Returning to Midway!

Don, Anne, and I are finally heading to Midway on Thursday, August 5!!! We’re still working on finalizing our 2010 Monument permits, but we hope they’ll be complete by the time or soon after we reach Midway. Until then, we’ll work on the one permit we still have active (my juvenile pearl oyster growth and survival cages) and preparing for our various projects. We look forward to seeing our friends at Midway again and resuming our work there.

Our 2010 Mitsubishi volunteers will join us a week later on Thursday, August 12. They’ll be lucky enough to fly into Midway during the day, so they’ll see Midway from the air. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to see more than a few, if any, albatrosses, since all the juveniles have fledged and the adults won’t return until October or November.

We know that Midway will be the same in some ways and very different in other ways. For example, FWS refuge manager Matt Brown has moved to another position on Maui and former refuge biologist John Klavitter is now acting refuge manager. We’ll miss Matt, but we’re also very happy for John. FWS has also added other staff, and I’m sure the Chugach staff has changed. The albatrosses will be almost completely gone, which is partly sad because we love seeing them and partly good because we’ll be able to arrive during the day and we won’t have to worry about tiger sharks cruising inside the lagoon to eat fledglings.

Since my last post in March, we’ve all been very busy.

• I finished teaching Ecology of Reefs, Mangroves, and Seagrasses (including giving a final exam and final grades!!), went to Maui for a week for an education workshop, and completed the steps to advance to candidacy (which include a public seminar which was the the occasion for the photo above).
• Don returned from Australia, worked very hard on completing our permits, and went to Germany for two weeks to analyze the cores collected in Australia.

Anne completed her first year at UCSC with some very intense classes and her scientific diving certification, spent a few weeks exploring Seattle and the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound, and looks forward to resuming fieldwork at Midway. As you can see in the photo to the left, she also went skydiving!!

• Helen and Rachel both completed their comprehensive exams and are getting started on their own research.Helen just returned from an intense 5 weeks on Palmyra working on coral recruitment tiles with Dan Brumbaugh, a UCSC affiliate that is a scientist for the American Museum of Natural History.

• Kate returned from Antarctica and will be joining us on the G-1 plane for a short visit to friends at Midway. We all look forward to seeing her again and hearing about Antarctica!!

What are we up to now?

Don is spending winter quarter 2010 on an International Ocean Drilling Program cruise to the Great Barrier Reef, where he is working to collect, preserve, and examine reef cores. He's been sending back some great photos of sea snakes, jellyfish, drilling equipment, sunrises, and himself in a hard hat! The ship departed from Townsville in early February and he won't be back to Santa Cruz until mid-April. And even that date depends on how much they are delayed by bad weather from Cyclones Ului and Tomas that are east of Australia, but heading west! The drilling equipment of the ship is very sensitive to bad weather and is easily broken - they've already had a delay because their dynamic GPS couldn't keep the ship directly over the drilling spot!

Since his cruise was delayed until this quarter, I am teaching his class "Ecology of Reefs, Mangroves, and Seagrasses". I did enjoy being called "Professor McCully" for the first week or so until all my students understood that calling me "Kristin" was fine! I'm enjoying teaching a lot, but putting a huge amount of work into lecturing and preparing and grading exams, quizzes, presentations, paper discussions, and labs. It's making me appreciate Don, and every other professor I've ever had, a lot more! Fortunately, it's only quite this much work the first time you teach a class! My mom was very impressed to see me lecturing and took this photo below of me (center) with Wendy (right), Anne (bottom), and our friend Ben Hawks (left) at a dinner party at my house during her visit.

Wendy (who didn't make it to Midway in 2009) is working hard to analyze her data and write up her results so she can present her Ph.D. dissertation in the spring. She's applied for funding and a permit to do some postdoctoral work on coral restoration at Midway. She gave a full guest lecture to my class a few weeks ago on her research at Midway.

Anne (our 1st year grad student currently with purple hair) is working on the steps towards her scientific diving certification, which has required huge amounts of time diving both in the pool and in the ocean, as well as taking several classes and working as teaching assistant for the first time. She's successfully bribing her students (and mine!) by bringing in octopus-shaped carrotcake, pineapple-shaped (and colored) cake, shortbread, chocolate shells, and fish and turtle sugar cookies! Most of that was for a guest lecture she gave in my class on analyzing sediment and her research at Midway.

Don, Wendy, Anne and I are also working hard to finalize our report to the Monument on our work the last 2 years, apply for new permits, and figure out what we're doing this summer! We haven't figured out our schedule yet.

Helen O'Brien, one of our 2nd year graduate students, is working hard to begin her research on manta rays in the Gulf of California and working as TA for my class. She only came to Midway for 3 weeks in 2008, but may return this summer!

But the big news is Kate Schoenrock (left and below), who has moved on from working as our field assistant at Midway to doing her own graduate work at University of Alabama, Birmingham. Her research is on endophytic algae (algae living inside other algae) in Antarctica, and she arrived at Palmer Station in February for 4 months in Antarctica! You should all check out the blog and photos she and her colleagues are posting about their adventures driving Zodiacs, diving in dry suits, etc. (http://www.antarctica.uab.edu/). Funny to see Kate in a survival suit and a drysuit! Talk about different from Midway!

Happy Independence Day!

Always lots going on, although it sounds like the next few weeks will be a bit calmer. Last week, I celebrated my 25th birthday and enjoyed a cake baked by Pong and decorated by volunteer Jessica Sun.

Our new graduate student, Anne Warner, arrived and helped us clean up the boathouse for two mornings. Anne and I went out in our little Red Whaler with acting deputy manager Greg Goldsmith to work on boating, which was a lot of fun on a beautiful day. We did yet another round of bivalve recruitment - our fourth so far this summer, so Kate and I are getting very tired of it. Anne is resuming her "favorite activity" from her winter visit: digging holes in the beach for water monitoring! Hopefully she won't have to dig 9 ft deep this time!

We had the ship Dove (a contractor ship to the SBX-1, a missile detection platform) and a Coast Guard ship the Walnut here for a few days, so it was good to see some old friends. Kate even managed to find a way to Kure on the Walnut as cook to some contractors on board for a few days - we're looking forward to hearing her stories and seeing her photos - I'm so jealous!!!

Fourth of July festivities included a night biking/running race on the runway, a "slow bike race" on the Cargo Pier (both won by Greg Goldsmith!), a feast with steak, hamburgers, and king crab, and a party with lots of games, alcohol, and performances by the Chugach band! At right, Anne beat Brett to make it to the finals of the slow bike race. At left, FWS volunteer Jessica Sun and Chugach Transportation worker Tawan joined the band briefly.

Sunday, the festivities continued with the tri-weekly poker, but on the beach this time! The albatrosses seemed a bit confused as the game took place between two areas they use as runways! The game was interrupted when rain showers forced the game inside, but a beautiful rainbow provided adequate compensation!