First day!

After a grueling journey (including a 12-hour layover in SFO which involved sleeping on the floor), we have finally arrived in Maui! We checked into our hostel in Paia, on the north shore of Maui, and promptly went to the beach with a group. It is so beautiful here. I feel like I'm living in a postcard. I saw the hawksbill nest that I'll be watching and it gave me chills. The surf is brutal, though... I felt like I had run a marathon after 20 minutes fighting to stay afloat in the waves.

Turtle watching starts TONIGHT at 7:30! I'm so excited! The nest could hatch any day.

Fun Fact: (actually kind of a sad fact) -- the Hawksbill turtle is so endangered that only one female has laid nests on the entire island of Maui this whole season. She laid four nests, which is about average (most females lay between 3 and 5).

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 22, 2017 at 9:11 AM

    Could some of the missing Hawksbills have moved to a different island?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownOctober 14, 2017 at 11:41 PM

      I don't know how I missed this! Unfortunately there is no chance of that. Females always return to the beach where they were born to lay their eggs.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Honu Friends

Image
I finally got a Hawaii Wildlife Fund volunteer T shirt! I'm official! This is really great because it means that when I ask tourists to stay away from the turtles, there is a greater chance that they will listen to me. Allow me to illustrate. One day before I had a shirt ( actually things like this have happened many days )  some people were standing very near the turtles and I yelled at them to please stand back, but they paid no attention. I was very angry. The respectful tourists were upset too, and I wish I had a hat or shirt or something to make me look official so people would listen to me. One woman in particular would not listen to anything I said, and continued to stand right next to the turtle and take selfies with it. When she was walking away, she tripped on a rock. I laughed.  The very next day I got my shirt. I was at the beach with Magda, and she gave me the clipboard and said, "Today is your day. Name some turtles and take data." I named three new turtl...
Read more

Look what the storm dragged in

Image
There's not a lot to report turtle-wise. I go to Ho'okipa every day, keep away the rude tourists, and talk to the respectful ones about turtles. It's been raining a lot recently and the ocean has been pretty violent. The lifeguards sometimes put up a no swimming sign, and this is very helpful because it means that the tourists don't complain about the swimmers. "Those people are swimming and there's turtles in the water. Why can't I go take a picture right next to one of these turtles?" Well, it's a public beach and there's only so much we can do. People are allowed to use the water. But that doesn't mean you can go stand next to one of these turtles who are all trying to get some beauty sleep. Of course this explanation only gets groans, grumbles, and from time to time no response whatsoever. So I really like the no swimming sign. A couple of nights ago there was a huge storm and the entire island lost power. Apparently this happens ev...
Read more

The Swell

Image
The past few days have been very slow. The swell has been huge. This means the sea level is really high and there are a lot of big waves. Beaches have been closed because it's dangerous to get in the water. The storm and the swell brought in a lot of debris and driftwood and now the water is brown and gross near the shore. When the swell is so big, the turtles stay in the water. There's no point in coming on the beach to bask because they'd just get washed right back out to sea. We don't really know where they go. Maybe around to the other side of the island, or maybe they hide out in underwater nooks and crannies and lava structures and small caves. So no swimming, no turtle-watching, and no turtles. I've been filling my time by updating my travel journal (which I have neglected for far too long) and working on an essay. The essay is a summary of what I've learned during my time here. It's something that interns do so they can put their experience on thei...
Read more