This last trip really made me realize how lucky I am to be spending my summer in Hawaii living my dream job. We hiked to a back country beach called Apua and hiked over 60 miles in 5 days. The hike to Apua point is 6.6 miles and then we have to day check a beach called Halape thats 5 miles away (10 miles round trip). Then when we do our hourly beach checks, we get an additional 5 miles a day since the beach is so long! We've had some new volunteers join the project, so this trip I was paired up with Brandon and Brennan (confusing, I know). Brandon just graduated from Slippery Rock (PA) this May and Brennan is my age and goes to school in Alaska. It's been super cool getting to know new people out here in the field because to stay up at night all you have is each other, so you start telling stories and asking questions and you get to know each other really fast. You learn a lot about each other but you also learn a lot about yourself too! There's been so many instances where Brandon and I look at each other and just say, "Wow…we are so lucky to be here." At night we were talking and someone asked what your dream job would be, and I think what I'm doing now is definitely my dream job. I'm so thankful I have this opportunity, that I was selected to be a volunteer, and most importantly that my mom and dad supported me and let me do this. There's no way this would be possible without them, so mom and dad if you're reading this, I can't thank you guys enough for this trip and letting me live my dream.
Halape
We saw lots of cool stuff in Apua on our hikes!
Brandon, me, Brennan, and Jeddy before hiking out to Apua!
-Brandon and I saw a huge eel in the rocks during low tide, like I'm talking at least 4 feet long and it was super thick too…so gross.
-We saw an albino mongoose…weird, right?
-We had some pretty epic sunsets!
-There's a fresh water crack at Halape where we day check. It's filled with fresh water runoff from the mountain and it's mixed with salt water from the ground and it's seriously the most refreshing thing ever…You finish your 5-mile hike and jump in the cool water, and after you feel so refreshed and clean, it's so rewarding!
Can't believe we're already into the last week of June! This first month has gone by so fast. We spent another week in Pohue and had tons of turtle activity! We had turtles come up on 3 of the 4 nights, and 2 turtles nested. One turtle had almost all of her right front
flipper missing (probably from a shark bite), but even with a missing flipper she was the strongest turtle we've ever worked with.
Crazy weather on our hike!
During my off time yesterday we went to Hilo and looked around at the farmer's market and got an awesome lunch at a place called Pineapple's, and then shaved ice at Wilson's. I'm definitely gonna be craving those when I head home at the end of the summer.
Just returned from a 5 day trip in Apua! Apua is one of our backcountry beaches where we drive to the trailhead, and then have a 6.5 mile hike to our beach (we also carry all our food, gear, clothes, talk about a workout). We had a mama turtle come up our first night around 9:20pm, and she dug 12 false nests for the next 6 hours and finally returned to the ocean at 3:00am without laying her clutch. Digging false nests is common, but digging 12 is a bit unusual. Sometimes turtles just don't find the right spot and continue digging somewhere else. This turtle was in a pretty rocky area, so we think that might have something to do with it. Hopefully when/if she comes up next she goes to a sandy spot! This was a new turtle so I also got to apply tags to her back flippers. This same night we also camped with three backcountry rangers who stayed up with us the whole night (I'm not sure we could have stayed up with this turtle so late if they weren't there to talk to us and keep us awake!). They we're all super excited to see their first hawksbill, especially since seeing one is so rare! Not only are they endangered, but they also only come up on the beach to nest and then spend the rest of their life in the ocean. Males never return to the beach after they hatch.
I also got to celebrate my 20th birthday in the field! It started by staying up until 3am with that turtle and meeting our new friends from backcountry! The stars were amazing that night too, every time you looked up you'd see one or two shooting stars. Then we were able to get about 2 hours of sleep and we were up at 6am for our morning beach check. Then we had a little birthday breakfast, complete with balloons and a party hat. The guys made me a fancy birthday coffee and we got a group picture before they headed off on their hike!
Other than that it was a pretty uneventful trip, no other turtle activity, and we head back out in the field tomorrow.
This week was our first week of going into the field on our own after our orientation! The two guys headed out to a backcountry beach and the three girls and one of our supervisors went to a beach called Pohue. We were there for 6 nights and have tomorrow off and then head back into the field again.
Pohue is probably my favorite beach we get to camp at so far! The sunsets are awesome.
Part of the turtle team!
Our kitchen/base camp
Everyone gets to pack they're own food bucket, and there's also a propane stove and basic kitchen stuff for us to use.
We had a lot of turtle activity this trip which is great! One night we had a turtle come up, dig around for maybe 10 minutes but then she headed back for the ocean. At that point we restrained her and checked her tags, measured her, and our data showed us the last time she came up to nest at this beach was in 2009. Restraining a 200 pound turtle is pretty tough! You have to lay on top of them and then get each arm under her flippers and lift them up so she can't get a flipper in the sand and push away. Since she didn't nest we knew she'd return the next night, and she did! She dug around for over three hours and dug 7 false nests and then returned to the ocean. But when all this was happening, we got a second turtle, which is pretty rare to have two at once! This was a new turtle who had never been tagged, so I got to apply new tags which was pretty cool. But she laid her nest below the high tide line, so we stayed up until 4am doing a nest translocation. After the turtle covered the nest, we had to dig it up, and one by one we placed all 160 eggs into a big bucket, and moved the nest to a safer location after replicating the nest size and dimensions. Our false nesting turtle returned the next night and laid her nest, but we had to do another translocation. Translocations are extremely rare, so it was pretty lucky we could do two back to back.
After we did the nest translocation we put a nest cage over it. It should hatch in 55-70 days.
I also managed to open a coconut…it only took like 2 hours…..
The best bakery ever!! If you're ever on Big Island, this place is a must! It tasted so good after 7 days in the field.
