Week one

Finally got a chance to do some posting! We've been pretty busy with training the last few weeks and haven't had much time off. Anyways, the first week was great! My supervisor, Liz, picked up me and one other worker from the hostel we were staying at in Hilo, and then we started our shopping. First we got breakfast at a little local place that had huge pancakes that were probably bigger than my head. Then we went to four stores to stock up on food to keep at our house, food for hiking/camping, and other stuff for the house like shampoo, sunscreen (lots and lots of sunscreen), etc. We had the afternoon to chill and then 3 more volunteers came that night. Right now there's 5 people working including me and everyone gets along great! We're from all over, Maine, Florida, Minnesota, California, and Michigan, and range between ages 19 and 27. Our house is actually in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and as you can imagine, living in a National Park is pretty amazing! There's other houses for volunteers like us, we've met people that work on a bird project, astronomy stuff, and we're known as "turtle people. There's a group of about 5 more turtle volunteers coming in a few weeks. Here's some pictures of our house! It's 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with a huge family room.

It's also like a quarter mile from an amazing overlook where you can see the crater! At night you can see it glowing from the lava. 

We also started our orientation trip for training! Our first trip we went to a beach called Kamehame, and it's about an hour drive on the highway and then another hour down a 4-wheel drive road. All 5 volunteers and our two supervisors went with us and we set up camp when we got there. We have a small tent set up and then a wooden box with kitchen supplies and other miscellaneous stuff. Thankfully we don't need to hike our water in and it gets dropped off by a helicopter. A typical day was something like this:

6am: Wake up and walk the beach, searching for turtle tracks and digs. 

6:30am: Trap check. We set traps for mongoose, feral cats, and rats since they each nests and hatchlings. I got to euthanize about 7 mongoose so far…it was sad at first but then I realized how mean they were and that they eat baby turtles and I was alright.

7am: Call the office and dispatch and check in/report turtle activity

7:15am: Breakfast and pack up for our day hike

7:45am: Day hile to other beaches which can range between 1.5-4.5 miles away and check those beaches for turtle activity. 

Noon-1pm-ish: Return to camp and SLEEP

4pm: Set predator traps

5pm: Night monitoring begins! Turtles most often nest at night, and our goal is to see the mama turtle come up from the ocean and mark and label her nest, and check her for tags or tag her if she doesn't have any. We check the beach every hour until 2am.

7pm: Stay on the beach and look for turtles. Most nights there won't be any activity since there are only about 100 documents hawksbill turtles that nest on Big Island. 

2am: Assuming there's no activity, we go to bed. But if there is activity, we have to stay up with the mama turtle until she returns to the ocean, which is a process that can last many hours. 

It's definitely exhausting, but it's so worth it! It's such a privilege to work with such a rare and amazing species.   

Here's some of the beaches we've worked at.

Sleeping in my hammock is great!

Black sand beach at Punalu'u