Ocean Watch

Tern Island experience

gets 2 thumbs up

On Tuesday I flew home from Tern Island, a biological field station in Hawaii's northwest chain. One moment I'm ducking low-flying albatrosses and listening to frigate birds call their chicks; the next I'm weaving in and out of Honolulu traffic and catching the war news on public radio.

You might think that such a radical change in lifestyle would be a hard adjustment, but that hasn't been the case. My Tern experience was like seeing the movie "Return of the King." While there, I was totally lost in the story. Then I came out, blinked a few times and was happy to be home.

Like that great fantasy film, mine also had a good cast of characters. I will never forget the volunteer biologist from Indiana who, while working on the roof of the barracks, spotted a large glass ball, with netting intact, bobbing just off the beach.

The young woman hurried down the ladder, pulled on her swimming suit and jumped into the ocean. The rest of us smiled at her good fortune and continued working.

Later, I mentioned the woman's lucky find to the refuge manager who said, "She threw it back."

"She did what?" I said.

"The net was full of gooseneck barnacles, and she couldn't bear to kill them. So she let the ball go."

"You're joking."

"I'm not," she said. "It's something to think about."

Another biologist at Tern had equal aloha for parasites.

Seabirds are loaded with ticks and flies that hide in their feathers and bite their skin for blood meals. One of these creatures is the flat fly, a bug so flat that whacking it with a slipper has no effect.

These flies don't usually bite people, but to me they do something even worse: They snuggle deep in your hair. When I felt one moving around in there, I would jump up, slap myself in the head and sometimes even yank out a few pieces of hair to get the creepy things. Then I squished them dead between my thumb and forefinger.

This bit of hair-pulling madness occurred at dinner one evening, and when I found the little bugger, this biologist said, in all seriousness, "Don't hurt it."

"If I don't kill it," I told him, "the thing will jump right back in my hair."

"You could take it outside," he suggested.

For this tenderhearted man, I carried the fly outside and let it bite some poor albatross. Something else to think about.

My Tern movie didn't have much of a plot, but it had some adventure scenes, sort of. Here's a note from my journal after a day of banding brown noddies and wedge-tailed shearwaters:

"One wedgie chick was far, far beneath a dense, low heliotrope bush. I broke branches with my skin as I crawled on my belly and then inched along on my side.

"Finally, I got in far enough to grab the little guy only to find that my open fanny pack (fastened in front) was empty of my banding equipment. It all fell out during my shimmy in. I scooted backwards, retrieved it all and banded the little brat, which was biting me the whole time.

"I am scratched, bruised, swollen and ache all over. My toes are bleeding. The half-digested squid on my hands, shirt and shorts stink, and I have bird poop everywhere. I'm exhausted, thirsty and hungry. I love it here."

I love it here in the Shire, too. It's good to be home.