a reference date, however, we were expecting her back in two weeks, and as the newspaper story reports, she did indeed make what we thought was her second nest on the night of July 23.

5690 as she drops eggs on the night of July 23. This photo was taken while she was in her egg-laying trance, during which almost nothing can deter her from finishing. Prior to entering this state, she can easily be disturbed by lights and activity, causing her to abandon the effort and return to the sea.

Click image to enlarge

Alert readers will note that I wrote “reported” nest in that description above. The reason for that is a story that gives me a lot of personal pleasure and satisfaction.

5690 made another nest two weeks after the first, on the night of August 13, so we were expecting her to nest again on the night of August 20th. This is consistent with honu females, who usually make their nests spaced roughly two weeks apart. In the past, 5690 has been fairly reliable in her intervals, but has usually made seven nests instead of the normal four or five. She typically lays fewer eggs per nest, so her total production in a given year is about average.

Honu aren’t predictable, however, and we certainly don’t depend on 5690 to keep to a rigid schedule. Her pattern has been to make a few false crawls on the night before she nests, so we always go to the beach on her 13th day, just in case she decides to nest early. Sure enough, on the night of the 19th she made a few false crawls, but we judged from her behaviour that she wasn’t quite ready and wouldn’t nest until the next evening.  We gave up our watch at 1:00 AM and went home.

On the off chance that she had come back after we left, I went to the beach the following morning to look for tracks. I was completely caught off guard when I chanced upon what looked to me like an old nesting attempt. It was in a patch of beach morning glory and not obvious, which is probably why it went unnoticed. It also didn’t look big enough to be a completed nest. Since it was covered in old debris, I knew immediately that it hadn’t been made the previous night, but I was startled when I looked closer and saw a hatchling! Sadly, the little fellow had already died, but I now knew I wasn’t looking at an abandoned attempt, but a completed nest.

The previously unknown nest as it appeared when I found it. The unfortunate little hatchling is circled in red.

Click image to enlarge

While the hatchling’s fate was lamentable in one way, in another it was most fortunate. Knowing that this was a nest that had already started to hatch, I contacted Glynnis Nakai of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, who excavates turtle nests as part of her job. Three days after hatchlings have emerged, Glynnis excavates to determine how many eggs there were, how many actually hatched, and most important of all, to find and free any trapped hatchlings.

In this case, Glynnis responded immediately to my call, and at 5:00 PM Saturday evening I met her and Joanni Morris at the nest to help her excavate. After digging for a few minutes, we were delighted when she came upon two more hatchlings. One had died, but the other began wriggling at her touch and was clearly alive. I can’t describe how happy I was at that point, but as she dug a little further I grew ecstatic. The reason was that she found more live hatchlings. They had gotten wedged beneath some rocks and a root, and without our help, would never have reached the surface. By the time the nest was completely excavated, Glynnis had rescued 17 hatchlings. Including the little one whose sacrifice had saved the others, there were only three dead. What could have been an undiscovered tragedy turned into a brilliant rescue!

The 17 rescued hatchlings, waiting in a bucket for their release. If their sibling hadn't died on top of the nest, these adorable little honu would have died underneath the sand.

Click image to enlarge

A little later, just at sunset, a small crowd gathered round to watch the little honu scramble down the beach to the ocean.

Glynnis Nakai, US Fish & Wildlife Services, places some of the rescued hatchlings on the sand. Since biologists don't yet understand how hatchlings imprint their beach of origin, it's normal procedure to let them reach the water on their own.

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One of the rescued hatchlings reaching the water's edge. If this is a female and she survives, one day she'll return to this beach to make her own nests.

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Counting backwards and assuming 5690 was keeping to her usual schedule, this nest was made on or near June 25th. That’s still a pretty late start for her, over a month past the time she has begun in other seasons. For years she has nested only on the stretch of beach at Kamehameha Iki Park, but she has made nests in other places in Lahaina in the past. The question now is whether she nested somewhere else earlier in the summer. We’ve looked but not seen evidence of that, and by now any early nests have hatched. She’s never nested after the end of August. We don’t even know if she’ll nest on September 3, which is the next date that matches her pattern. That would be Nest 6, which is not unusual for her—in fact it’s normal—but if she really started so late, this is not a typical summer.

If she does come back, that would support the idea that the nest I discovered was her first or at most, second. If she doesn’t, there could have been two previous unknown nests, which would push her first date back to a more typical May 28th. Of course, if she doesn’t come back that won’t prove anything, but if she does we can be fairly sure there was at most one unknown nest—and if she comes back twice, which I think highly unlikely, we’ll be almost certain all of her nests are known.

But that’s not all…

Watching an excavation and hatchling release is always enjoyable, but recall that I had found this nest because I was checking to make sure 5690 hadn’t fooled us and nested after we went home the previous night. It turns out that she had not, and so our 5690 evening had actually just begun.

Our great friend and benefactor of the honu, George Balazs, had flown over from Oahu specifically to see 5690. For those unaware of the story, George has been leading marine turtle research in the Central Pacific for the US National Marine Fisheries Service since, well, almost forever. Back in 1981, George released a small yearling honu off the Big Island, with the single external tag bearing the number 5690. 19 years later, in 2000, he got a call from Maui that a turtle had nested on a Lahaina beach, and she had a tag: 5690! Since then, he’s naturally felt a special connection to this honu, and he’s taken a lot of pleasure from our reports of watching her make nests over the years. His job and location don’t allow him to be there on most of these occasions, but this year he decided to spend his own time and money to come over and see her again.

(L to R) Glynnis Nakai, George Balazs, and Joanni Morris after the excavation of 5690's first known 2011 nest. The bucket at their feet holds 17 rescued hatchlings.

Click image to enlarge

You can imagine George’s delight to have lucked into an excavation that saved so many of her hatchlings. This meant that he (and we) had the extraordinary experience of seeing the mother honu and her progeny all in a single evening. While this was an exhausting night—none of us are getting younger—it was more than worth it. It did, however, take some patience. 5690 was not beyond providing us with a little suspense.

When we’ve been looking for her on other nights this summer, 5690 has been fairly consistent in making her first appearance about an hour and a half after sunset, around 8:30 PM. On this night, the one-shot chance that George had taken looked at first as though it wouldn’t pay off. Although he would have been happy with the unexpected hatchlings, it would have been a big disappointment if 5690 just didn’t show up. By 10:30 we were getting pretty anxious, although we weren’t about to quit waiting. Then, at 10:35, I saw her head pop up close to shore. She wasn’t about to let George down after all.

I alerted George and Ursula that she was about to crawl up the beach, and we’d just managed to settle down to watch when she slowly emerged from the water. The moon hadn’t risen yet and it was hard to see what she was doing, but eventually we could tell that she was making her way up the beach.

5690 makes her first crawl of the night at 10:35 PM, August 20, 2011. (15 second exposure at ISO 3200)

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It took her 35 minutes for this first crawl, and although she eventually went back into the water, we were relieved just to know she was out there. Usually, it would be 30-45 minutes before she crawled out again, but continuing with breaking her pattern she showed up about 10 minutes later at the other end of the beach. Now, sea turtles are supposedly shy of bright lights when they come ashore to nest, but 5690 appears not to have read the manual. She crawled out right in front of two glaring floodlights on poles, behind which there was a loud nightclub complete with more flashing lights.

This is the unlikely beach that 5690 emerged onto to make her nest. The two prominent floodlights and the flashing lights from the nightclub in the background (not to mention the constant low frequency drumbeat) should have deterred her—but didn't. (Photo courtesy George Balazs)

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As she moved up the beach, her behaviour became more typical of a nesting turtle, in that she veered towards the darkness provided by the shade of the vegetation. She crawled—and she crawled—and she crawled. Then she crawled some more. Once she was past the high-water line, she began moving parallel to the shore. She moved right over a lot of sand that I felt would have made a terrific nest. In fact, she actually had nested in that sand in a previous summer but not this time. About 100 meters later, she finally made it to the same patch of beach morning glory in which I’d discovered the nest that morning, and began to dig.

Sometimes 5690 digs for a while and then changes her mind and moves elsewhere. Not this night. Most other nests are made with just me and Ursula watching, if anyone. Again, not this night. At times there were a dozen or more observers, and at least six people (including us) watched her from start to finish, more than four and half hours. As always, I felt privileged and exhilarated to witness the process, and I’m pretty sure everyone felt much the same way. I’ve no doubt, however, that George got a special thrill that no one else could experience as he watched the same honu that he’d released in 1981 making her nest on a Maui beach 30 years later.

George spent a good part of the night just lying and watching 5690 as she made her nest. His 30 year connection with her made it particularly special to him. (15 second exposure at ISO 1600)

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Links to other 5690 stories

I’ve never created a page devoted specifically to 5690. Perhaps I should, but until I do I’m providing some links to some of the other places where we’ve written about her.

• Honu Highlight—Notes on the birthing process (2002)
• 5690 hatchlings (2002)
• 5690 nests again (2002)
• 5690: Found! (2003)
• Excavating nest 1 (2004)
• 5690 does it to us—again! (2004)
• One nest excavated, another one made (2004)
• The most extraordinary 5690 sighting (2004)
• The 26 hour day (2004)
• Nest emergence (2004)
• Nest 5 hatches! (2004)
• 5690 makes nest #4 (2006)
• 5690 nests again: an experience re-born (2008)
• 5690 makes nest #6 (2008)
• Hatchlings! (2008)
• The “homeless” Mississauga Muse attracts the attention of Maui Police (2008)

Masha Kai

Masha Kai is a female honu, resident at Honokowai, who had a satellite transmitter attached in the summer of 2009. Unfortunately, her transmitter failed sooner than we’d hoped and the tracking maps we did get showed that she never left the Honokowai area. Last fall, we did see her out on Reef 2, and it was obvious why her transmitter failed. Contrary to the report we’d gotten, the box was still attached to her carapace but the antenna was missing. That wasn’t the bad news, however. We were disturbed to see that Masha Kai had developed fibropapilloma tumors.

This image shows not only the reason why Masha Kai's transmitter failed, but also that she had tumors in her eyes and on her body.

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This summer, on our second dive, we saw Masha Kai again. She was in almost exactly the same place where we saw her in December, but this time the news was good. Her tumors had not progressed at all, and in fact looked to be regressing already.

Compare this image to the one above. You can see that Masha Kai's tumors haven't gotten larger, and are showing signs of regression.

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While it’s uncommon, we have seen fibropapilloma regress this quickly before. It’s especially comforting in Masha Kai’s case because she was carrying a satellite tag and helping us understand the honu a little better. Of course there’s no connection between the transmitter and the tumors, but the tag does make her special to us. Mahalo nui loa, Masha Kai.

(Click here to go directly to the clip on YouTube)

[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]

Reporting July 29, 2011, at sunset, faintly over tremendous wind noise, Ursula Bennett (TURTLE TRAX and “The Book of Honu”):

There it is!

[CROSSFADE]

Sunset, in the car, Ursula:

We got a little bit of that sunset and then we had to run back in the car. And the question is whether to stay the night, it is really cold.

And not only that, that wasn’t rain. That was almost like, uh—

Peter Bennett (TURTLE TRAX and “The Book of Honu”):

Sleet.

Ursula:

Sleet, yeah.

[DIP TO BLACK]

A little after sunset in the car, Ursula:

It is July 29th, 2011. There’s Haleakala there. It’s completely dark. And we’re the only ones here.

I’m at the stage where I would like to go back. I don’t especially— I’m getting a little bit…

It’s kind of wintry and can’t see anything. Kind of, I know I can see where the edge of the summit is there. The sun set over in that direction. But I can’t imagine us seeing stars today.

And the plan was to at least have Peter get a really good photograph of the night sky. But you can’t set up a tripod in this.

[DIP TO MORE BLACK]

Approximately 8:15 PM, Ursula:

It is July 29th, 2011. It’s, I don’t know, maybe around 8:15 maybe.

Peter:

Something like that.

Ursula:

Something like that.

We’re here to spend the night. Haleakala. And you can kind of hear the wind. And I can open the door and you can actually hear what it sounds like. But we’re actually going to spend the night.

[DIP TO BLACK]

Later, in the fog, Ursula:

…and looking out and I don’t see any stars. So that means we are in fog. See that?

Peter:

Ho yeah.

Ursula:

Still  very much in fog. That’s not— our window is not cloudy, it’s fog.

But! We do see stars. The stars are out again. See them, Peter?

Peter:

Oh. My goodness.

Ursula:

Oh, wow!

[DIP TO BLACK]
[Audio affected by car fan noise.]

10:15 PM, camera on dash aimed at us, Ursula:

It is July 29th, 2011 and we’re here atop Haleakala. And we decided to spend the night.

And I guess it’s maybe what— 10:30 now?

Peter:

10:15.

Ursula:

Quarter after 10.

And we Googled, or at least I Googled to see how one goes about spending the night in a car atop the summit of Haleakala. And there really wasn’t anybody who wrote anything about it.

And I can kind of see why— aside from the odd truck or something that goes by, there is nobody else, it’s just us here.

And it’s a wonderful experience. When we turn off the lights we can see—  a kind of shrouded right now in fog. And every once in a while, the stars come out. And they are outrageous.

Over here would be the Big Dipper, sort of setting, down by the summit there. And over on this side is Maui’s Fish hook and we’ve been trying to get some pictures.

We came up here because we want to honour a dear friend —Peter’s very, very close friend. And this was the best way we thought of doing it, just to be up here. Just spending the night.

And I just want to say that if there are people who do want to spend the night at the top of Haleakala, it’s comfortable enough. Just make sure you’re dressed warmly.

And in our case, we’ve got a blanket here and then on top of it, a comforter. And it’s quite pleasant and we’re going to, we saw, we came up here just in time to see the sun set. And we’re going to spend the night and then also see the sun rise.

And it’s quite an experience, it really is.

At the beginning when it started to get dark, a part of me wanted to leave and I have to thank Peter for staying and saying, no, let’s stay a while longer. And the “while longer” stayed until —it’s such a fantastic experience that I want to spend the whole time.

So, you know, it’s possible —we’re both in our 60′s. I’m 62, 63, I forget, 63 and Peter?

Peter:

64. 64 next month.

Ursula:

So, 64 next month, so, you know, not a problem. In the meantime this is about the only place to be on Maui for thinking about— the loss of a really special person.

Certainly for me, he was the most brilliant person I ever met. No offense to you, Peter.

Peter:

Mmmm.

Ursula:

So, anyway, going to conserve the energy here. By the way— there we go.

[DIP TO BLACK]

1:37 AM July 30, Ursula:

It is 1:37 am. This would be July 30th, 2011. We’re here at Haleakala, the summit. And outside are the most amazing stars. And Peter’s setting up a new battery here. So he can take some more pictures.

And we’d fallen asleep for a while and I woke up because it was cold.

And turned out that when we started the heater for a bit, the— this all became clear. And there was just stars. And we thought that there was only fog. And that’s I guess we fogged up the inside of the— yeah, you can see it right, well, maybe you can’t but—

We’d fogged up the car.

You ready to go?

Peter:

I think so.

Ursula:

Okay.

[DIP TO BLACK]

1:38 AM, Ursula:

Anyway, just—  it’s 1:38. We’re here at Haleakala, the summit. We slept for a bit. We got cold and we decided to turn the car back on. And it’s nice and comfy right now.

And I just want to report— 1:39 am, it’s beautiful. So. It’s worth it.

Just need to be prepared, that’s all.

Turning camera off.

[DIP TO BLACK]

Near dawn, July 30, 2011, moved from the summit to the visitor center of Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii, Ursula:

It is the July 30, 2011 and we’ve made it through an entire night at Haleakala in our car. And there’s the east. Sun rise. Very obvious now in the camera.

And just above that band of light you can still see Orion. Although that star on the lower right there is gone. But you can still make out—  still make out one, two, three, four, five, six, seven stars there.

And people coming and taking a look.

[CROSS DISSOLVE]

Wow, some of these people just aren’t really dressed for this. Some are wrapped in blankets. But I’m telling you, even in the car, it’s cold. And we’ve got a blanket and a comforter.

And that looks like the first park ranger there— coming.

Peter:

He’s been around before.

Ursula:

Has he?

Peter:

Oh yes.

[CROSS DISSOLVE]

Ursula:

I want to record right now, this being dawn, that we went up  here to honour Jose. July 30th, 2011. Spent the night on Haleakala.

And at sunset I said the Lord’s Prayer and then, I woke up several times and there always just seemed to be cloud. Fog.

[CROSS DISSOLVE to Peter's photograph of Milky Way galaxy]

And then at one point Peter woke up and said wait a second, there’s stars out, turn on the car.  And once I turned on the car the inside was all foggy. And once the windshield cleared, there were stars everywhere.

And we managed to get pictures of the Milky Way and all kinds of things. And it was at that point I said the second Lord’s Prayer.

And when I saw the narrowest band of light right there, I said the third one.

[DIP TO BLACK]

5:31 AM, dawn, Ursula:

Time right now, is 5:31 and we’ve already seen dawn. And cars are still coming. But we’ve survived [sic] a night on Haleakala. We showed up just before sunset. Saw the most amazing stars. And now we’re at dawn of a new day. And—

[Peter sighs. DIP TO BLACK]

After dawn, Ursula:

I have to say that at one point we went, around 2 o’clock, wouldn’t you say? We shifted from the summit to right here at the Haleakala crater visitor center.

And as we were driving we noticed that there was one, a van, wasn’t there? At the, at the summit. And we passed somebody else in an SUV tucked along the side of the road.

So there were at least two other cars that had spent the night.

So people do it.

[DIP TO BLACK]

After dawn, Ursula:

And what I’ll do is I’m going to brave putting down this window for a second. Oh my! It’s not nearly as cold as I thought!

[CROSS DISSOLVE]

There they are. I give these people credit.

[wind gusts]

Window up! Window up! Window up! Window up!

[CUT]

Approximately 5:40 AM, Ursula:

You know I’m surprised that even though we were there the whole night, nobody from the Park Service stopped by to check in on us. Don’t you think that was strange?

Peter:

I did think that they would at least at one, you know, some time during the night come by and check. Are you okay? Are you know, not stuck here or anything, are you, or anything, you know.

Ursula:

Yeah. Which is, I guess the message to anybody who’s thinking of spending the night here and that is that you really are on your own.

Of course we had our cell phone.

Peter:

I don’t know if our cell phone will work up here.

Ursula:

Oh. Okay. We had a paper weight that we brought.

[CROSS DISSOLVE]

Ursula:

And Peter’s confirmed— where does it say “No service”?

Peter:

“SOS only”.

Ursula:

Oh yeah. Whoops.

Peter:

Well.

Ursula:

There it is.

Peter:

There may —I don’t see any bars there. But there might be, you might be able to dial “911″.

Ursula:

Yeah.

Peter:

Maybe.

Ursula:

So keep that in mind, anybody who wants to spend the night in the car or spend the night period.

Peter:

The thing is, we use T-Mobile. T-Mobile doesn’t have service up here. Whether another carrier might —Sprint or somebody else, I don’t know.

Ursula:

Okay.

[DIP TO WHITE]

6:10 AM, a few miles down Haleakala, Ursula:

What’s really lucky is we noticed a sign that said “Slow vehicles pull over” and when I did there’s this beautiful sunrise there.

Peter’s taking a picture with Jose’s camera. And we call it “Jose’s camera” because, well, Jose just out of the blue sent us a Canon Powershot one day.

We flooded it and that’s the replacement. We still call it “Jose’s camera”.

Look at that.

Oh, and I just want to document —this is the picture, bring it closer? This is the picture that Jose’s camera did.

Right there.

Clouds.

[FADE TO BLACK]
[two other photographs shot with Jose's camera]

Please consider a donation to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation.

IN MEMORY

This morning we received the devastating news that a dear friend and strong supporter of our sea turtle research passed away. He had just undergone heart bypass surgery and did not recover from post-surgery complications. We spoke with him briefly two days ago, and were so fortunate to be able to tell him we loved him.

Aloha nui loa, Jose. Pulu `elo i ka ua o ka ho`oilo. Aloha!

And like all the other times
I’d lit candles for a loved one
at this church
I recited the Lord’s Prayer.

“Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.”

And at

“Thy will be done”
I faltered.

I couldn’t go on.

Couldn’t say
“on earth as it is in heaven.”
anymore.

Or the rest of the Lord’s Prayer.
anymore.

And I’ll always wonder
if he’d be okay
if I had.

— Ursula

Please consider a donation to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation.

In commemoration of Jose: a night atop Haleakala

That means “Home, Sweet Second Home” if I’ve translated correctly. (I don’t speak Hawaiian, I just have a Hawaiian dictionary.)

The Nohonani, Honokowai, West Maui, is our second home. I could have waited for a sunny sky but this picture illustrates that we just love to be here no matter what the weather does.

Click image to enlarge

Yes, we’ve finally returned to Maui. It’s been a stressful 14 months since we left. Family health issues resulted in delaying our annual pilgrimage until now. When we revised our plans, we had no idea how much we’d miss being here in July and August. At first, it didn’t bother us much, but as July wore into August, we gradually got more and more anxious to return. By the time we got on the plane on October 31, we were ready to walk across the continent and swim to Maui. We always knew we’d miss being here, but we seriously underestimated how much.

That’s why the picture above isn’t a typical bright, sunny, “Maui is Paradise” scene. Sure, the sky is grey and there was a little bit of light rain falling, but so what? It’s good to be here in any conditions. When we arrived, a huge surf was breaking and there were surfers right out in front of the Nohonani. In other years, that would have been the source of a good deal of frustration, but not this time. If we don’t get in a single dive (we actually don’t expect to get in many) and we never get the kayak in the water (we will) we’d still be content. We needed Maui. It’s already recharged us a great deal, and that’s all we really want.

5690

One of the things we thought we’d miss this past summer was watching over 5690 and her nests. We’ve been doing that every second year since 2002, when we were first privileged to watch 5690 make a nest. This year, however, 5690 didn’t show up. She  might be nesting somewhere else, but I consider that unlikely. My theory is that there has been a scarcity of honu food along the West Maui coast for a couple of years, so the females simply aren’t able to build up the reserves they need before making a nesting migration.

None of the Honokowai females who we expected to nest at the French Frigate Shoals last year were spotted there, and we’ve not had any reports of honu from this year’s list either. I suppose that it is possible that all of the tagged females we’ve identified over the years have simultaneously met some other fate, but I think it’s more likely they’re simply not ready to nest.

Masha Kai

Masha Kai’s transmitter failed a lot sooner than we’d hoped. We do think that she is still in the area because she’s been spotted. The person reporting this mentioned that it appeared the satellite tag was completely gone, which would be unusual but not impossible. The patch on her carapace is still visible, which is how she was recognized. We did learn that Masha Kai is a local girl, since all of the positions she transmitted were within shouting distance of the Nohonani, where the transmitter was attached.

Here’s the final tracking map for Masha Kao, as prepared by Denise Parker, JIMAR/PIFSC Marine Turtle Research Specialist, Marine Turtle Research Program
NOAA, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, Silver Spring MD. Mahalo Denise, and also to George Balazs, Leader, Marine Turtle Research Program, NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Honolulu HI, and Marc Rice, Director, Science and Technology, Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Kamuela HI.

What about the honu?

Since we arrived over three weeks ago, we have not dived, and we have only managed two kayak trips. There are several reasons for this, only part of which is the water conditions at this time of year. The fact is, we had several days in a row of excellent conditions (unexpected at this time of year) but other reasons kept us dry. We intend to change this but until we do, we don’t have much to report about the honu, and of course no pictures or video at all.

We can say, based on shore observations, that on some days there are a lot of honu about, and on others, none at all. We haven’t seen one haul ashore to bask yet, although we know that the week before we arrived one honu had crawled up onto the Nohonani beach three or four times. We have hope.

Remembrance Day/Veteran’s Day

One thing we did do, and which I am eager and might I say, proud to report, is honour the veterans on Remembrance Day.

This is the first time either of us has been outside Canada on November 11th. In Canada, November 11 is called Remembrance Day, and it is a day to honour the veterans of all wars, especially those who dies in the service of their country. There are remembrance ceremonies in every community, complete with the laying of wreaths at War Memorials and Veteran’s Cemeteries, accompanied by Canadian Armed Forces, Royal Canadian Legion, and Cadet Corps Honour Guards. For weeks leading up to November 11, The Royal Canadian Legion sells poppies, and by the time Remembrance Day arrives most Canadians are wearing one. It is a solemn and powerful occasion.

As November 11 approached here, we wanted to observe and perhaps participate in the ceremonies to be held here. We were baffled to discover that there weren’t any! We couldn’t even find a single poppy to wear. Apparently, in the United States most ceremonies honouring veterans take place on Memorial Day, which is in May.

In searching for mention of any ceremonies, we discovered that the Veteran’s Cemetery on Maui is in Makawao, so we drove up there (it’s on the slope of Haleakal for those who don’t know) to visit and get a feel for the place, and to see if there might be something planned that wasn’t posted somewhere on the net. We found it to be a beautiful, peaceful, and moving place—but there was no indication that there would be anything special happening on November 11. We agreed that we would do something ourselves.

Since we couldn’t find poppies for sale on Maui, we decided to make our own. It took a bit of searching and some creative thinking, but we were pleased with the results.  We made a video of the process, so you can judge for yourselves:

At 11:00 AM November 11, we were back at the Makawao Veteran’s Cemetery with our homemade poppies.

Lest we forget.

For Ursula’s blog on this, see MississaugaWatch: CANADIANS PREPARE FOR MAUI REMEMBRANCE/VETERANS DAY 2010: NO POPPIES?… MAKE YOUR OWN!

Future updates

I’m embarrassed that it has taken so long to post an update here. Unlike past seasons, I will not attempt to make weekly updates, but I do promise to post anything new and interesting. Turtle Trax is in dire need of a major overhaul but I have not been able to devote much time to it over the past year, and I can’t predict when I will be able to do it.

It’s been a while since we last posted a Fibropapilloma Bibliography. I have mixed feelings about this.

We put Turtle Trax online for two reasons. One was to celebrate the beauty and wonder of sea turtles, but especially the Hawaiian green turtle, or honu. The second was to raise awareness of their struggle with the debilitating and often deadly tumor disease, fibropapillomatosis, or FP.

When we started in 1995, FP looked like it could well be the end of the line for green turtles, and not just in Hawaii but throughout the world. No one knew the origins of the disease, or how it spread, or indeed how it could erupt into a pandemic simultaneously in discrete locations. For example, to this day nobody can explain how FP became an epidemic in Hawaii and Florida at the same time, since there is literally no contact between these two turtle populations.

Faced with the possibility of losing the green turtle, government agencies and conservation groups all over the world started looking into the problem. Quite a lot of research was conducted. Once the results began to become available, the need for an FP bibliography was obvious. In those days, there were frequent additions and updates. Then the Good News arrived: FP was not always terminal, and many turtles recovered on their own. FP research activity subsequently slowed. It’s never stopped, but once the threat of extinction was removed, so was the urgency to understand FP, hence the (much) longer intervals between bibliography postings—and my ambivalence.

Obviously I am happy that FP is not an extinction threat. In fact, at Honokowai now you would be hard pressed to identify a honu with FP. 15 years ago, it was easy. All you had to do was find a turtle—they all had FP. Not any more.

Kimo (U 362) at The Rock in 1993. At the time, Kimo had one of the worst cases of FP we had seen.

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11 years later, Kimo's tumors had disappeared with almost no trace. She is the poster honu for FP recovery.

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On the other hand, FP is still out there. Sure the Honokowai ohana has recovered and the disease has moved on—but not that far. Just a few kilometers up the coast, around Napili, FP is still common. Honu are still suffering and dying from its effects. Yes, FP will pass from this ohana too, but not before a lot of turtles have been affected. This is why it saddens me that I don’t have to post the FP bibliography as often as we once did. It reflects the fact that there simply isn’t as much research happening as there once was. The shift away from FP research is justifiable and understandable, but I still am pained whenever I see a turtle with tumors.

All of which is a long introduction to the latest FP bibliography. We present two formats: the Murakawa-Balazs bibliography in traditional format, organized by author (also offered as a PDF version for download), and our own version, organized by source. The latter arose from our own research efforts, and is meant to minimize the effort needed to fetch material from library shelves.

As always, we claim full responsibility for errors, and would appreciate it if you would tell us if you discover any.

Masha Kai, as of October 27, 2009

Tracking map for Masha Kai as of Oct 27 09

Masha Kai still remains close to the Nohonani, as expected. Most of the data points are clustered together close to where she was released. There are two exceptions, one to the north and one to the south. What they mean, if anything, is anyone’s guess. As we move into winter (yes, there is a winter in Hawaii) we might see some change in her behaviour. The really interesting questions are: will she make a nesting migration in the spring, and if so, where? Watch this space.

Meanwhile, if you are staying at any of the West Maui condos between Honokowai Park and Pohaku Park (S-Turns), remember that you have a chance of spotting Masha Kai. She’s easily recognized by the transmitter and antenna mounted at the top of her shell. If you see her, we’d love to know about it.

Background of tracking Masha Kai

Masha Kai is a female honu who was captured, given a satellite tag, and released at Honokowai, West Maui, on August 21, 2009. The video below is re-posted to provide you with some background information. If you want more on this story, read my last post from Maui for 2009.

Masha Kai is a female honu who was captured, given a satellite tag, and released at Honokowai, West Maui, on August 21, 2009. The video below is re-posted to provide you with some background information. If you want more on this story, read my last post from Maui for 2009.

Latest tracking maps

Two more tracking maps have been released. Masha Kai continues to remain close to her release point at the Nohonani. If you are staying at any of the West Maui condos between Honokowai Park and Pohaku Park (S-Turns), you have a chance of spotting Masha Kai. She’s easily recognized by the transmitter and antenna mounted at the top of her shell.

Marc Rice is mounting the satellite transmitter and antenna on Masha Kai's shell, making her easily recognizable whenever she is at the surface. For more about how the transmitter is mounted and how it will affect the turtle, watch the video.

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As of September 21, 2009

Tracking map for Masha Kai as of Sep 21 09

As of October 12, 2009

Honokowai’s missing Matriarch

This photo is from 2005, the last year we saw Tutu. Even though she's missing, we consider Tutu to be the Matriarch of Honokowai.

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For personal reasons, I’ve been thinking about matriarchs a lot lately. Inevitably, this led to thoughts of Tutu.

We’d seen fewer than a dozen honu before we met Tutu in 1990. She carried tags so we knew she was a nester. Back then, she was the largest honu we’d ever seen. She felt old to us so we called her “Tutu,” Hawaiian for grandmother. Later we discovered that we’d done her a disservice: Tutu was a relatively young adult female. Her first recorded nesting season was just two summers before, in 1988. Since female honu don’t begin laying eggs until they’re 20 or older, she might not be a grandmother even yet.

By the time we learned this, we’d already decided that Tutu was the Matriarch−the archetype honu mother. For the next 15 years, we could depend on finding her either at Honokowai or at the nesting grounds in the French Frigate Shoals. In 2006, however, she was not seen at either location. Since then, she has been missing. We kept a sharp eye out for Tutu throughout the summer of 2009, but had no luck. We put her tag numbers on a watch list for the people monitoring the nests at East Island, but as far as we know they did not record her presence. We don’t know her fate, so we like to think she is still living somewhere nearby, just not within our diving range. Her absence from the nesting grounds is disturbing, however. We are forced to consider the possibility that Tutu might be dead.

Some Matriarchs are gone forever. We don’t know that Tutu is one of them. Regardless of whether she is still alive, however, for us Tutu is and will always remain special: the Matriarch of Honokowai. Aloha nui loa Tutu, wherever you are.

Masha Kai is a female honu who was captured, given a satellite tag, and released at Honokowai, West Maui, on August 21, 2009. For the story and video of the process, see my last post from Maui for 2009.

Good intentions

We received the first satellite tracking map just over a week ago, but I didn’t post it immediately (obviously). I had every intention of sorting through the summer’s images and video to find and post some of the good stuff we  missed posting during the summer. I still plan to do that, but life has a funny way of interfering with plans. Suffice to say a family emergency has me in Newfoundland at the moment. Right after I got here, I received a second tracking map and I realized I couldn’t put off posting these any longer. So here they are.

As of August 31, 2009

Tracking map for Masha Kai as of Aug 31 09

After Masha Kai was released, Ursula and I hoped to spot her, if not on a dive, at least feeding inshore. This never happened, raising the possibility that perhaps she was a transient turtle and not a Honokowai honu after all. While this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it would have been a bit disappointing. The first tracking map, however, showed that she was just south of us but outside our observation area. In the inset, the Nohonani (indicated by the star) is the condo where we stay. The Ka’anapali Shores is easily visible  from the Nohonani, and we have snorkeled in that area from our kayak. We know that there are a lot of honu on the reef there. From our one short survey, we also know that there is considerable overlap with the honu we see on most of our dives. So, no surprise but an interesting map.

As of September 9, 2009

Tracking map for Masha Kai as of Sep 9 2009

The second map is interesting because it shows that she has returned to the area of the Nohonani, probably to forage. If that is what she’s doing, then sooner or later someone from the Nohonani or the Kulakane (the condo next door) will spot her transmitter and report the sighting to us.

Even if she goes nowhere else before her battery dies, Masha Kai will tell us something about the range of the Honokowai honu. We knew some of the Reef 2 honu sometimes went south to the area of the Ka’anapali Shores, but we didn’t know how often, or whether some of them ventured even farther. Perhaps Masha Kai has more to reveal. With luck, she’ll make a nesting migration next spring. We’re hoping.

Three honu have a disagreement over how to share a Turtle Trample.

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A lot going on

This is the last entry from Maui. Since my last post, a lot has happened but the first thing I want to write about is the picture you see above.

It’s a Turtle Trample on Reef 2. This summer, it was usually occupied by at least two honu. On this occasion, however, three turtles wanted to use the area. That’s when honu get cranky with each other, and that’s what led to this truly remarkable photo.

The turtle on the left is nipping the hind flipper of the honu in the centre. The male on the right is expressing his claim to the place with a gaping “yawn”. It’s difficult to get a photo of either of these honu behaviours, but to capture them both in one picture—amazingly fortunate. The icing on the cake, however, is in the background. You can see Ursula taking video of one of Hawaii’s extremely rare hawksbills. How lucky is that?

Keoki Kraters

We named the first ‘ea we ever met Keoki. (‘Ea is the Hawaiian name for hawksbills.) Later, when we learned more about ‘ea, we found out that one of their favourite foods is a sponge that grows between and beneath the corals. To get at these sponges, the ‘ea make holes in the reef, so we started calling these holes Keoki Kraters. When we see a fresh Keoki Krater, we know that there’s a hawksbill somewhere about.

Corals are easily damaged and many of them take several years, sometimes decades, to regenerate. When you dive in Hawaii, you are cautioned about this and are instructed to protect the reefs  by avoiding contact with the corals. Nobody told the ‘ea, however. Keoki Kraters can be pretty big. Watch this video of one being made to see how the turtle digs, using both flippers and beak to get at a choice morsel.

Between the ‘ea making Keoki Kraters and the honu making Turtle Tramples, it’s a wonder that Hawaii has any coral reefs left. For more on this subject, see the poster we presented together with George Balazs at the 2000 Sea Turtle Symposium in Orlando: “Changing the landscape: evidence for detrimental impacts to coral reefs by Hawaiian marine turtles“.

Masha Kai

Masha is a Russsian name, and Kai is Hawaiian for “sea”. Masha Kai is the name given to the female honu to whom George Balazs and Marc Rice attached a satellite transmitter (with a little help from us). The Russian part of the name came from some Russian guests at the Nohonani who watched part of the process. This video tells the story.

Some background: all summer, we’d been telling George (who heads Marine Turtle Research in the Central Pacific for the NMFS, for those who don’t already know) about the way honu now feed from early afternoon onwards right next to the waterline here at the Nohonani. George is never one to miss an opportunity, and he sensed one here. His reasoning was that it should be relatively easy to catch one or two of these honu with a tangle net, with the idea of putting a satellite transmitter on any promising candidate he might snag.

So George came to visit, along with Marc Rice, who teaches Marine Biology at the Hawaii Preparatory Academy and who has lots of experience helping George capture and release turtles for various research projects. On the afternoon of August 21, they managed to bring two turtles ashore. One was a young male whose tail was just starting to lengthen. The other was a mature female, which made her a more desirable turtle to carry a satellite tag, since there is a chance that she will make a nesting migration next spring.

The male was duly measured, weighed, given PIT tags, and released. The female got the extras: a satellite transmitter and a name. If all goes well, we’ll soon receive tracking maps that we can post here. We can report that on the dives we did after the tagging, we did not see her, nor have we spotted her feeding inshore, where she was captured. We couldn’t find either honu in our database, but we haven’t analyzed our photos from this summer so it’s possible we did photograph her underwater before she got her transmitter. Meanwhile, we’ll have to wait for the first tracking map to see whether she remained around Honokowai. I’m not sure which I prefer: a local lady, or a transient? Either way, it will be fascinating to see what we learn from her.

Aloha Masha Kai, and mahalo nui loa for the exciting afternoon and evening you provided for us and the guests at the Nohonani. Thanks also to George and Marc, of course.

The ladies return

Near the end of our summer at Honokowai, we start looking for honu with numbers etched into their shells. These are females freshly back from their nesting migration to East Island. The monitoring team engraves these markers into their shells while they are laying eggs, then paints them white to increase visibility. It’s a harmless process, because  the shells are similar to your fingernails, in that you can cut or scratch something into them without pain.

This year, we’ve been lucky enough to spot three honu mommas who have returned safely to Reef 2: numbers 132, 137, and 218.

2009 number 137, unnamed. We've known this honu for several years. Her favourite resting spot is at the back of Reef 1. You'll probably have to enlarge the image to see the number etched on her shell.

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2009 number 132 is a special turtle to us: Tiamat. We've known her since 1991. Again, enlarge the image to see the number.

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2009 number 218 is another special turtle: Raphael, known since 1992. We found her resting in exactly the same place along the edge of Reef 2 that she's occupied for several years now.

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We don’t have a report yet of how many of the lady honu on our annual watch list were seen at East Island, but we do know that at least one other Honokowai honu was there: Mendelbrot. (Yes, we spell the name with an ‘e’ not an ‘a’.)

Night Basking

We’ve been preparing to leave for a couple of days. It’s always tough to go back, and this summer is no exception. It’s been particularly rewarding watching the honu so close to shore, where more and more people get to see and fall in love with them. With so many turtles spending so much time right at the water’s edge, we knew it was inevitable that one of them would crawl out to bask one day.

Last night, I went out onto the lanai to check the rocks right below for night-time foragers. Most of the summer, there’s been one or two and sometimes as many as seven, easily spotted thanks to a large light that shines from the roof of the Nohonani directly into the water. I was disappointed that there was no one there to wish us aloha on our journey home. I was about to go back in when I glanced to my left—and there, out of the water and “basking” on the beach was an adult honu! (I put “basking” in quotes because obviously there was no sun, it was two hours past sunset.)

We rushed down to get a closer look, and we could see the long tail indicating that this was a male. He was quite content to lie there, even as a small crowd (four or five people) gathered to gaze down at him from the Nohonani sea wall. Eventually a couple of people approached him on the beach, always staying a respectful distance away. Still no sign that he was disturbed, and after a half an hour or so the crowd dispersed even though he was still lying almost motionless in the sand. After all, it can get boring looking at a sleeping turtle, even for us.

We left too, but once we got back upstairs, Ursula suggested that perhaps I could get some decent time exposure photos. After all, he wasn’t moving except to raise his head to breathe every few minutes. So I got one of the tripods, went back down to the beach, and gave it a shot. Okay, a few shots. They turned out pretty well—in fact, since the sand hides most of the graininess, it’s hard to tell that these were taken at night.

A male honu rests in the sand right below the sea wall at the Nohonani. 15 second exposure.

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In what turned out to be a spectacular finish to a summer full of interesting and unusual events, this male crawled up onto the beach on our last evening on Maui for this summer. 15 second exposure makes it hard to believe this was taken at night.

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Sometimes hugs just aren't welcome. Both of the honu in this photo are male.

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When companionship goes too far

One of the more puzzling honu behaviours we see is mounting. Male sea turtles are notorious for mounting… well, just about anything they can, or so the stories go, anyway. (Check the Googles.) In our experience, honu males aren’t quite as indiscriminate. Except for a couple of occasions when the turtle on the bottom actually was female, we’ve only seen them mounting other males.

The general assumption is that sea turtle mounting attempts are sexual. (Again, ask the Googles.) Our observations don’t back that up, however. In all the male-on-male mounting events we’ve seen, none of them has involved a penis. So we think something else is happening. Exactly what, we’d love to know.

At any rate, on our August 8 2009 dive, one male was particularly interested in a companion. Note that both incidents in this video involve the same two honu.

There are at least a dozen mature males hanging around Reef 2 this summer, but this is the only full-on mounting that we’ve seen. I’ve seen a couple of other unsuccessful attempts, but that’s all. Again, this doesn’t support the idea that male sea turtles are permanently on some sort of natural Viagra. On the other hand,we don’t know how randy they are in March, say, which is about the time that mating urges start up. Would we find the males more affectionate in early Spring? More research is needed, but is hampered by lack of funds. Pity.

Cornet fish companion

We see cornet fish all the time. They’re long and really skinny, and until last week, not particularly interesting. There’s one cornet fish our on Reef 2 who’s just a bit different, however. It likes to follow the honu—by hovering directly over them. Now we’ve seen fish that follow octopus (the multi-barred goatfish is notorious for this) and fish that follow eels (the trevally does this), but this is the first honu follower we’ve seen. Here’s a sequence of photos:

The cornet fish positions itself above the honu and stays there while the turtle swims across the reef, apparently oblivious to being shadowed. Note how the cornet fish curves to follow the contour of the honu's shell.

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The other cases involve the follower scavenging the food of the followed, but cornet fish don’t eat seaweed. Besides, the honu it followed weren’t feeding. We’ve not seen any other cornet fish do this either. Why? It’s another mystery. More research is needed. (Did I mention the lack of funding?)

When honu don’t appreciate human companions

Honu aren’t aggressive, meaning they don’t attack or bite, but sometimes they can be obnoxious. Occasionally, a honu decides to be a bully. This usually means the turtle swims directly at one of us and literally tries to run the target of choice down. This situation is easy to recognize as it develops, and really isn’t much of a threat. Being bumped by a honu isn’t likely to hurt or harm. Normally, we just try to get out of the way, but once in a while, the honu won’t give up.

In this video, a honu decides to intimidate Ursula and heads right at her camera. It isn’t obvious, but most of this clip was recorded while Ursula was trying to back out of the turtle’s path. In the process, the honu bites at the camera–not once, but twice! Now that’s really unusual. If the honu is making some kind of threat display, however, it’s not working. We think it’s pretty cute.

I want to stress that Ursula shot this video while backing up and trying to avoid contact. Some viewers might assume she was swimming alongside the honu for some of the time, but that’s not correct. I shot several photographs (between giggles, it was amusing to see) so I’m posting some of them here so you can see for yourself. (Normally I wouldn’t show these; the quality just isn’t there.)

This was taken after the initial straight-on run at Ursula, and shows the beginning of the circling tactic that this honu employs.

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Having forced Ursula to back up, the honu gets more emphatic and is about to bite at her camera.

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Now the turtle has completed another circle and is about to nibble at the camera again.

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A companion in a time of stress: Mickey Newbury

Mickey Newbury is probably one of the most influential songwriters of his time—and one of the least known. His Wikipedia entry states:

For a time, he was one of the most influential creative minds in Nashville and it’s arguable that he was the first real “outlaw” of the outlaw country movement of the 1970s.

His songs were recorded and made famous by stars such as Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, and many others. One of his best known songs is “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”, the song that turned Kenny Rogers into a Top Ten artist, and the song that drew Mickey to Ursula’s attention. The song that moved her to make a tribute, however, is called “The Willow Tree”, also known as “I Wish I Was”. I’m posting the video here. For the full tribute (which I really recommend) see her blog of August 11, “City of Mississauga’s ‘Trust, Quality, Excellence’ pushes MISSISSAUGAWATCH straight over the Edge –and The Muse escapes to Mickey Newbury”.

An old companion

Hoa is Hawiian for “companion”, and is also the name we gave a young honu in 1992. Hoa turned out to be a male, and this summer it looks as though he was off mating somewhere, probably the French Frigate Shoals. We conclude this because his shell has almost no algae growth on it, and he has white scar tissue at the trailing edges of his flippers, and he looks pretty skinny. These are signs that Hoa has been trying to be a honu daddy. We hope he succeeded.

No matter where he was, he returned to Honokowai and took up the same place we’ve found him in for the past several summers: the coral head where we anchor a temperature logger at South Park. Hoa thus provides us with out featured pic for this post:

Ursula poses with Hoa, known since 1997. Hoa's clean shell is a clue that he's probably been migrating.

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Zeus, who we consider the alpha male of Honokowai. We met Zeus in 1993, but he was photographed at Honokowai in 1992.

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Concerning old friends and site fidelity

Over the years we’ve written a lot about site fidelity: the strong tendency of honu to return to the same reef and often the same exact spot, year after year. We presented a poster at the 2000 Sea Turtle Symposium on the subject, and we make several references to the concept in our book. Yet this faithfulness is not absolute. Some honu, particularly mature males, are around for a few summers and then—not. We sight others every summer once we’ve met them, and there are those who are around for a while, absent for a few summers, then show up again.

Some absences are easily explained. Mature females migrate to nest every second or third year (see the poster). Usually when this happens our friend George Balazs, who heads the Marine Turtle Research Program in the Central Pacific for the National Marine Fisheries Program (George needs a shorter title; I suggest Head Honu Honcho) notifies us. Every season we send him a watch list and the monitors at East Island in the French Frigate Shoals let George know which ones show up. We can’t track males this way because males aren’t tagged, and although they might haul ashore to bask while at East Island, the monitoring team there don’t normally tag or mark them.

When we see a male at Honokowai with a carapace that has little algae growth, and who has whitish scars on his flippers and neck, we assume he’s been mating at the Shoals, but of course we can’t be sure. Nevertheless, such indicators do explain an absence: he’s been off mating somewhere. This brings us to Zeus.

For many years, we saw Zeus every single summer. We thought he probably wasn’t mating, since he never bore scars. (The scars result from wounds inflicted by other males as they attempt to dislodge a male who has successfully mounted a female.) Then, a few years ago a friend of ours sent us some pictures he took at Honokowai in March, showing a mating pair of honu. We easily identified the male as Zeus. So we thought, “Hmm. Zeus is clever, he doesn’t make the long swim to East Island, he just courts the ladies at home.”

Except… this week we saw Zeus for the first time this summer. He swam right by us at a leisurely pace, allowing Ursula to get plenty of good video.

As you can see, this time Zeus has several mating-type scars. It’s likely that he got those at East Island, where the competition for females is tough. Besides, the scars are pretty fresh, and most of the females who are receptive are there, not here. So the Big Guy probably does migrate sometimes. His mating habits, however, are not the only reason I mention Zeus.

Zeus is an excellent example of how our, i.e. Ursula and my, perception of site fidelity is inherently incomplete. All our observations on the topic are drawn from coverage of what is really a pretty small area. We’d be naive to assume that it coincides with the range of any particular honu, let alone an entire ohana. It’s true that some honu show up in that tiny observation area year after year, but it’s also true that some honu drift in and out of it. We are convinced that they still live at Honokowai, just not in the limited range we cover in our dives—not to mention that we are in the water for only about 5% of a given day.

Zeus used to hang around places that were within our dive site, so we saw him frequently. The spots he preferred changed gradually, though. At first we found him most often at the Turtle House. Later, we saw him so frequently at a place on Reef 2 that we named it Zeus’s Lair. Then, when North House was active, we encountered him there. So when he went missing for a whole summer a few years ago, we were concerned but we always felt that he’d just started hanging out somewhere outside our range.

Since then our Zeus sightings have confirmed our suspicions. We usually see him once a season, no more. It’s all we need. Sure, we’d love him to move back into our dive range, but we’re just happy to know he’s still out there, safe and living his life at Honokowai. Best of all, Zeus gives us confidence that most if not all of the honu that we used to call regulars but who we don’t see anymore are somewhere out there, safe and sound just like he is.

Seals & eels

Something interesting happened a few days ago—a monk seal dropped by for lunch. Hawaiian monk seals are endangered (reports say there’s only about 1200 of them) and most of them hang around the French Frigate Shoals. We’ve been lucky enough to see one around Honokowai a few times, but never when we’re in the water. The first time was back in 2005, when we were out on our kayak and spotted a big head that was neither honu nor human.

Our first monk seal sighting, from the kayak at sunset, July 29, 2005

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The seal—we don’t know its sex so let’s call it a she—had caught an eel and was gleefully slapping it against the water. I gather this is how they stun/kill their prey, because while it looks playful for the seal, the eel winds up chewed and swallowed.

I’ve seen a seal (presumably the same one since there just aren’t that many of them) playing with an object that wasn’t food. It was a couple of summers later, and I spotted her from our lanai. She was tossing and chasing something white and round and definitely not food. Eventually she gave up and left it to float away. but she showed that she’d play with something floating in the water.

At the time, none of our cameras had a zoom capable of capturing anything worth showing, but then last year (2008) we got a Panasonic SDR-H18. This little gem has a 32x zoom with fantastic image stabilization, so when we spotted our friend the monk seal diving repeatedly for something, we grabbed the camera and got this video from our lanai:

For some reason I never worked it up to post on YouTube, but then last week, the seal came by for a repeat performance. Fortunately, this year we bought a Panasonic SDR-H80, which is smaller and cuter and has a whopping 70x zoom! The image stabilization is amazing, but even on a tripod it’s difficult to zoom right in, track a moving subject, and get an image that isn’t a bit shaky. Nevertheless, we got more video of that rarest of Hawaiian sea mammals, the monk seal, enjoying another eel meal.

Good news from Kuamo’o

Readers of past summer summaries know that we have an alternate dive site that we call Kuamo’o. That’s not it’s real name, but we call it that because the site can only be reached by crossing private property. It has a large honu ohana, and we were invited to dive there a few years ago because many of the turtles had tumors. We were asked to check them out and try to determine how they were doing.

At the time, the tumor epidemic at Honokowai was slowly waning. We saw fewer honu with tumors. Many of the turtles we sighted we knew had recovered—regression cases. Kuamo’o was disturbing, in the sense that it was like stepping into a time machine and visiting Honokowai 5-10 years earlier: most turtles had tumors and there were many severe cases. We could comfort ourselves and the concerned residents at the location with the knowledge that we had already established that many turtles would recover.

This summer we were late going to Kuamo’o because of the constant swells throughout July. Kuamo’o is shallow and sandy. While it is a spectacular dive in the right conditions, the smallest wave action stirs up the sand and turns the water murky—not really an enjoyable dive.

Every year since we started diving there, we’ve placed a temperature logger for George Balazs, so we were just waiting for a few days of calm in a row that would let us retrieve last year’s logger. Finally, on July 31, we got the conditions we wanted. Sort of.

It had been calm but the water was still pretty messed up. Usually, on a Kuamo’o dive we’ll see 25-30 honu, but not this time. A resident assured us that there were as many turtles as there always had been, but I guess they had better things to do the day we were there. We did see 10-15 turtles. While that’s not a big sample, what we saw was encouraging.

For the first time, we did not see a lot of tumors. Usually, most of the honu we see there have some tumors, and until now we’d always see at least one extreme case. That didn’t happen this time. It was a lot like Honokowai: some small tumors on some turtles, and nothing serious on any of them. Some of them appeared entirely tumor-free, although if we checked the chances are high that those are regression cases.

Without several dives, it’s not possible to say whether the epidemic has faded from Kuamo’o in the way it has from Honokowai, but that’s what we’ve always expected. Our single visit certainly gave us reason to feel encouraged.

Oh, and we did retrieve George’s temperature logger.

This contains the temperature logger we placed in 2008 for George Balazs, Head Honu Honcho.

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Our summer gem

Who would deny that the cutest of any species are the youngest?  Maybe it’s Nature’s way of protecting the most vulnerable and promising individuals, or maybe it’s just humans who automatically find youngsters endearing. At any rate, there’s no doubt that the little jewel of a honu that we’ve featured several times now has completely charmed us. If the reader responses we’ve gotten so far are typical, we’re far from alone. I wanted to give you an idea of just how small this little turtle is, so here’s a photo with Ursula in the picture for comparison:

Ursula takes video of the cute little honu.

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We see this beautiful young honu on almost every dive, always in the same area, never intimidated by our presence. We try not to pay too much attention but it’s hard not take pictures and just enjoy the cuteness of the little turtle—especially when she (or maybe he, who knows) sometimes seems to be acting out just to get our attention.

For example, sometimes when she returns from getting air, instead of returning to rest underneath the coral head she lands in the sand and flings it about. That’s what Ursula is recording, and that’s what she’s doing in my favourite pic of the week.

Our summer sweetheart flinging sand hither and yon, which I like to think is for our entertainment—but of course, it isn't.

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Update, August 11

Ursula’s latest blog is honu-related. See City of Mississauga’s “Trust, Quality, Excellence” pushes MISSISSAUGAWATCH straight over the Edge –and The Muse escapes to Mickey Newbury.

The sole turtle at the Turtle House today was not a honu, but an 'ea (hawksbill).

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The end of an era

[NOTE: This blog is also posted at Ursula's site, www.mississaugawatch.ca.]

Our dive of July 28, the fourteenth of 2009, marked the end of an era for us and for the Turtle House. It was nothing like I had expected.

The discovery of the Turtle House

We discovered the Turtle House at the end of the summer of 1989. We’d been expanding our dive area all summer, and this was the furthest we’d ever wandered. The memory is still vivid for me.

First, I saw a vague yellowish cloud in the distance, unlike anything else I’d seen underwater. As we swam closer, we could see that we were actually seeing a huge school of goatfish, more or less hovering near a great, out-of-place rock.  It was—still is—as big as a small bus and there is nothing else like it anywhere in our dive area. While Ursula busied herself looking around and under what we came to call The Rock, a fascinating place in itself, I ventured makai across a small reef.

To my great delight, I could see that across a narrow sand channel there was a huge coral mound—with four honu resting on it! This was exciting because we’d never seen that many turtles resting together before. I rushed back to get Ursula to show her, and we spent a few moments gazing in awe before we realized that our air was running short and we had to go.

We only had four or five dives left that summer, but we visited the Turtle House on every one of them. It turned out that four was actually a low number of honu to find there, and we counted as many as a dozen all within the immediate vicinity of the Turtle House. We were fascinated and delighted. The following winter was long and frustrating for us because we were so eager to spend more time with the turtles there.

The Turtle House honu

Most of the turtles in our Who’s Who Underwater at Honokowai are Turtle House honu. That’s where we first met them, those are the first ones we came to know and name, and sadly, many of them were the first ones we knew who became afflicted with severe fibropapilloma tumors, and thus the first to “disappear.” We never saw them die so we could not say for sure that they were dead, but no other conclusion made sense.

Noke, Barney, Four Spot, Hoahele, and especially Howzit—all youngsters from the Turtle House, all infected with tumors, all went missing and were presumed dead. Larger honu did not escape the curse. Poino was the first to vanish, followed by 1991 Turtle 10, 1993 Turtle 11, 1993 Turtle 8D—they all vanished. (By then we’d identified so many honu we only gave names to the ones with the strongest personalities.)

The Promise we made

1993 was a key year for us. We confirmed that Clothahump, the first honu we’d ever met, had contracted fibropapillomatosis, FP, the tumor disease. We both broke down and cried underwater when we saw her. That was a seminal experience. From the pain of that moment was born the Promise to Clothahump and the honu: to tell their story to the world. Two years later, Turtle Trax became the first sea turtle website. That was our first step towards fulfilling our Promise.

The Book

Our website was never intended to be the fulfillment of our Promise. From the beginning, we talked about writing a book. Back then, we knew we weren’t ready to do that. We weren’t even close. We had to educate ourselves about the honu, about FP, about the environment at Honokowai. We didn’t know when we’d be ready, but we knew the time hadn’t arrived yet.

The prompt

Then at the end of 2001, I felt pain in my chest. I spent New Year’s 2002 in an Intensive Care Unit at the Credit Valley Hospital, followed quickly by a double angioplasty. I was lucky. No heart attack, just the warning signs. I started a rehabilitation programme to get me back in shape to dive again, and Ursula joined me. We both realized that if we wanted to keep spending time with the honu, we had to change our lives.

Another thing we realized was that we couldn’t delay writing the book any longer. Confronted with mortality, we got started.

Published at last!

The journey was long and difficult. Enough said about that. July 18, 2008, marked a major leap towards fulfilling our Promise. That was the day we received our advance copy. Since then The Book of Honu has done well, and you can buy it at major bookstores throughout Hawaii, as well as at most online booksellers (e.g. University of Hawaii Press, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca).

Closure

When we first made the Promise, we thought publication would mean that we were finished. In 2002, however, we’d done something special for Osha Gray Davidson’s book, Fire In The Turtle House, which was partly inspired by the honu of Honokowai. Every year since, we’ve checked on its condition and it has held up well. We both agreed that to bring closure to our Promise, we had to do the same for The Book of Honu.

Ursula signs the copy of our book that will be anchored at the Turtle House.

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On July 17, we took a copy of the book to Maui Plastics to be prepared for anchoring at the Turtle House. We both signed it, dedicating it to our honu friends from the Turtle House. Last week, we got word that the casing was finished, so all we needed were the right conditions to finish our task. July 28th turned out to be the day.

The snorkel out

A dive to the Turtle House is arduous. It’s a long way out, and the days when we could make such a dive without effort are over. We snorkel for about ten minutes (about half the distance) before we descend. This time, I had a lot to think about.

I knew that a visit to the Turtle House these days would depress me. So much of what had given us joy out there is now lost. The yellow cloud of goatfish, the first thing I ever saw there, disappeared sometime between summer 2004 and summer 2005. It had gotten smaller, true, preyed upon by a school of about 15-20 ulua (trevally), but that had been happening for years. We don’t think the ulua destroyed the school, but we don’t know what happened either. They’re gone, and I miss them, but that’s not what depresses me.

It’s the missing honu, the turtles I loved, that bring me down. Not just the ones we think are dead; those we knew about and mourned for years ago. It’s the abandonment of the place, the appearance of a ghost town, that’s what makes me sad. I want the honu to still hang out there, lying about and posing for pictures, swimming up to us, even landing on us—but none of that seems likely to happen again. They’ve moved on, and so have we.

Today, we’re lucky. The most popular honu hangout is the much closer Reef 2, still an easy dive for us. Even better, the honu have begun feeding right outside the condo where we stay, the Nohonani. We can walk out onto our lanai at almost any time of day and spot at least a couple of heads popping up for a sip of air.

In the evening, we can often count half a dozen turtles grazing on the rocks directly offshore of our unit, in waist-deep water and only 6-7 meters from the waterline. I fully expect that any day now, a honu will pull out onto the beach to bask. We’ve already seen this behaviour along the West Maui coast.

So those were some of the things I contemplated as we made our way towards the Turtle House to finish what we started so many years before.

Anchoring the book

As I expected, we did not find any honu when we got to the Turtle House. There was, however, one turtle waiting to greet us: a hawksbill, the first one we’ve sighted this summer. Quite a large one too, one of the biggest we’ve seen, and not one familiar to us. She—no long tail and large, so likely a female—let me take her portrait and looked on as we got ready to take care of business.

Ursula takes a picture of me taking a picture of her, with an 'ea in the background, probably wondering what these noisy clumsy intruders were up to.

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Every summer since 2002, on our first dive to the Turtle House the first thing we do is check Fire In The Turtle House. As it always has so far, it had survived the winter waves with no ill effects.

The copy of Osha Gray Davidson's book placed at the Turtle House referred to in the title.

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We then set about putting our own book in place. This took a lot of effort, and the story is best told by the video we made:

Securing the book occupied my mind for a few minutes. Unfortunately, the casing had cracked under pressure, something Maui Plastics had warned us might happen. They’d said the same about Osha’s book too, but it had survived so we were willing to take the chance. I was dismayed at first, but then considered that whether it survives isn’t important, it was completing the Promise that mattered. Maybe next summer the water will have destroyed it, or maybe we’ll never get to go out there again. Whatever happens, we know we finally completed what we started in 1993. It’s over, or as the Hawaiians say, pau.

Sadness runs in a circular motion

In the video, Ursula makes much of the fact that I reached 1100 pounds of air at the Turtle House and we had to leave. In the past, we have often stayed out there until I was down to 800 pounds, and still made the beach with air in the tank. (Aside: women are way better than men when it comes to air consumption; Ursula usually has 800 pounds or more left when I’m down to less than 100.) I wasn’t worried that I’d run out, and neither was she— except…

My reaction as we left surprised me. I broke into tears. The sadness, the loss, the pain of watching honu from this place suffer and disappear… it suddenly overwhelmed me. I tried to keep in mind the joy the place had brought us, the beauty it once held, the delight we experienced in meeting and getting to know and love the Turtle House honu, but that just made me feel worse. So I blubbered away pound after pound of air most of the way back. Every time I thought I had it under control, some new memory would set me off again. [Ursula's note: I just read this and had no idea until now.] I really was puzzled why I was so emotional, but later, as I contemplated what to write, it came to me.

The only other time I can remember crying underwater was exactly at the moment this journey began: when we saw that Clothahump had FP.

For some reason, before we’d started out, a song I’d completely forgotten until then had been running through my head, a little ditty by Donovan. My subconscious was trying to tell me something. I’ll leave you with the lyrics:

Happiness runs in a circular motion
Thought is like a little boat upon the sea.
Everybody is a part of everything anyway,
You can have everything if you let yourself be.
Happiness runs, happiness runs.

“Happiness runs”, Donovan Leitch

The author contemplating a Promise fulfilled.

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Just a few of the pod of spinner dolphins that regularly swim up and down the West Maui coast—but hardly ever within our sight during a dive.

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Poddin’ us

There’s a large (probably over a hundred but who knows) pod of spinner dolphins that frolic up and down the West Maui coast. They’re delightful to see because spinners seem to take great joy in leaping high out of the water, spinning madly, and landing with a great splash. We see them from shore many times during a summer, and it isn’t uncommon for us to hear them during a dive. Hardly ever do they come within view while we’re underwater, but when it does happen it makes that dive really special.

On July 20 we had such a dive. We’d only submerged a couple of minutes before Ursula signalled to me that she could hear dolphins. She has to do this because I’ve gotten deaf in the higher frequencies that dolphins like to use, and even when they’re right on top of us I can’t hear a lot of the chatter. At any rate, almost as soon as she finished letting me know, she pointed excitedly up to the surface. Ursula talks to her camera underwater these days, and even if I couldn’t hear the dolphins I could hear her shout, “THERE THEY ARE!” I’ll let the video tell the rest.

Cutting the line

The dolphins had already made our July 20 dive special, but there was more joy in store. I experienced my happiest moment underwater so far, and quite likely the happiest moment of the whole summer.

In the summer of 2008, we noticed that a Honokowai male (1998 Turtle 32 in our database, no name) had gotten monofilament line wrapped tightly around his left flipper. The line was embedded fairly deeply in his skin. In such cases, the line often tightens and cuts off blood circulation, eventually rendering the flipper useless. Such entanglement will actually amputate the limb, although it is a long and painful process.

Most Honokowai honu allow us to approach closely, but throughout the summer of 2008, 1998-32 would not let me get close enough to try taking the line off. We kept seeing him on most dives this summer (2009) but he was still wary when I tried to approach. Fortunately, his flipper looked healthy and he seemed to have full use of it. Knowing the potential for disaster, however, I could not abandon my goal of removing the line.

CAVEAT: DO NOT ATTEMPT A RESCUE LIKE THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE CONSIDERABLE EXPERIENCE WITH TURTLES! NOTE THAT IN THE U.S., APPROACHING SEA TURTLES CAN BE CONSIDERED HARASSMENT AND COULD RESULT IN CHARGES.

On July 20, for the first time, he let me get close enough to reach out with my scissors (don’t all divers carry scissors?) and get in a snip. We (the turtle and I) were lucky in that one cut was all I needed to get the whole tangle off. Ursula caught the whole thing on video:

Since then, we’ve seen him and gotten a good look at the flipper. The limb appears fine, with no permanent damage except for scarring. 1998-32 also seems more tolerant now, although we no longer have reason to try to get close. Two days later, I got this picture:

Close-up of the scar left around 1998 Turtle 32's left flipper. The monofilament had been wrapped tightly for over a year.

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15 bundles of joy

Another source of Maui joy comes whenever we have the privilege of watching a turtle nest being excavated. On July 21, 2009, we got that chance. Hawaii State Biologist Skippy Hau excavated two green turtle nests on the north shore of Maui, near Waihe’e. Both had hatched within a day or two of each other, meaning that two different females were nesting on this beach. Since nesting in the Main Islands is still rare, this Maui beach has become an important site for honu.

Once hatchlings are known to have emerged from a honu nest, the procedure is to wait 5-7 days, then excavate the nest. On Maui, excavations are the responsibility of our good friend Skippy Hau. He excavates for two reasons: first, to rescue any trapped hatchlings, and second, to evaluate the success of the nest and to collect any unhatched eggs or dead hatchlings for analysis by the Marine Turtle Research Program run by George Balazs for the NMFS.

Hatchlings need other hatchlings to help them dig out of a nest. (See our book, The Book of Honu, for a nice description!) This means that when Skippy digs out a nest, he’ll usually find at least one or two trapped hatchlings, stragglers who have no hope of digging themselves out without help. In this case, Nest 1 contained seven live hatchlings and Nest 2 added another eight. Skippy saved fifteen little honu, and at sunset, released them to scamper down the beach before an adoring crowd.

This video shows how cute honu hatchlings are. Beware, heart thieves at work!

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If you’ve watched the video, you already know how difficult it is for hatchlings to reach the water. They struggle down the beach, only to be tossed back when a wave breaks over them. Often this happens repeatedly, and clearly it is exhausting for the little turtles. I give you my favourite photo from the nest excavation, which I like to think symbolizes the battle of the honu hatchlings to reach the sea.

Travails of the newly hatched honu

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Pu'ipu'i, known at Honokowai since 1994, poses atop the coral at South Park

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Pu’ipu’i (U-249), an elegant lady of considerable dignity

Some honu somehow manage to appear, well, experienced. Pu’ipu’i is such a turtle, but in her case, the look has been well-earned.

We first saw Pu’ipu’i (Hawaiian for stocky, plump) at Honokowai 14 years ago.  At the time, she was—and she remains—an aloof turtle. That first summer she permitted us close enough to read her tags, but unlike most of the other honu, she always gave the impression she’d rather that we stayed away. For example, she wouldn’t—still won’t—flee when she sees us, but neither will she stay around for long once we’ve arrived, unless we stay well away. That’s why I was delighted that on last Monday’s dive, she stayed settled and let me take several portraits, my favourite of which you see above.

When we first met Pu’ipu’i we saw evidence of fibropapilloma tumors. At the time, we still hadn’t seen enough FP to know that in many turtles, the disease naturally regresses. All we could tell was that she was infected, which at the time made us fear for her. Back then we didn’t see her much, and the next year we recorded a sighting was not until 1999. By then we knew enough that we could tell she was a regression case. 1999 was the year we expanded our dive range to include North House and we realized that one reason we hadn’t seen Pu’ipu’i every year was that her range exceeded ours. Once we began visiting North House and Reef 2 regularly, we saw her more often.

Then, in 2000 we got delightful news from East Island in the French Frigate Shoals: Pu’ipu’i had been recorded nesting there, and better yet, the monitoring team had taken a photo! We’d put her on the list of potential nesters for that year, so Vanessa and Aaron had been watching for her.

Pu'ipu'i making one of her nests at East Island, French Frigate Shoals, on June 21, 2000. Photo by Vanessa Pepi and Aaron Dietrich.

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In 2001 she was back at Honokowai, and in 2002 she nested again and this time she returned in time for us to see her before we left for the winter. On August 26, during one of our last dives for that year, I recorded her on videotape with a bright new marking on her shell, L47U, identifying her as a 2002 nester.

So Pu’ipu’i is a faithful Honokowai resident. She makes the 1600 kilometer round trip and returns right to the same reefs she left. Given that many of  the Honokowai regulars seem to have gone looking for greener pastures in the past three years, we’re grateful to see her. She’s a touch of familiarity in what has increasingly become a “new crowd” at Honokowai. Best of all, she’s become more tolerant—although not by a lot.

A rare nesting event on Oahu

Last week, on Thursday July 16, the NMFS Marine Turtle Research Program (MTRP) got a call from the Game Warden (Robin) at Kaneohe Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Pyramid Rock Beach is part of the base, and Robin had witnessed a turtle laying eggs—at 10:45 in the morning! This is unusual not just because nesting turtles in the Main Islands are still rare (although becoming more common every year) but also because honu nest at night.

Robin also managed to measure the turtle’s carapace length. It was 66 cm, much too small for a nesting honu. On the other hand, these characteristics are a perfect fit for another species: the olive ridley. Now ridleys are extremely uncommon in Hawaii. To have one nest here and be seen doing it—, well, those are win-the-lottery odds. Yet the description of the nesting behaviour and better yet, photographs, confirmed that an olive ridley had done her motherly duty on Pyramid Rock Beach.

Robin was concerned that the nest was vulnerable to being washed out by high surf, so Stacy and Irene from the MTRP went to the base to examine the nest. Since the nest was just 6 meters or so above the high tide line, they agreed that the eggs should be relocated. These photos tell the story of what happened next.

This photo shows how close the nest was to the waterline, putting it in danger of being washed out. Photo by Irene Nurzia-Humburg and Stacy Hargrove.

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They carefully opened the nest and relocated 108 eggs to a safe location further up the beach. Photo by Irene Nurzia-Humburg and Stacy Hargrove.

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The new location, further up the beach and protected by flagging tape and signs. Photo by Irene Nurzia-Humburg and Stacy Hargrove.

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In 7-8 weeks, if all goes well, Robin or some other lucky Marine might catch sight of little hatchlings scampering down the beach. After that, the MTRP team will excavate the nest to determine its success, with hopes of obtaining a DNA sample to help further understand the unusual phenomenon. Since marine turtles usually return to the beach they hatched from to nest, we wonder if, a couple of decades from now, Pyramid Rock Beach might be the scene of a mini-arribada. (An arribada is the name for the mass nesting event of the ridley turtle.) Hey, they’re Marines! Semper Fi!

Introducing a Honu Cutie

Last week we posted a photo of the latest cute recruit to steal our hearts. She—we refer to most honu as “she” until we are sure of their sex—doesn’t have a name because we decided that naming the little recruits was just too heart-breaking. At Honokowai, the history has been that virtually all young honu (there’s been only one exception in our records) become infected with fibropapilloma tumors, which quickly advances. Then they disappear. So far, there’s no sign of this happening to our latest sweetheart, but we’re still too cautious to name her.

We see her reliably in the same place at the start of our dives, resting under a coral head about 5 meters down and 100 meters or so from shore. We assume she probably encounters snorkelers quite regularly, since she tolerates our interest with aplomb. On our latest dive, Ursula recorded a bit of her routine, which we spliced together with a sample of the action out on Reef 2, 300-400 meters from shore and a bit too far out for a little one just yet. I hesitate to say this, but I will: since the FP contagion seems to have peaked and diminished to mercifully low levels at Honokowai in recent years, maybe this cutie has a chance. So far, no bad signs. If she’s still clean next year, we might be seeing a happy breakthrough.

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At the risk of being monotonous…

Ursula looks in on a honu cutie.

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There can be no better welcome to our new look than a wave from our old friend, Aikane.

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The new look

Aloha and welcome to our new front page. Previous visitors will notice that I’ve moved the Summer blog onto the front page, and moved the links around. The idea is to give the most recent activity (i. e. our summer commentaries) more prominence. I felt the old front page sort of buried the blog, so that many visitors were missing a chance to read our delightful prose.

I’m not sure if I’m finished tinkering, so if anyone has suggestions, there is a comment box below, you know. Mahalo for any contributions to the process.

Turtle turnabout

On to what is the most remarkable honu behaviour I’ve seen in 20 years of watching honu underwater.

Last week I posted a short video on YouTube that we called Honu Hassle … with KARMA! The Karma part comes about when a small spotted pufferfish (C. jactator, commonly called a toby) takes a bite out of an obnoxious honu. Watch and see for yourself:

Tobies like to hide under honu and it’s quite common to see them biting the turtles, presumably in an effort to snag a parasite snack. It’s clearly annoying to the honu, since they often flinch when bitten. Occasionally a toby bites repeatedly and you’ll see the honu leave in frustration.

So it was that during a dive this week, I was setting up to photograph a honu when I noticed a toby approaching:

A small toby approaches a honu, probably in anticipation of chomping some parasite lunch—and consequently, the turtle as well.

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I was preparing to get a picture of the action, when suddenly—CHOMP! Not the toby, the honu! I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. The toby had vanished, and it had all happened so fast I had no chance to click the shutter. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but there was the honu right in front of me, masticating—something. I recovered from my surprise and started to snap pictures. As the honu chewed (not really the right word) the surrounding water started to fill with particles, so I hoped to catch a shot with some evidence of the poor toby’s fate. This sort of thing is completely dependent on luck, and the best I could manage was a shot in which you can just barely see the toby’s tail:

A honu with a mouthful of toby. See inset for the tip of the toby's tail.

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Now, honu are vegetarians. They don’t eat fish. Although immature honu are omnivores during their pelagic stage, when they arrive inshore they switch to a vegetarian diet, like their mature cohorts. Neither of us has ever, ever, in 20 years seen a honu eat a fish. It’s not clear at all why this turtle snapped up the toby. Perhaps this was a case of “I’ve had enough and I’m not going to take it anymore.” I really doubt that it was done for food, because a) as I said, honu don’t eat fish, and b) look at this next picture:

Anthropomorphic perhaps, but doesn't this honu look disgusted?

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Disgusted or not, right after I took that shot the honu spit out the remains of the toby, got up, and swam away. Here’s what was left:

Not really honu food. This toby will never bite another honu.

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At this point, I feel like saying, “Now I’ve seen everything,”—but I’m pretty sure I haven’t. Honu are full of surprises.

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As I’ve written before, we have mixed feelings when we see little recruits. While they are adorably cute and their carapaces are simply spectacular (they’ve not had time to develop the coating of algae that will dull their shells) at Honokowai it’s the really young turtles who historically have suffered most from fibropapilloma tumors. Our experience is that they all get infected, it progresses faster, and it is more devastating in recruits. Nevertheless, the sight of a recruit is always a joy to behold. There’s one living right now about 100 meters from shore, and Ursula got a wonderful picture that we’d like to share with you.

This little honu is the smallest we've seen this summer. I'm sure I don't have to point out the dazzling shell.

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Best of all, this turtle’s eyes look clear, meaning that so far there’s no FP. (Our experience is that FP starts in the eyes.)

We’ve actually been on Maui for a week now. We got to the Nohonani close to midnight last Sunday (June 28) and as we always do, walked out onto the lanai for our first look at Our Water. (Okay it actually belongs to the honu, and the sharks, and the Hawaiians, but it’s our back yard to me.) Our lanai almost overhangs the water, it’s that close. No more than 5 metres from the waterline, straight in front of us, there is a rock formation that barely breaks the surface at low tide. As our eyes adjusted, we could see movement down there. We could make out one, then two, then three honu grazing on the rock. It got harder to count them as they moved around, but we figured there were at least four and maybe five turtles right below us, all in water that would barely come up to our knees. What a honu greeting! If only the light had been good enough for video or pictures…

On Monday morning, I woke with a scratchy sore throat. It was just as well since the ocean noise already precluded any thought of diving—we had a swell running. So that was pretty much our week with the honu: watching from the lanai while waves stirred up the water and I suffered from a (fortunately mild) cold. The trend we’ve noted over the past couple of years is continuing. It’s now common to see several honu feeding throughout the day along the formation we call the Sea Wall (actually a ledge of petrified beach) about 25 metres from shore. Starting in the mid-afternoon, some of them move in even closer to shore to work on the rocks like the ones right below us, although we haven’t seen a repeat of the numbers we saw that first evening. These are often full-grown honu, leading us to expect fewer turtles out on the reef during the day. More on that in a moment.

Last summer we checked the rocks and Sea Wall  to see what the honu were eating, and it was clear that there were sparse pickings. Their preferred food in the past has been pterocladiella, but that’s been grazed right down to the rock in most places. This summer we’re seeing a resurgence of ulva, or sea lettuce. Fortunately for the honu, ulva regenerates quickly and apparently is their new main course. Over the past few summers, encroaching sand has covered a lot of the ocean floor that used to host various seaweeds. Describing the area as a desert is not inappropriate. We’ve speculated that this is the main reason for the change in our ohana’s behaviour towards daytime feeding, and why we find fewer honu out on the reef.

Unfortunately for you, dear reader, this new behaviour is difficult to show to you (but I just had an idea that might work, we’ll see). We could make video of long periods of waves broken by occasional honu heads popping up for a second or so, but we’ll spare you that. Photos are not practical either. Shooting from the beach or the lanai requires lots of luck since most of the time, there’s nothing to see but water. We don’t try to approach them using snorkel or SCUBA because they are far less tolerant when feeding inshore than when resting on the reef. Even if we were so rude as to disrupt dinner, most of the time the water is too murky from wave action on beach sand to allow decent photographs or video. I guess you’ll have to come to Maui and see for yourself.

We  finally get wet

So yesterday both the swell and my cold had diminished enough to try diving. After the usual first dive frustrations with equipment (e.g. I broke a snorkel-keeper) we got underway, submerging much closer to shore than usual. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the swell hadn’t destroyed visibility completely; in fact, I’d rate it good. It was immediately obvious that ulva was growing profusely inshore, which is good for the honu.

As we arrived at Reef 2 we started to see honu. I’m not as good at recognizing individuals as Ursula, but I knew right away who the first honu I photographed was. Blue was named for his distinctive shell, seen partially covered in this photo:

Blue is a male who apparently did not make the migration to the French Frigate Shoals this summer.

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The first summer we met Blue, he had fresh scars on the trailing edges of both his front and hind flippers typical of those inflicted by competing males. He was also skinny—much skinnier that you see him here. Looks like he’s not feeling as raunchy this year.

The rest of the dive was uneventful. We went to Reef 2 (those of you with our book can now look at the map and see where we were!) but found perhaps ten or twelve honu. A few years ago we’d probably see as many as 30. There seem to be fewer and fewer fish, which is not surprising given that the reefs here have been declining steadily for years. On the way back, I was briefly surrounded by a school of needlefish, fun to see but exceedingly difficult to photograph due to their silvery colour. Nothing else special to report.

A typical scene

I’ll close this short blog with a typical scene from yesterday. I’m thinking that this summer, blog entries will be irregular rather than on some forced schedule. If something neat happens, I’ll report it as soon as I can; otherwise, I’ll try to post weekly but who knows. Aloha!

An unidentified honu at peace on the reef, with me hovering about enjoying the view. Note lack of other honu in the picture.

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For the remainder of this summer, these blogs are dedicated to the memory of Rick Dalton, brother-in-law but more important, friend. Aloha nui loa Rick.

Sometimes miracles do happen

Last spring, I booked our annual Maui trip for a month later than usual, swapping July out for September. We were anticipating the release of The Book of Honu, and the plan was to be on Maui when it happened. A few weeks later, however, our editor informed us that the schedule was for advance copies to be available in late September, and books wouldn’t be shipped to stores until October. Naturally, we were a little disappointed, and we switched our plans back to our traditional July and August trip.

Shortly after we arrived, I sent email to our editor to let him know our summer address, and to our delight he wrote back that there was a good chance that we would receive an advance copy while were still on Maui. My understanding is that it’s highly unusual for a publisher to be ahead of schedule, but I certainly appreciated that we were lucky enough for our book to be one of those rare exceptions.

Well, if you’ve been following along, you know what happened. Our great friend and mentor and the expert on honu, George Balazs, came to visit us in mid-July. While he was here, we got our advance copy! Based on its availability, Maui Ocean Center invited us to help them celebrate the honu during the last week of August, which is just over, and that brings us to…

Our first appearance as authors

On Monday, August 25, I presented a slideshow and talk at the Deep Reef Exhibit. I used a  number of pictures from the book, supplemented with some that had been excluded simply because of space limits. It was unrehearsed and I’d only finished putting it together that morning, which meant that it had some rough spots. At the end, however, one of the MOC staff asked if I’d be available to give one of their Ocean Talks, so it couldn’t have been awful. (I said yes, but it will have to wait until next July.)

Your author makes his first public appearance as your author.

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Then came the awkward part: book signing.

I’ve always felt sorry for the guy who sits at a table with a pile of books in a bookstore and smiles hopefully at shoppers. Now I was that guy. It felt weird. Sure, people did buy the book and get us to sign it, but there was a lot of waiting and smiling too.

Yes, I said “us” because Ursula was there too, drawing little honu cartoons along with her signature. During the slack periods, however, she nonchalantly wandered around looking like just another shopper, leaving me to be That Guy. She says she wants me to have most of the glory. I’d rather share. She wins this round.

Our first book signing, with me playing the part of That Guy.

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It really didn’t matter. All of the discomfort was worth it, because The Moment had finally arrived: our book was officially on the shelves! We started the summer with no hope of seeing the book in stores until we came back next July. (We don’t expect bookstores in Canada to stock it.) On Monday, however, the dream came true. There it was, and not only that, there we were actually signing them.

The latter was never really part of the dream, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. We owe it to University of Hawaii Press and in this case, Maui Ocean Center, because helping to promote the book comes with the territory. Maybe it gets easier with repetition. So on Thursday…

Our second appearance as authors

This time I read from the book down at the Turtle Lagoon. Reading is a lot easier than unrehearsed talking about slides. It was a lot more enjoyable and instead of sharks in the tank behind me, this time there were honu.

I love the Turtle Lagoon. This summer they’ve added a new attraction: the Sea Life Park captive breeding program provided six recently hatched honu. They’ve been given their own tank at the Turtle Lagoon, and their appearances are rotated in groups of three. Not quite hatchlings, but not yet grown to the size of the smallest honu that you’d see on the reef, or normally in the Turtle Lagoon either. It’s a wonderful opportunity to see honu at a stage of their lives that is almost never seen in the wild. They’re still wearing their hatchling colours: almost black carapaces and white plastrons. They are simply adorable.

Zachary, already an ardent fan of the honu, gets the rare chance to see honu that are only a couple of months old.

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Following the reading, which went a lot smoother than the talk, we again retired to the MOC Retail Store to sign books. I didn’t feel quite so much like That Guy this time, partly because several people gathered round to chat for a while so we actually looked more like authors—or at least the way I think authors should look at a book signing. I might be able to get used to it, but then I don’t expect to have to do it much either. The book is really intended to be a regional book. I wanted to write a book primarily for the visitor to Hawaii who saw a honu and fell in love. I think we succeeded, but now it’s up to the market.

The Promise

The book begins with a promise to Clothahump: to tell her story and the story of the honu on her reef. At the end of 2002, after I’d had my angina scare and we realized that time could run out without warning, we renewed that promise by placing it on a dive slate underwater at Reef 2, near the honu. This week, on our aloha dive, I went back to that slate to pose for a fulfillment picture: thanks to UHP, we’ve kept our promise.

The dive slate in my hand has our promise to write the book written on it. It's been there since 2002. That's a long gestation period.

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Ursula has written a lot more about this in her blog, so instead of duplicating her work, I’ll just direct you over there.

Aloha Maui!

…and we’re outta here! Pau, as the Hawaiians say. 10 months of Mississauga coming up.

For the remainder of this summer, these blogs are dedicated to the memory of Rick Dalton, brother-in-law but more important, friend. Aloha nui loa Rick.

Return of the wahine

Last week we received a heads-up from George Balazs that one of the females who nested this summer had been sighted somewhere along the North Shore of Oahu, and he was putting us on notice to keep an eye out for returnees at our dive sites. The monitoring team at the French Frigate Shoals uses a Mototool to inscribe a nesting honu’s carapace with an identifying number that is then painted white so that it is visible from some distance. (The procedure is harmless, since the shell has no nerves; think of it as similar to clipping your nails.)

407

About halfway through our very next dive, what should we see but a honu with a white number on her shell: 407.

2008 nester 407 at Honokowai, just arrived from the French Frigate Shoals. She's 2001 Turtle 124 in our database.

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We first encountered this turtle in 2001, and we recorded her in 2002 and 2003 as well. She was big enough for us to suspect she was a female when we first met her, but this is the first confirmation of that. We don’t have an entry for her in 2004, the last year we have entered complete data for the turtles we sighted. She could have nested that year, but we won’t know her history until George has had time to dig up her records.

487

Things that shake your confidence: sighting a honu with the number 487 etched on her shell on the following dive.

For a few moments, I questioned what I’d seen the day before. (Later Ursula confessed having the same reaction.) Could we possibly have made a monumental goof? We’re getting on, these things happen. As soon as I got a good look at her profile, however, I knew that this was a different turtle.

2008 nester 487 (not 407), on the right. Enlarge the picture to see her etched number.

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Our database records her as 2003 Turtle 15, who was nester 339 in 2004, and notes that she is laid-back, meaning that she is not at all shy. She certainly sat for the portrait above, and was still settled down on the reef when we passed by there much later in the dive. That’s when I noticed that she had a tag on her left hind flipper, conveniently clean and in a position that I could read easily. She’s 665C.

The watch list

So on two successive dives we spotted two honu who made nests in the French Frigate Shoals this summer. Neither of them were on our watch list, which we prepare and send to George Balazs at the beginning of each nesting season. This year, his team monitoring the nests on East Island spotted only two of our Honokowai ohana: Pu’ipu’i (U 249) and Molokailimpus (V 133).

We first met Pu’ipu’i in 1995. She has always been a shy turtle but we did manage to record her tag. Since then we have seen her in years when she has not been nesting, which she seems to do every even-numbered year. It’s still possible that we’ll see her when she returns this year, but we’re running out of dives.

Molokailimpus got her name because one of the tags she wears (T50245) came from Colin Limpus, the prominent Australian sea turtle researcher, and was attached on Molokai in 1991. We met her in 1999, and saw her last in 2003. She turned up nesting at East Island in 2006 and now again this summer. Although we don’t see her anymore, we still consider her a part of the Honokowai ohana.

The ‘ea love Honokowai

I know that just last week I was marvelling at our luck in seeing three different Hawaiian hawksbills in such a limited time and area. Imagine my surprise when I caught sight of another hawksbill tearing up Reef 2. I knew immediately we hadn’t seen this ‘ea yet this summer because even from a distance I could see the glint of tags on her hind flippers. “Ake!” I thought to myself. We knew Ake had been tagged in 2005 and in 2007 she was seen at Old Airport Beach just a bit south of our dive site. Surely this had to be her. She was mighty big, even bigger than Kiniana, who up until then had been the biggest hawksbill we’d seen.

'Ea 1D66, a new hawksbill at Honokowai, with saddleback wrasse. If you enlarge the picture you can see a short length of monofilament line, which ends in a small hook embedded in her left shoulder. It will eventually rust out and doesn't appear to be a major hindrance.

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She was busy trying to get at something under the corals and paid us no attention, so I was able to get some good pictures while Ursula shot video. I managed to get a decent left profile, which normally would be essential in order to identify her in our database, but here we had tags. Nice clean ones too, and she was obligingly displaying them so that I could read them easily and even take clear pictures of them without having to get close.

Tags 1D66 and 1D67, cropped and enlarged for your viewing pleasure.

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When we got back to shore, both Ursula and I were sure we’d seen Ake for the first time since 1999. Those thumps you heard on Thursday were our two jaws hitting the floor—it wasn’t Ake. It was yet another ‘ea, our fourth this summer and a new addition to our list. How is that possible? Like Ake, this ‘ea was tagged at Pohue on the Big Island. Will Sietz, who runs the tagging program at Pohue, wrote that she was the second hawksbill they’d tagged who was later reported foraging on Maui. The other one is Ake.

Now given their rarity, it’s no surprise that only two Pohue-tagged ‘ea have been reported on Maui. Think about the odds, however, that both of them would turn up at Honokowai at some point—during one of our dives! You do it, I can’t. It makes my head hurt.

Maui Ocean Center book signings

As I might have mentioned, Maui Ocean Center has invited us to help them celebrate It’s A Honu World, their week-long series of events that highlight the Hawaiian green turtle. I’ll be giving a slide presentation and talking about The Book of Honu tomorrow (Monday, August 25) at 3 PM at the Deep Reef Exhibit, followed by book-signing in the Retail Store. (It’s always free to visit the store!) On Thursday (August 28) I’ll be reading from The Book of Honu down by the Turtle Lagoon, again followed by book-signing in the Retail Store.

Which reminds me, I should be preparing…

For the remainder of this summer, these blogs are dedicated to the memory of Rick Dalton, brother-in-law but more important, friend. Aloha nui loa Rick.

Our book-signings at Maui Ocean Center

It’s a Honu World at Maui Ocean Center from August 23rd to the 29th. As part of the celebration, your hatchling authors (that’d be me and Ursula) have been invited to participate.

On Monday, August 25, at 3 PM, I’ll be giving a presentation at the Deep Reef Exhibit. It will feature pictures from The Book Of Honu, but I’ll also include some of the best pictures of this summer, as well as a few of the pictures that we had to leave out of the book due to space limitations. If we can make it work, we’ll also show a few video clips. Digital projectors can be finicky about video, so no promises. After the presentation, we’ll be signing books in the Gift Shop.

On Thursday, August 28 (my birthday!) I’ll be reading from The Book of Honu at the Turtle Lagoon Exhibit, also starting at 3 PM. Again, after the reading we’ll be in the Gift Shop to sign books.

A fascinated observer leaves noseprints on the glass at Maui Ocean Center's Turtle Lagoon.

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Maui Ocean Center is the top attraction on the island, and the Turtle Lagoon is (in my humble opinion) the best exhibit in the aquarium. If you’re here on Maui, you owe it to yourself to visit—and by the way, it’s always free to visit the Gift Shop!

5690 makes it 7!

On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, 5690 was back to make her seventh nest of the summer. Rather than duplicating Ursula’s fine effort for her blog, I’ll just point you over there.

We made several time exposures during the process, and we were really happy with some of them. I’ll just show off one here; visit Ursula’s blog for the rest.

A nearly full moon shines down on 5690 as she digs her seventh nest of 2008. You can just make out the top of her carapace in the shrubbery.

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Yet another ‘ea

The ‘ea, or Hawaiian hawksbills, are supposed to be rare. They are designated “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. Since 1987, only 86 individual nesting females have been recorded, most of them making nests along the Ka’u coast of the Big Island.

Our dive site at Reef 2 is pretty small, really. It’s maybe 1500 square yards in total, and it’s quite a distance from the Ka’u coast. Yet so far this summer we’ve seen not one, not two, but three different ‘ea! We’ve mentioned Kiniana and Likeke, so when I spotted a hawksbill in the distance this week I assumed one of them was back. When we got closer, however, it was obvious that this was not an ‘ea we’d seen this summer. The turtle was too small to be Kiniana, and didn’t have the distinctive right flipper of Likeke. Further, this ‘ea had a lot more algae on the shell, way too much to have grown there recently.

We know Ake, another hawksbill we’ve seen in past years, now has tags, so that ruled her out. Could this be Keoki, the first hawksbill we’d ever met? We know that Keoki and Ake have both been sighted at Old Airport Beach, a popular snorkeling and beach diving site not far south of Honokowai. I was fairly sure that’s who we’d seen—until we got back to shore and I had a chance to check our database. No match! This was a new ‘ea, our third of the summer.

This 'ea (Hawaiian for hawksbill) was sighted on Reef 2, casually poking around in the corals for sponges. Note the honu resting in the background.

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There’s no doubt that ‘ea are really rare. How is it then that in the few hours we’ve spent underwater this summer, in the tiny area that our dives cover, we’ve been lucky enough to see three different hawksbills? Back to that lottery ticket debate…

Good intentions

I’ve delayed posting this long enough. I was hoping to add more material here but circumstances have conspired against me. Your forgiveness is requested, Aloha!

For the remainder of this summer, these blogs are dedicated to the memory of Rick Dalton, brother-in-law but more important, friend. Aloha nui loa Rick.

Change is hard—and so is unchange

Before we get to this week’s events, I want to make a quick comment on Turtle Trax itself.

To create this blog, I use WordPress, which for the most part is a pleasure. Last week I discovered that the TinyMCE Advanced plugin really does tame the visual editor to the point where I might, for the first time ever, abandon hand-coded HTML. There are quirks, but I’m getting used to them. If you have your own blog, then you owe it to yourself to try this combination.

Anyone who’s read my early entries knows that I was ambitiously planning to revise the whole website to use CSS. (Can I just interject here that CSS suck?) The problem is that my long-cherished style for images employs drop-shadows.

CSS really sucks at doing drop-shadows of any sort, never mind the nice soft-edged ones I wanted. For a while I switched to a hard shadow, but I didn’t like it. Finally, this week I decided that HTML tables aren’t that wicked and if purists want to turn up their noses at the way I do things, fine. See if I care.

So I spent a good part of today drafting some macros to generate tables combined with a little CSS for my drop-shadow style images. They finally work, as you can see below. This is my style, and I’m sticking to it. Thanks to Matthijs Hollemans for Macro Expander. (Oh, and a special thanks to Internet expletive-deleted to Explorer for making my day more interesting.)

We return to Kuamo’o

Kuamo’o, our alternate dive site, is a fantastic dive, but it has its drawbacks. It’s both shallow and sandy, so the least bit of wave action makes it murky. Last week provided the first prolonged period without a swell, so we headed there for a long-overdue survey and to collect the temperature logger we placed last summer.

Even after a couple of days of quiet waters, the visibility was still mediocre– but pretty good for Kuamo’o. As expected, we immediately began sighting turtles. Kuamo’o must concentrate at least twice number of honu we see at Reef 2 into a noticeably smaller area. We were prepared for that, but one of the first things we saw we were definitely not prepared for: Wai?, the honubill, was settled peacefully into a hollow in the huge coral formation that dominates Kuamo’o.

Wai?, nestled into the main reef of Kuamo'o, while a honu passes overhead and Ursula lurks in the background.

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Why Wai? is incredible

Here’s the thing. There is only one honubill that anyone knows about. In all of Hawaii, no one has ever reported another turtle like Wai?, ever. For us to discover her was like winning the lottery. We first sighted her at Kuamo’o in 2004. Then. much to astonishment, we saw her again in 2006 –at Reef 2! Incredible enough, but even more so that she’d show up at both sites in the same summer.

Now, Reef 2 is about 4.5 km (or 3 miles) from Kuamo’o. There are a lot of turtles between the two, most of them strangers we’ll never see. Yet Wai? shows up at the only two places where we dive regularly! What are the odds? Ursula and I have an ongoing debate about whether this means we should buy—or avoid—lottery tickets.

Kuamo’o tumors

The honu at Kuamo’o are still more likely to have tumors than those of the Honokowai ohana, although we know enough now that we don’t worry about many of them: they will recover on their own. The sad side of the story, which we continue to point out, is that the youngest turtles are also the ones most vulnerable. The disease is more severe, progresses more rapidly, and in almost every case in our experience—Kamaha’o is the only exception—results in the disappearance of the little honu. Dead? We can’t say for sure, but what would you think?

We haven’t seen many little honu at Honokowai this summer, but there are several at Kuamo’o. Sadly, they tend to have tumors.

We made two dives at Kuamo'o. We saw this young honu on our second dive. The small tumors indicate the onset of FP, which means we probably won't see this turtle next summer.

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2008 Roll Call

The summer  is well past the midway mark and we haven’t yet listed the honu we’ve seen from past summers. Mostly this is because the list is alarmingly short. There are a number of honu we recognize but not by name. That is, we’ve never given them names, and we haven’t done the work necessary to find out what numbers they have in our database. Further, finishing our book has taken up most of our resources in recent summers, so we haven’t updated the database. There are many honu we know have been around for more than one summer, but we can’t quantify how many or which ones.

When I say the list is short, I mean the list of our named turtles. Here it is:

• Tiamat
• Raphael
• Kamaha’o
• Hoa
• Kiniana (‘ea)
• Iakeke (‘ea)
• Wai?
• Wana
• Ho’omalu
• Amuala
• Ho’oulu
• 1996 Turtle 12
• 5690

Yes, I know 1996 Turtle 12 and 5690 aren’t names as such, but 5690 is a special case, and 1996 Turtle 12 is an old familiar face who we’ve never named for some reason. He rates a mention while some other numbered turtles don’t because he’s a favourite.

Where are the others? Well, we see a lot of daytime feeding inshore this summer, so we don’t expect to see as many honu out on the reef. We also know that food is not as plentiful as it once was in the area, so we think some of the old regulars have just moved up or down the coast a bit. Zeus (not seen this summer) is an example.

Zeus first went missing in 2003. Prior to that, we’d seen him frequently every summer since 1994, and we actually had a sighting of him reported  to us from 1992. He was missing all of 2004 as well, and we had given up hope of seeing him again. Then, on my birthday in 2005, there he was, swimming gracefully past.  We saw him again in 2006 and 2007, although once only in both summers. So we know Zeus is out there, he just isn’t hanging around within our diving range.

Wana is behaving much the same way. We’ve seen her, but she was at The Rock, where we seldom visit now. She’s drifting north and although we know she’s okay, we miss her. Others we worry about. Tutu has been missing since 2006. We thought she’d be migrating that year, so we weren’t alarmed, even though the folks who monitor the nesting activity at the French Frigate Shoals didn’t report seeing her. Then she was missing in 2007, and again she wasn’t seen at the FFS. She wasn’t there when we visited Maui in January, and she’s not out there this summer. Not good news.

Ho’oulu returns!

We’re not sure what to make of Ho’oulu. We didn’t seen her during our winter visit, and she wasn’t there in July either. Ho’oulu is fully adult, though, so there are three possibilities:

1. She’s nesting somewhere other than East Island (FSS). There are more reports this summer of green turtles nesting on the main islands than ever before.  Ho’olulu is so huge we can’t believe she doesn’t nest somewhere, but she doesn’t have tags, she’s never had a number engraved on her shell, and she doesn’t have a PIT tag. I’d stake the house that she’s a nester, though.
2. She’s off feeding when she used to spend time resting. She’s huge, Jerry. Huge! You don’t get that huge without a lot of food, and as I mentioned, food is scarce around here now. I suspect she has a lot to do with that. Did I mention she’s huge?
3. She’s following the pattern of Zeus and Wana. She’s found a new place to stay, and she only comes back to Reef 2 occasionally.

Whatever the case might be, much to our delight we found her last week resting in exactly the same place she’s preferred since forever. As usual, she barely took notice of us so we both managed to get photos, one of which I now present for your viewing enjoyment:

After a prolonged absence, we sighted Ho'oulu in the same spot she's used since 1992. She was her normal reserved self, and rested quietly for several portraits. Ursula is in the background snapping away.

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Hatchlings!

As I was trying to finish this blog yesterday, Ursula returned from Lahaina where she’d just checked 5690′s nest #3. She was excited because she thought she’d seen signs of impending hatchling emergence. So we hastily grabbed our cameras and rushed back to watch.

When we got there, it did indeed look like the hatchlings were about to make their appearance. The down side was that although there was a bright half-moon in the sky (good for attracting the hatchlings in the direction of the water) there was not enough light for photography. Using flash to photograph hatchlings is a strict no-no, so I resorted to long exposure times and hoped for the best. The results are pretty noisy/grainy, but all things considered they turned out fairly well.

32 second exposure of us waiting for hatchlings. As you can see, Ursula is much better at staying still than I am.

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32 second exposure of hatchlings emerging—but the little kritters scoot too fast to show up! Who said turtles are slow?

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By the time it was over, we’d seen about 50 hatchlings scampering down the beach and into the waves. Despite the moon, it still dark enough to make it hard to be sure exactly how many there were. As far as we could tell, however, nobody got confused and headed the wrong way. It was a rare thrill, lone we won’t soon forget.

For the remainder of this summer, these blogs are dedicated to the memory of Rick Dalton, brother-in-law but more important, friend. Aloha nui loa Rick.

Highlights resume

While I still think of Rick every day, the pain has subsided enough to start posting again. I have two weeks to catch up on, so I’ll just review some of the highlights.

Kiniana

On July 20, during our first dive in really clear water, we spotted a hawksbill resting peacefully on the reef. Hawksbills, or ‘ea in Hawaiian, are rare in Hawaii, so we always feel lucky when we see one. Rarer still is to see one resting–usually they are actively foraging or swimming across the reef. Rarest of all is to see one resting next to a honu. In our experience, honu and ‘ea don’t get along.

A rare turtle in an even rarer situation: lying around with a honu. This is Kiniana, first seen at Honokowai in 2000.

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Best of all, the ‘ea turned out to be one we know: Kiniana! We first met her in 2000, when she was a lot smaller. Now, she holds the record for the largest ‘ea we’ve seen. Because she is so large and still has a teeny tail, we’re fairly confident Kiniana is a female. She’s in excellent health as far as we can tell, and probably should be laying eggs somewhere this summer or next. They still use metal tags on nesting hawksbills, so it’s possible that she’ll turn up with jewelry sometime soon, maybe even this summer.

The new Mt. Balazs

If you’ve been following along, you know that for the past two summers we’ve seen a change in the habits of the Honokowai ohana. There’s been a substantial increase in daytime foraging, particularly right in front of our condo. We’ve speculated that this is why we aren’t seeing some of our old friends out on the reefs, and why others are now irregular in attendence.

Another possibility for absences, of course, is that the honu have moved. While they typically return to the same spot on the reef year after year, eventually some of them shift to a new preference. We like to think that turtles like Tutu are still around, just a bit up or down the coast and out of our diving range. We know this is true for Zeus, for example.

One of these new gathering places is actually not so new to us. It’s a large coral head that we used to pass regularly as we went back and forth to the Turtle House. It’s also closer to shore than the honu used to prefer, and until this summer, we’d never seen a honu near it.

Now, however, whenever we check it (it’s out of our normal dive plan these days) we find six or seven honu around and sometimes on it. Because it’s a large coral head away from the reef, it reminds me of Mt. Balazs, the coral head at North House that the honu eventually undermined to the point that it collapsed and literally disappeared. That isn’t likely to happen this time, since this coral head is much larger and the honu can’t wedge themselves under the edges as easily.

1996 Turtle 12 sits atop the latest honu attraction at Honokowai.

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How long they’ll gather round it, however, is anyone’s guess. This one is within snorkeling range for the visitors and is shallow enough that people will inevitably dive down “to get a better look.” If you’re on of those visitors, please don’t do that. Wait patiently at a respectful distance, and sooner or later one of them will come up for air. Works much better.

Not exactly a highlight: Wai? is back

Wai? (yes, the question mark is part of the name) is the only known cross between a honu and a hawksbill. Last summer, we saw her (we think Wai? is probably female but no one knows for sure) and reported that we saw indications of the onset of FP. On our ninth dive, we saw her for the first time this summer. We were distressed to see that our prediction had been accurate: Wai? definitely has tumors.

While the tumors are not yet severe, and in fact the signs are that she has just a mild case that could already be in regression, there is still cause for alarm. Since Wai? is a crossbreed, she is potentially a vector for a species jump. FP has never been reported in the Hawaiian hawksbill. Nobody knows how FP spreads, so we worry that Wai? could somehow transmit the disease to the ‘ea. We think the chances of that are small indeed, but they definitely aren’t zero.

Likeke

We’ve noted that the ‘ea are rare, and they are. Reports say that there are only about 100 nesting hawksbills in the Hawaiian Islands, and they are listed as critically endangered. On the other hand, we spotted our second hawksbill of the summer on July 25th, swimming directly towards us. Completely unconcerned about our presence, the turtle swam right between us and proceeded to a patch of coral a short distance away, where a “tastie” was apparently concealed. In short order, pieces of coral littered the bottom as the ‘ea engaged in a search for food.

Likeke charged up the middle between us, providing an excellent photo op.

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The behaviour indicates that this turtle is no stranger to divers, so we suspect that hher range includes Old Airport Beach, a popular snorkeling and diving site just south of Honokowai. We’ve actually met this ‘ea before, and in fact one of the pictures in our book shows a honu snapping at hier–a rare turn of events, since it is usually the ‘ea who snap at the honu.

We didn’t name this hawksbill last summer –we usually wait for inspiration, some signal –or perhaps even the turtle to “suggest” a name. We went to the Hawaiian Boys’ Names dictionary and chose Likeke, which is Hawaiian for Richard, Rick and Ricky. I don’t think I have to explain why.

5690 makes nest #6

On the night of July 28, 5690 made three false crawls, but no nest. We therefore expected her to nest on the night of the 29th, so we got to the beach early–or so we thought. It was only 8:30 but when we arrived 5690 was already crawling up. She’d just gotten past the high tide line when I spotted her. She started some tentative digging in short order, and we thought, “Cool, early bedtime!” Silly us.

She dug for a while, then decided she didn’t like that spot so she moved further mauka and started over. We thought this was good, since the first choice had been a little too close to the high water line for our liking. It added 45 minutes to our night, but so what. Still looked like an early finish to us.

She spent almost an hour flapping about and digging a fair-sized pit–and then she started to crawl makai! Visions of another false crawl flashed though our heads but no, she stopped midway between her first effort and her second and started anew. Hopes for a quick nest faded as she dug industriously for another hour or so. Still, we were grateful that she hadn’t headed back into the water, and we could see from her movements that she was working hard on her egg chamber.

Eventually she stopped for a couple of minutes, which normally means that she’s starting to drop her eggs. This time it was clear something was wrong. Normally, when she’s laying she drops her head, but we could see that she had her head raised and was looking around. Oh no!

Oh yes. She started to move again, this time back to the pit she’d dug mauka. At least she was still determined to finish her nest, but now we could see it would be a loooong night. By this time she was digging in just about the darkest spot on the beach, and to make it even harder to see what she was doing, she was burrowing in vegetation that covered most of her shell. I had a brief hope that she’d get to digging the egg chamber quickly because she’d already dug a large body pit there, but no such luck. It was start-all-over for 5690.

At last, at about 12:45, she settled down and this time, her head drooped in concentration. After a couple of minutes, I slipped up behind her to make sure she was actually laying eggs. She was. Huge sighs of relief from us.

Things to do while you wait for 5690 to finish: make a 15 second time exposure. That's Ursula sneaking a few winks under the Mississauga flag.

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5690 finally swam away at almost exactly 3:00 AM, having covered up a much larger hole than usual in a much shorter time than she typically takes. Thankful for small mercies, we roped off the nesting area and made it home at 4 in the morning. Tiring, but as always, a thrill and an experience I wouldn’t want to miss. Will she return for number 7 in two weeks? I sure hope so, because whether she does or not, we’ll be walking the beach to find out.

Ho’omalu

We’ve taken the kayak up to Hoaka a couple of times, but with mixed success. The first time, the wind came up and the water was already murky. I jumped in the water and immediately saw Ho’omalu, our Hawaiian-Mexican crossbreed. She was swimming gracefully away, however, and I never got a chance to get a picture. Our second visit had much better conditions, but no Ho’omalu.

We haven’t given up hope of getting a photo. She looked fine in the brief glimpse I got. We’ve always worried that she might contract FP but I saw no obvious tumors. Of course, I didn’t have a chance to see if there were the subtle signs we recognize as the onset of the disease. Stiil, we know that she’s out there and she still has all her body parts. That’s something.

In conclusion

The ocean calls, so I’m cutting this off. Other things worthy of mention have happened, but they’ll have to wait. Aloha!

On Saturday, July 26, my brother-in-law and friend died suddenly and tragically from a previously undetected heart condition. He was doing something he loved–cycling–when witnesses saw him fall from his bike. Despite the prompt arrival of paramedics, he could not be saved. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Yesterday, Ursula and I took a tribute float of flowers out towards the setting sun. As soon as we launched the kayak, a honu surfaced for a moment right beside us. While we were paddling straight out, a rare solitary dolphin broached in the distance. At moments like these, I can’t help but feel a spiritual connection with existence, with life–and death. For me, the appearance of these two creatures symbolized the aloha I felt for Rick.

Taking a float of flowers out to sea at sunset in memory of Rick

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I really liked Rick. I wanted to write a lot more here. I can’t. I’ll resume the normal updates later, when I feel better.

Aloha nui loa Rick.

Since 2000, 5690 has nested every even-numbered year. That’s as frequent as sea turtles ever get, and it’s not unusual for some of them to go three or even four years between nesting seasons. I don’t think 5690 will ever wait more than the bare minimum, however, because she lives only a few kilometres north of her nesting beach. Not for her the gruelling 800 kilometre swim to the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, oh no. She’d rather run us ragged every second year watching for her to nest, and then keeping an eye on the nests to see when they hatch. I’m sure she does this on purpose.

So it was that we felt lucky this week when we got a call on Monday morning from Skippy Hau, Hawaii State Biologist, that 5690 had been seen ashore the previous night. This was a day earlier than we thought we had to start watching, so I rushed to the beach and checked out the dig. I was worried that we might have missed her, but it looked to me that she’d given up and gone back without dropping eggs. Close one. We couldn’t be certain, of course, so Monday night Ursula and I prepared for an all-nighter and headed to Kamehameha Iki Park.

We needn’t have worried. When we got there 5690 had already crawled up the beach, wandered around a bit, and made a couple of false starts. (We later reconstructed this from her tracks.) We arrived just as she settled in for some serious digging. Her previous nests this summer have all been in more precarious locations, closer to the water, where waves have often swept over them. She chose to make this one well back from the waterline.

Our luck continued to improve when the Yoshino family showed up. Lindhow (Mom), Lana (11), and Max (9) had met us before in 2006 at the excavation of one of 5690′s nests. (At least, that’s how I remember it but my memory is long past its best-before date.) What I do recall clearly is that both kids were impressively bright and keenly interested in sea turtles. At any rate, Lindhow had brought them along to see if there was any sign of hatchlings from 5690′s earlier nests. They were delighted to discover that Momma 5690 herself was in attendance, digging industriously.

Watching 5690 make a nest is a long and sometimes boring process, but having the Yoshinos there transformed the experience. For one thing, both kids already knew a lot about sea turtles and nesting, but they still had endless questions. Intelligent, thoughtful questions. The kind that make the time go by. Ursula and I appreciated that.

For another, watching the Yoshinos was like re-living our first nesting experience. The joy and excitement was contagious. They were having a ball and thanks to them, so were we. Best of all was the moment after 5690 entered her egg-laying trance and the Yoshinos got to creep quietly up behind her and peer down into the egg chamber. The Yoshinos are perfectly aware that once a sea turtle starts laying her eggs almost nothing can disturb her, but you’d never know that by their respect and quiet behaviour… and oh, the aloha! You could feel it in the air. It was perfect.

Once 5690 was deep in her egg-laying trance, it was possible for the Yoshinos to get a look at her eggs.

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From the time 5690 drops her last eggs until she finishes covering up is usually about two hours. It’s long, and truthfully, the most unexciting part of the whole thing. The Yoshinos could easily have been forgiven if they’d left right after seeing the eggs, but I don’t think you could have dragged them away with a two-ton pickup. Fortunately for all concerned, she’d started early (for her) and almost exactly at 1 AM, 5690 wearily dragged herself back into the water.

It wasn’t quite over. The place where 5690 had nested is exactly where people like to lie or sit during the day, since it is shaded for a good part of the time. Surfers start arriving right after sunrise, so we had to drive in posts and put up CAUTION tape before we went home. The Yoshinos eagerly helped until the whole job was done, then gave us warm hugs before heading off to bed. I’m not sure what time Max and Lana got to sleep, but I’m betting it took a while before the excitement of the evening wore off. Mahalo nui loa to them for an evening not to be forgotten.

Luck of the George

So far our luck was quite good. Somewhere I think there’s a huge balance scale, however, and when our luck is good someone else’s goes bad. This is where I introduce our great friend and mentor, George Balazs. He’s the Leader of Marine Turtle Research for Hawaii and he visits us once or twice each summer in the course of carrying out other work-related duties on Maui. George had been hoping that 5690 would wait one more night so that he could see her again, but our good luck with the Yoshinos and the short night (relatively) was his bad luck. Not so bad, you might be thinking. Just wait.

George was due to arrive on a late afternoon flight so that he could give a presentation to a group of stranding volunteers, the people who take care of turtles when they wind up ashore and in difficulty. When he got to Honolulu Airport, however, his flight had been cancelled. He hastily made arrangements for the next flight, which would get him to Kahului behind schedule, but while he made that flight, his luggage (with the handouts he’d prepared) didn’t.

George’s volunteers had waited patiently for him (who wouldn’t be willing to wait a while to hear George talk about turtles?) and the presentation went well even without the materials. As he was leaving, George called us to say he was on his way.

An hour passed. That’s usually long enough to make the trip from Kihei to Honokowai, but not this night. The phone rang, and it was George—stopped dead on the highway about halfway here, thanks to night-time construction. So clearly, George had a streak going.

When George finally arrived, we had a wonderful time for what was left of the evening and a fair chunk of the early morning, getting to bed far too late. Up too early as well, but a day with George is always full and never dull. Things to do, places to go! First, we took George’s rental car across the island to recover the lost luggage. That done, we looked around a reported green turtle nesting sites at Waiehu, then drove over to take a look at Waihee (no nests reported this year), both of which are fairly isolated stretches of beach. Why do I mention that point, you ask?

George couldn’t resist taking a photo of the road sign that points to both nesting beach sites we were on our way to visit.

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Well, next it was on to lunch at Wendy’s, Kahului—where George glanced out the window and said, “Hm. Does that tire look flat to you?” Yup, the little black cloud was still following George around. Flat as a pancake, at least on the bottom.

Our Good Luck week must have partially offset George’s Bad Luck week, because we could have gone flat at one of the nesting site spots, which would have been inconvenient to say the least. Fortunately, the service truck was stationed fairly close by and a friendly, efficient tow truck driver had us back on the road without too much delay. George had work to do at Maui Ocean Center (always a treat to visit, you should go).

Maui Ocean Center has a turtle tank, which usually contains around half a dozen small honu hatched at Sea Life Park on Oahu. When George visits, they’re weighed, examined, and given PIT tags in preparation for eventual release into the wild. George worked on a table right next to the turtle tank, giving patrons a great opportunity to see the turtles up close and observe turtle science in progress. George’s little black cloud must have been elsewhere for a while, because everything went smoothly and quickly.

Visitors to Maui Ocean Center get a rare treat: honu up close and out of the water, as well as a chance to see how sea turtle biology is done.

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Our good luck trumps George’s little black cloud!

One of the nice aspects of our Maui Ocean Center visit was that they expressed an interest in having us conduct a book-signing there—but of course, this meant we’d need books to sign. The last week of August (also our last week on Maui) will be Sea Turtle Week at the Center and a book-signing during this celebration of honu would be wonderful. As far as we knew, the schedule still had bulk shipments of the book at the end of September at the earliest, but I agreed to contact our publisher, University of Hawaii Press, to see what chance there was that we could squeeze out at least one advance copy. Failing a full book-signing, they were willing to consider a presentation where we could at least generate a little publicity for the book.

The next morning (Friday) I sent email to our editor asking about the possibility. We were floored by the quick reply: an advance copy had been put in the mail that morning! Take that, George’s little black cloud! We—including George of course—were ecstatic. We had thought that we wouldn’t see an advance copy until we were back in Mississauga. To receive it here on Maui was a really special bonus.

We went about the rest of the day running around with George as usual, visiting 5690′s nests and a few other sites where we knew honu go to forage and in a couple of cases, sometimes haul out to bask. We were on a real high, the only down side being that George would be leaving in mid-afternoon. When we returned to the condo to prepare for his departure, we didn’t really expect to find the book waiting, but I checked the mailbox anyway.

Now I know people like to dump on the US Postal system, but folks, they outdid themselves on Friday. The book, posted Friday morning on Oahu, was in our mailbox at 2 PM Friday afternoon! Beat that, UPS and FedEx!

The US Postal Service comes through!

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Those of you familiar with the CMYK colour space (the one used for offset colour printing) is not kind to blues. It’s the hardest colour to print correctly. This fact had me extremely nervous about the colour images I’d provided. After all, I’d never done this before. To make matters worse, after I’d finished and everything was off to the printer, I happened to read Dan Margulis (world renowned colour printing expert) on the topic of printing blues, and frankly, it made my stomach churn. Had I done it right?

I need not have worried. Folks, even if I do say so myself, the book is stunning. The printers did a fabulous job. You should get your copy and see for yourself (hint, hint). We couldn’t be happier with the final result. Best of all, George–who has been a major part of this book since the beginning—was here when it arrived, and was at least as thrilled as we were. It just doesn’t get any better.

The authors and George Balazs with the advance copy of our book—at long last.

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So we’ve been over the moon ever since. We haven’t managed to dive or get out on the kayak for a long time, but none of that bothers us right now. The Book of Honu is finally a reality. Not just printed and ready to sell—t’s beautiful.

Oh, and that little black cloud?

Waiting for George at the airport. About two hours after his flight was supposed to have left, we got a phone call from George. His plane was still sitting on the tarmac, delayed by “paperwork.” He eventually did get home, several hours late. For George, this Maui trip had been a mixed bag, but all of the misfortunes were offset by arrival of the book. All in all, it was a Good Week. Aloha!

It’s Maui out again! Visiting in January/February really helped a lot, especially considering that the past winter was more unpleasant than usual. I don’t know how we’ll handle next winter, since we’ll be enduring or normal 10 month hiatus. On the other hand, I really don’t want to dwell on that downer until absolutely necessary. On to happier topics…

The Book of Honu

When last we left you, our book was still in layout. Not long after we got back to Mississauga, we got a PDF for proofreading purposes. We’d been anxious to get this because up till then we had no idea what the book would look like. Once we opened it, however, we saw that our anxiety was misplaced. I know we’re biased, but the book is simply stunning. The UHP book designer, April Leidig-Higgins, did an amazing job. The graphic accents and overall layout are beautiful.

I’m a font geek and I was concerned that we might wind up with some mundane or ugly font (can you say Times-Roman? ) but I need not have worried. The text is set in Minion Pro, which I love. Okay, I know most of the readers will never care, but it was important to me. It’s difficult for me to express how happy I was with the choice.

Two days before we left Mississauga for Maui, we received a copy of the fall catalog for the University of Hawaii Press. We were ecstatic to see that UHP used the cover image from our book for the catalog’s front cover! The Book of Honu is listed prominently on page 1, which is as good as it gets. We couldn’t have asked for more.

I know we’ve been talking about this forever, but it’s nearly here at last. This is how the cover looks. Attractive, is it not?

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Anyway, until you have a copy in your hands you won’t know what I’m talking about. The schedule calls for advance copies to arrive in September, with bulk shipments starting in October. I’m not sure what UHP distribution is like outside of the Islands, but I do know that you can already put in your order at all the major online booksellers. (Blatant plug: please do!)

Drop shadows? We hates them…

Just in case you’ve been paying attention and wondered how the Battle of Shadow’s Deep is going, well, it isn’t. This post is using a bastardized combination of tables and CSS for drop shadows, and I don’t think it works at all in Internet Explorer 6. As far as I can tell, in IE6 you don’t get anything. (Thanks, Microsoft!) At least everything looks right in Opera (still the champ), Firefox, and *ptui!* IE7. I know there are still a lot of IE6 users out there, but the effort to tame that piece of {expletive deleted} is just not worth it.

First dives

We’ve made four dives so far, with mixed results. The visibility is poor even though (until today) the water’s been pretty calm. We’re not sure where the silt is coming from but we know it’s out there.

The trend towards an underwater desert continues. There’s less and less algae of any kind. Inshore, it’s now common to see honu foraging in the early afternoon. Before this year, they stayed mostly along the makai side of the ridge of petrified beach sand that we call the Sea Wall. Now we’re seeing as many as a dozen coming right up to the waterline in the evenings.

Out on Reef 2, we’re seeing perhaps half as many honu as we used to see a couple of years ago. That’s 12-15 turtles, which is still a goodly number but we can’t help but feel a little disturbed. A lot of our regulars haven’t been seen yet, but it’s still early.

The Turtle House revisited

Every year we make at least one dive to the Turtle House, but to be honest it’s a visit we don’t look forward to anymore. It’s just sad and depressing to verify yet again that the place where it all started has long been deserted by the honu. This summer we decided to get it over with early. As expected, there were no turtles at the Turtle House, and no evidence that they’ve been using the place.

Our plastic-encased copy of Osha Gray Davidson's great book, Fire In The Turtle House, is still in place at the Turtle House.

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Wana

The Rock, however, was a slightly (but only slightly) different story. As we approached, we could see one honu snuggled under a ledge. She didn’t bother to open her eyes as we approached, so we felt that it must be a turtle we know, and indeed it was: Wana!

First sighting of Wana for 2008--in an unexpected place: tucked under The Rock.

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The big experiment

Somehow, Ursula got it into her head that she could “talk underwater.”

This was partly inspired by the success of our experiment with recording whalesong during our winter visit. I thought she was nuts [Ursula: WHOA! That's "creative, non-linear thinker" to you, there guy], but hey, she’s my wife so I have to cut her a little slack.

How did that work out? Well, you be the judge:

Trust me, you weren’t as surprised as I was.

5690

It’s an even-numbered year, so 5690 is doing her thing again. Before we arrived, we got word that 5690 had been active. Because she is well known and nests on a heavily-used beach in Lahaina, it was inevitable that she would attract more attention than ever. Unfortunately, this has resulted in problems for her. We’ve been told that her attempts to nest have been interrupted by enthusiastic but inconsiderate observers, with the result that at least on one occasion she gave up and headed back into the water.

For us, this means another exhausting summer. We’ll attend the beach every night she’s due up to nest. We don’t have any special authority over her or the beach, but we can be there to try to explain to anyone else who notices her what she is doing and why she shouldn’t be disturbed. In our experience, people are quite happy to leave her in peace once it’s been explained what she’s doing and how to behave around her. We’ll report here how it all works out. Meanwhile, her nest #1 is due to hatch any day now, and we have to go and check for evidence of emergence. Aloha!

So much for good intentions.

You might have noticed that things came to an abrupt halt. (Perhaps both of you did.) Right at the end of November, our car died. Literally. It happened right in front of the place where we always took it for repairs. It had been there so often in the prior month or so that I think it just decided it wanted to stay there. So it did.

Anyway, replacing the car became a full time occupation for most of December. On top of that, other priorities arose and the result was no time for Trax updates. Howzit’s visit to Mississauga also went into stasis, a state from which it has yet to emerge. I’ve been promised that it will happen, so please be patient.

Book news

University of Hawaii Press has provided us with a book production timeline. If all goes well, the book should be in stores sometime in September. Right now it’s in the layout stage. We expect to get galley proofs for review in March. We can’t wait, because it will be the first time we actually get some idea of what it will look like in print. Once we’ve seen it, I’ll post our reactions here.

Maui in winter

Yes, we were on Maui for four weeks. I had intended to post weekly updates, honest I did. Events conspired against me, however.

One of us (I won’t say who but her initials are Ursula) decided that it would be a Good Idea to take only one laptop. Well, after all was said and done, the results were mixed. Since our computer usage had to be serialized, something had to give–well actually, several things, and posting weekly updates was one of them.

Maui in wintertime is… odd. We weren’t used to the sun setting behind Lanai. The angle was all wrong and kept us a bit disoriented the whole time we were there.

 Our first Maui sunset for 2008 looked alien to us. That's Lanai, but we couldn't help feeling that it should be Molokai.

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Maui’s mountains in summer are red and brown. In winter, they are a lush green with a little red showing. Same with Lania and Molokai. Beautiful but strange to us. We’d always wondered if the dry brown grasses of summer ever turned green. Well, they do, and it’s wonderful to see, but it doesn’t last long. They were green when we arrived but by the end of January, when we were about to leave, everything had begun to turn yellow and was starting to go dormant for the summer. It reminded me of the brief but spectacular wildflower bloom you see for about three weeks in late June and early July in northern Newfoundland and Labrador. Oddly, the north’s bloom is far more colourful than Hawaii’s winter greening, but then for the rest of the year the positions are reversed: Hawaii is spectacularly colourful and northern Newfoundland and Labrador is, well, kind of drab.

It was also cooler than we’re used to on Maui. Mind you, we weren’t bundled up in sweaters and jackets like the locals, but we did notice that it wasn’t as warm as it is in the summer. Especially the pool. That sucker isn’t heated. In the summer, it gets a lot of sun and is usually pleasantly warm. In the winter, the sun doesn’t shine on it much and while the water temperature would be just fine on a summer’s day in Mississauga, it’s not exactly what you’d like on Maui at any time. Maui is supposed to be warm.

We were told that this winter was unusually cool and rainy. Well, it certainly was rainy compared to what we’re used to. It didn’t really make that much difference to us. Maui rain isn’t like Mississauga rain. You can stay out in it. It’s lighter most of the time, and warmer always. The downside is that it washes mud into the ocean. Mud makes for lousy visibility when diving.

Not that there would have been that much diving. The winter waves (which, like the sun, come from the wrong angle) are bigger than their summer cousins. Great for surfers, hell for divers. Our whole concept of what is a large wave at Honokowai had to be adjusted. Big waves don’t just prevent us from diving while they wave, they also stir up the water so that it takes a couple of days after they stop before the visibility clears. We are not fans of big waves.

On the positive side, the winter conditions did expand our comfort level in the kayak. We negotiated wave conditions that we would never have considered before. This happens when you leave shore when the waves aren’t too big, and while you’re out there, the swell comes in and walla! You get to learn how to surf your kayak!

Whales!

The whole purpose for visiting Maui in winter was to see the whales. For me, even more compelling was to hear them. I wanted to be underwater and hear the whales sing. Without that, the whole trip would have been disappointing.

We did manage to get in four dives in four weeks. On each of those dives, we heard whalesong. Sometimes faint, sometimes strong, it was always there. The experience is impossible to describe, except to say that it was beautiful and exceeded anything I had expected. I’ve often heard recordings of humpback whales singing, but to hear genuine live whalesongs myself was something I will never forget.

Of course we saw whales as well. The second time we went out on the kayak, we spotted frothing in the water indicating a whale might be headed in our direction. By the time I got out the camera and turned it on, they were nearly on top of us. A mother and calf swam past us at a distance of no more than 20 meters, with the calf breaching about halfway out of the water once before they zipped away. The whole thing was over in seconds. I didn’t manage to get anything worthwhile with the camera, but we didn’t care. We’d come to Maui to see the whales, and seen them we had.

I think Mom must have put out the word that we’d had our close encounter though, because despite spending hours and hours on the water for the rest of our stay, no whale ever came close again. We did see whales breaching right next to others in kayaks and canoes. Not us. We frequently saw huge splashes and spouting whales–way off on the horizon. Not near us. Didn’t matter, we were having fun anyway.

We got the most fun satisfying our curiosity. We wanted to record whales singing. We weren’t sure we could, especially since we could not see any whales in the immediate vicinity. Here’s our first attempt, courtesy of YouTube:

We were thrilled by what we got. That video shows you what we did but it doesn’t really do justice to our recording. This next video gives you a better idea. I made it as a large pod of dolphins swam right past the kayak, some of them quite close, but I knew the camera would have trouble picking them up. You can barely see them in the original video, but that’s what Ursula is pointing at, dolphins. Now that it’s been YouTubed, well… Anyway, we were hoping to capture some dolphin chatter from that swim-by, but no matter how hard we listened, we couldn’t hear anything like the noises we expected. Lots of loud whales, though.

Then we wondered if whales sang at night. We could have easily gotten the answer from the Googles, but we had more fun using the empirical method. (Spoiler alert: they were even louder!)

You might be wondering what’s going on after the 1:14 mark. Ursula is holding a NiteIze signal wand. These are waterproof (rated to 300m depth) and highly visible. They’re great safety lights for night kayaking. You can also use them to make bizarre video. (Well, we needed some visuals for the whalesong…)

The honu…

Of course we didn’t neglect the honu. We spent several hours floating above Reef 2. We were gratified to see numerous turtles coming up to breathe. In January, all of the honu should be at home since nesting migrations are still a few months away. We were eager to get a dive in to see who was there.

When the waves finally settled down and we got out to the reef, we did find a lot of turtles. We had exepected this, based on the numbers we’d seen surfacing for air.

What we didn’t expect was that many of the Reef 2 regulars weren’t around. For example Ho’oulu, who was there last summer, wasn’t there for any of our four visits. We thought we’d see some of the tagged turtles, but only Tiamat was around. We recognized a few others, but a lot of the honu we’d hoped to see just weren’t there.

Your intrepid reporter photographs Raphael, one of the few regulars we saw.

Click image to enlarge

We’re not sure why we didn’t see more familiar faces. It might simply be that we just weren’t out there enough. It would be pretty easy to miss somebody given the limited time we had to look around. We’d like to believe that this is the explanation rather than, say, finding that the regulars have abandoned Reef 2. Remember, we didn’t see a lot of our regulars last summer either.

If they’ve really moved elsewhere, this would be a first for us. In our experience, whenever the honu have abandoned a site they all move elsewhere. This time, Reef 2 still has lots of honu–just not the ones who used to hang out there. Is this a permanent change? We’ll have to wait until next August, and even then there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to tell what’s going on. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope to see more of our familiar cast when next we dive.

Changes

I’ve updated the description for the Show Turtles Aloha campaign at Laniakea to reflect the new foundation that is now running the programme, the Malama Na Honu Foundation.

I’ve also updated the guidelines for reporting sick or injured turtles.

Finally, I added an introduction to Why Howzit Is Dying to put it in context with the latest findings. That essay was written in 1995 and a lot has changed. In particular, I was worried that it left the wrong impression, namely that the honu were in danger of being wiped out by tumors. That’s not the case, although there are still reasons for serious concern.

Sorry, no new Howzit yet. You’ll have to take that up with the Mississauga Muse.

I promise it won’t be so long until the next post. Aloha!

Despite the fact that many visitors somehow end up thinking that we live in Hawaii, we’re actually Canadians living in the self-proclaimed Best City in Canada. No doubt Mississauga was the first place that sprang to mind. No? Perhaps someone should tell Hazel that the Kool-aid has run out.

This is the long way round to telling you that I’m not using the American Thanksgiving long weekend as an excuse. Not using the Grey Cup weekend either. Nope, this delay was the direct result of time shrinkage.

I know, I know, never use hot water. I just forgot, okay? Next thing I knew the Thursdays (my favourites) had all but disappeared and the Sundays ran into the Mondays causing an awful ruckus let me tell you.

Anyway, that’s all sorted out now. Sorry for any inconvenience. Tuesdays will never be the same though.

New FP Bibliography

It’s been quite a while since we received a new fibropapilloma bibliography. For a long time that bibliography grew by leaps and bounds, and we got frequent updates. These days there are fewer changes, which might be a Good Thing. Maybe. While fibropapilloma in Hawaii has been determined not to be a threat to the continuance of the population, there’s still a lot of it around.

I’d like to believe that the incidence of FP is on the decline everywhere, but in preparing the bibliography update I noticed that one paper describes an increase in the “hot zone” (where FP is found) in Florida. That’s not good, especially given the seeming reduction in research. Perhaps there are a lot of projects that haven’t reached the reporting stage yet, but I suspect not.

We know that in Hawaii–and we have no reason to think this doesn’t apply elsewhere–FP in an area flares up over a period of 5-10 years, but then the incidence drops as the most vulnerable turtles die off and the stronger turtles recover. After 3-4 years of decline you reach a point where few turtles have visible signs of the disease, although many of them have had it. As far as I know, no one tracks FP closely enough to determine the stage any particular area has reached (except for us at Honokowai, of course). Do fewer articles indicate that the disease is on the wane everywhere, or has research simply ground to a halt? I wish I knew.

Twice the Howzit

I’m not the only one who’s been lagging. Our friendly neighbourhood Evil Empire Fighter has been preoccupied as well. This put the brakes on Howzit’s adventures but I see he’s back up to full speed in this week’s Toon, Observe The Loss. Warp 2 in fact: six panels instead of three!

This Toon is dedicated to the memory of Milo Radulovich, a man who stood up to government tyranny and with the help of Edward R. Murrow, managed to win. For a great version of that story, don’t miss Good Night and Good Luck, the movie by George Clooney.

The world could always use another Edward R. Murrow, but really, what we need most is a bunch more Milo Radulovichs. Good night Milo, and good luck.

The big news this week is that I’ve put together a set of slideshows for each chapter of the Toon archives. I’ve retained the old list of links to individual entries as well. I’d like to have a way to dive into the slideshow from each individual Toon, but that takes more work than I’m willing to put in right now. Check out the shows at the Trax Toon Archives.

Then there’s the not-Archives…

Howzit’s welcoming committee treats him nicely, but there’s a subtle undercurrent of caution. Oh wait, now that I mentioned it I guess it’s not so subtle. Anyway, this week The Force Is With Howzit.

Some of you might recall that we were writing a book. I think we first mentioned it back in 2002. I’m sure anyone following along thought that it would never really happen. I know I did.

Well, what with the first publisher we approached generally screwing us around and the changes requested by our second publisher (University of Hawaii Press, who have been nothing but exemplary) we’ve actually written three drastically different manuscripts. The latest news, however, is that the third time’s the charm.

Just as I was preparing to post this, I got email from the copyeditor assigned to our book. He sent us his corrections for review, and to my great delight, the changes are few and minor. I’m finally accepting that this process is drawing to a close, and it will really end with an actual printed book!

Someone once said that writing a book was a lot like giving birth. That could well be true, although one of those two things I’ve never done so I can’t say for sure. One thing I do know: if the gestation period for babies were as long as it was for this book, there’d be a lot fewer pregnancies.

The futility that calls itself CSS

The struggle continues. As I mentioned last week, I managed to get a drop-shadow technique to work everywhere except within this blog. I spent the week slowly dissecting the guts of the pages WordPress spews out, finally determining that WordPress inexplicably was throwing in paragraph and linebreaks that thoroughly messed up a lot of stuff, not just drop-shadows. Once I defeated this odd behaviour, things were back on track–sort of. There’s still one small discrepancy I’m trying to track down. Keep watching.

By the way, despite this maddening problem I would still recommend WordPress to anyone contemplating a blog. For the most part, it’s really well designed and implemented. The best part is that when you do encounter difficulties, the support forum can usually sort you out and you can fix things yourself. I don’t think there’s anything better out there.

Meanwhile, back in Mississauga…

This week our poet hero arrives in Canada at last. He soon makes the acquaintance of his first Canadian icon, but apparently not soon enough for his taste. Maybe that explains why Howzit Horses Around.

Biographies & video

I’ve spruced up the biographies for Howzit and Nui on our Who’s Who at Honokowai page. The changes are mostly small and cosmetic, but there is new material: video of both these turtles. I’ve posted short clips showing what they looked like when we first met them.

Howzit is a special turtle to me. I don’t know if Howzit was really male, but Ursula and I always thought of Howzit as a he. He was probably the turtle with the most personality back then: small, cute, and precocious. Howzit seemed to think he was in charge, and he didn’t hesitate to let all the other turtles know it. He was easy to fall in love with, and I did. When it was clear that his tumors were getting the better of him, it broke my heart. I will never forget saying aloha to him for the last time in 1995 because I knew I would never see him again.

Twelve years later the tumors are almost a thing of the past at Honokowai–almost. Even today, however, the little turtles like Howzit still get severe tumors and still “disappear.” We don’t name juveniles anymore because of this. It just got too hard to become attached to them and then watch as they got sick, deteriorated, and then vanish. In some ways, they are all Howzits to me.

Howzit shows that’s he’s no slouch when it comes to surveillance. The title for this week’s Toon is They Need Super Vision. No kidding.

The battle rages on…

I thought I’d scored a breakthrough with CSS this week. I got Stu Nicholl’s drop shadow trick to work on my local machine, but when I tried posting an example here in the blog it all went blooey. I’ve been fighting with it all afternoon. Score: CSS 63 gazillion me nothing. Maybe next week.

I’m so disgusted I’ve got nothing else to say.

This week’s Toon is called Tell Her The Camera’s On The Bum. I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Howzit is by no means impoverished and he does have a place to stay. Sure, he’s travelling on Mississauga’s dime, but George made sure he had enough money to pay his own way home and stay in a good hotel while he’s away. Just in case.

Updated web pages: none

Not that I haven’t tried. I’m really struggling with making CSS do what I’ve done rather easily with tables. Wait, that’s not right, I’ll revise that.

I accept that CSS can’t do what I did by violating the taboo against using tables for layout. I’m willing to acknowledge my weakness, reject the heresy, and swear not to do it again. Really. As soon as I find any CSS that can, say, reliably apply a drop-shadow to an image in all browsers.

Well, I can’t. I got really close, though. I thought I’d found The Grail this week. A CSS guru (Stu Nicholls) has a demo page that illustrates a nice drop-shadow. That page looks right in all four of my test browsers. When I saw that, my heart almost stopped. Could it be…?

No it couldn’t. It’s probably my ignorance of some subtlety of CSS, no doubt, but no matter what I’ve tried I can’t make Stu’s trick work. Not in any of the browsers. None, Jerry. Nar one of ‘em.

Curses. Many curses. Much gesticulating at the monitor with upraised digit. Loud condemnations of the CSS gods, thundering oaths of painful and prolonged vengeance, frightening fury unleashed and hurled against those who would deprive me of the simple, perverse pleasure of a little table or two… those bastards.

To no avail. Stu’s CSS still won’t work, even though I’ve picked apart the source for his page and virtually duplicated it–the part that he says creates the drop-shadow, that is. There’s a lot of other stuff going on with the source for Stu’s page there and I have no idea if any of it matters. Probably not, probably it’s something really minuscule that I missed and will MAKE ME FURIOUS but that’s okay. I’ll get it to work, or find something else. It’s just that a drop-shadow for images is the look I want, so it’s tough to make any real progress until I find a method that I can live with.

New videos: none

This project is also a bit off track, but for a different reason. Okay all you mothers of little videographers out there, gather round. Pass this advice to your children: when using Adobe Premiere to capture video, never never never never ever use Scene Detect.

Scene Detect captures a separate clip every time it detects that you started and stopped the camera. This sounds great, and it is–until you make the mistake I made. I renamed some clips and then sorted by name. Don’t do that.

Since then I have not managed to get them back in capture order. Now, perhaps someone out there can explain Premiere’s clip naming algorithm to me. I’m not exactly inexperienced at this sort of thing and I can’t figure out what the hell it did to my clips. It’s logical up to a point, and then… blooey.

This problem resembles the CSS drop-shadow problem in that they are both the sort of thing that drives me crazy, but I can’t stop myself from trying to fix them. Frankly, I’ve put in so much time on the clip order that I realized I would be better off just giving up and recapturing the tape WITHOUT THE DAMNED SCENE DETECT (sorry, but I feel so much better now…) but then I’d never know how Premiere names clips. *Sigh*. I haven’t quite reached that stage with the CSS drop-shadows, but there’s a whole new week ahead.

I’ve got new video for you on Aikane’s biography page. I extracted about six minutes of Aikane from compilation tape 1, which covers the summer of 1991 and the early part of the summer of 1992. That includes what turned out to be our first documented sighting of Aikane in 1991. It also illustrates how small Aikane was when we first met him (her?).

In those early days, Aikane was important to us not just because s/he was friendly, but also because every other turtle we saw regularly at Honokowai either had or was getting tumors. This wasn’t the only reason that Aikane was the Honokowai honu we photographed and videotaped the most. Even with the poor quality of our video from that period (not helped by size reduction for the web) you can easily see how attractive Aikane was.

What’s a compilation tape?

In 1997, when we first acquired a digital tape deck, Ursula reviewed all of our Regular-8 and Hi-8 video. She created six compilation tapes with short clips form the original media, documenting what was good and/or interesting and where we could find it. It’s a fascinating and invaluable resource, even if a lot of the material is usable only for historical purposes.

Our video from that time suffers not just from age. The format we started with (Regular-8) wasn’t great to begin with. Worst of all, we hadn’t yet learned about white balance and we didn’t even have an orange filter, so the colour is just awful. Warts and all, however, I find myself fascinated by what is on those tapes. They really drive home the changes that have occurred underwater at Honokowai over the past 15-16 years.

Meanwhile…

In this week’s Toon, The CorpSec Err Force is on the move, but under the watchful eye of Kariya Nation. Over at that other blog, you can meet Kariya Nation’s inside operative, The Mole. Check him out.

This week’s Toon is called Culvert Operation, which is feeble I admit, but at least it’s a pun. My head hurt thinking that up, so give me a break here.

When we started the Toons the titles weren’t punny. Then I somehow came up with the stupid concept of making each title a pun. Ursula delegated that job to me. Do you think I might regret that idea, oh I don’t know, every week maybe? That’s actually underestimating it.

I know what you’re thinking. No, I can’t give it up, and yes, I’ve admitted I have a problem. I’m weak, what can I say. So it is that I will probably continue to inflict awful puns upon my family and friends (those who haven’t fled screaming) and yes, you too dear reader. I only write this to ask your forgiveness, but I digress.

This Toon begins a new era: the dawn of Kariya Nation. We hope it’s interesting and amusing on its own, but if you really want to appreciate it, start following Mississauga Musings. Little does Howzit know that his cousin Nando is not what he seems…

Other revisions: none

There aren’t any external changes this week. Most of my Trax revison time was devoted to fighting with CSS. Frankly, I’ve started to doubt the value of the conversion to full CSS. It doesn’t seem capable of the style I want, so that means choosing a different look. I really was hoping to avoid that. I’m beginning to get the old one-step-forward-two-steps-back feeling. It hasn’t quite gotten that far yet–I’m still at the running-hard-to-stay-in-place stage–but I’m sooo close. Wish me luck.