Midway, Part III

I just realized that I forgot to tell you about the chef and the stars, both of which were promised as upcoming events...

The chef, Pong, is one of the Thai guys hired to work on the island. He was probably the most welcoming person on the island, explaining each dish at our first dinner. I was cautioned that Pong's analysis of the spiciness of a dish was not to be believed. Apparently 10% spicy means my boss will be in a lot of pain later. Anyway, Pong was wonderful and even made a birthday cake on Wednesday for one of the women in our group.

The stars. I have no pictures of them, even though I tried. Hmm, why do I have a pitch black photo? Ah, yes, pointing my little digital camera at the night sky to capture stars really wasn't the best idea. The brightness of the stars amazed me, but what was even more incredible were how many more stars were in the Midway night sky than I'd seen anywhere else. The best I can describe it is to say that the sky looked like lace. Tiny little stars dotted the sky everywhere and formed an intricate pattern like really fine lace. I had to stop looking up or my neck was going to get sore. (I suppose I could have laid down on the patio, but strangely enough I wasn't really in the mood to get run over by mice.)

After breakfast Wednesday morning, my group biked over to the boathouse to take a trip over to Eastern Island. (FYI, Wednesday was a very eventful day, so it will be split into several posts.) As we were hanging out on the dock this is what we looked at:



Pretty, yes? I still can't get over the color of the water. Our boat normally takes off from a different dock but that one was being taken up by the fuel barge, so our boat had to be moved over. This led to an interesting way of getting the boat into the water that was also entertaining:



Once the boat was in the water we piled on and set off for Eastern. The water was a bit rough and it was windy, so I was perfectly happy to stay inside. Looking back to Sand Island we saw the ironwoods (Australian pines) prettily juxtaposed against the blue ocean.



It was a short trip and we disembarked at a pier on Eastern that must be WWII era. Don't I look fetching in my life vest?





The above is the view of the island I had while still on the pier.

We began our tour of Eastern walking toward the duck seeps (more about those later) and just checking out the birds and what was around us. One of the first things you notice is the number of bird (mainly albatross) carcasses decomposing from last season.

Plastic in the ocean is a huge problem for birds like the albatross. Albatross eat mainly squid and flying fish eggs and pieces of plastic float on the ocean surface much like squid and fish eggs. The bird scoops plastic up, not knowing the difference, and either eats it or feeds it to her chicks. Some albatross survive eating the plastic because before they fledge (fly away for the first time) they expel a bolus of the indigestible items in their stomachs (much like an owl pellet). However, plastic is replacing so much of some birds' diets that the birds starve to death. These are the carcasses we're seeing.



They actually used to practice carcass removal and toss the birds back into the ocean, but then they realized that doing so meant they were also tossing plastic back into the ocean. So, now they just let them decompose on the island.

Mostly bones mixed in with the plastic

Surprisingly this wasn't nearly as disgusting as it might seem. Maybe I was just being stoic because I didn't want to be heckled by my biologist colleagues, but it was really only awful if I saw a new enough carcass that it still had a face. I even held a bird bone. Unbelievably light.



I did not hold the skull.

We also found random albatross eggs on the ground. Some were obviously empty, but others needed to be handled very carefully. I can promise you I would have vomited if someone had dropped this thing.



On the really upbeat note of birds starving to death because their bellies are full of plastic, I'm going to sign off for the day. Just think about it the next time you're participating in our plastic-full society in a way that could be improved. I'm good about bringing my own bags to the grocery store, but I definitely need to work on decreasing my use of plastic bottles (Diet Coke addiction, anyone?).

I promise pictures of live albatrosses and a whole slew of other birds and wildlife as well as some breathtaking scenery and more hilarious pictures of Colleen, nature girl.