Midway, Part IV

Beach on Eastern Island

Good morning! I hope everyone had a lovely Veteran's Day - all federal holidays off is one of the few perks I get from working for the government.

Per my little sister's request (in the comments for my last post) I will try my best not to have a depressing sign off this time. So, I'll start with the depressing stuff!

After we walked around Eastern, looking at birds and ducks and WWII stuff, we headed out to the beach to take a look and see if we could find any Hawaiian monk seals.



Pretty. These beaches are some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen or could even imagine. And knowing that if we weren't out there, not one human would set foot on them that day is remarkable.



However, even though people may not actually be on the beach that often, our impact is seen in a big way. Because of its location in the Pacific, Midway sees a lot of trash wash onto its shores. And I don't mean just some plastic bits - I'm talking computer monitors, shoes, intact lightbulbs, tires, helmets, you name it! Seeing this beach covered in garbage really does put our consumer culture into bleak perspective.



Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Ok, because I don't want to get too depressing or preachy, we're moving on. Moving on to awesomeness like this:



I found a glass float! It's the pretty blue thing in my right hand. Japanese fishermen used to use glass balls of varying sizes to help their nets float. They switched to plastic floats in the '70s, but the glass ones still turn up on Midway with relative frequency. It's definitely an exciting thing in the office when someone finds one and I was lucky enough to do so on my first (and likely only) trip to Midway. None of the other folks on my trip found one, so I'm extra lucky. I just realized I don't have a good picture of the float itself, so I'll take one and post it at a later date.

As we walked along the beach we kept our eyes peeled for endangered Hawaiian monk seals. It's recommended that you stay 150 feet away from them because they tend to get skittish and are safer basking on the beach than if they returned to the water. We saw a couple of really big ones napping on the beach and had to adjust our route, but then we happened upon a littler one close to the pier where the boat was docked.





Isn't he so cute?? Seriously, if there was an animal that could turn me into a total nature and wildlife lover, it would be this one. Unfortunately he saw us and started to shimmy toward the ocean, but luckily he decided to stop and show off for us.





He flipped over, showed us his belly, rubbed his head, rubbed his belly. It was ridiculously cute and one of those moments where I really knew how special this opportunity was.

To sign off this time, I'm going to leave you with a couple of pictures of me and birds. The first is me with (I believe) a tropic bird hovering over my head. I'm going to have to check on what kind of bird this is...



The second is me with an albatross. Well, an albatross statue. The things I do for your amusement...



I can hear you laughing.