June 28^th, before sunrise, somewhere over the Pacific between Guam and Hawaii

We got to the small Yap airport – a brief airport, one terminal – at 1am.  On the big plane from Guam to Honolulu, I got a whole row to myself, of which I took full advantage.  It’s the best I’ve ever slept on a plane, ever. 

We’ll land in San Francisco soon.  

June 27^th, 7am

Yesterday began out travels home.  Up early, and back to the airport-slash-post office to reunite with PMA pilot Amos.  Miles and Keenan and Austin meet us there, we hug and high-five and they give us the plumeria leis they made, white and cream and pink.  We exchange info.  “Come back next year!”

That night, back on Yap, Sam, Kelsey, Cole, and I stay late and the Mnuw.  An exuberant group offers us cake – they are there to watch the premier of House Hunters: Yap Edition.  Whoa!  It’s them.  A cultural anthropologist doing immersion in Yap.  Pretty neat.  The walk back to ESA is rainy and it feels great. 

In a couple hours, we will do a cultural tour of Yap.  I’m looking forward to exploring more if this island, which seems vast and jungled compared to the islands of the Ulithi Atoll. 

June 25^th, 10:30pm

After breakfast, we boat to Asor to garden.  We (lots of awesome ladies and us!) planted 105 sweet potato cuttings!  In the ground… in the sun's beating heat.  Felt good!  We soak in the ocean for a bit before going to make lunch at Laurie’s house (the woman with the awesome garden and awesome sense of humor).  Then we depart Asor and hear to our last site in the lagoon – not for data collection, but to see the old WWII wreckage that lies at the bottom, where a ship carrying amphibious vehicles sank.  Dolphins leap nearby.  These strange man-made objects sit perfectly visible, 30 to 60 feet below.  The surface is a shimmering cloud of silversides.  Everything is so beautiful and blue and open.  Sharks cruise the bottom, over the rusted structures.  This is perfect.

We return to Falalop and cleanup our lodge home (organized chaos).  The Ulithi kids are barbecuing in some shade down by the beach and the smell is enticing.  The peachy rays of sunset approach and we all meander around the shore, just soaking it in.  That night at dinner, with so much of the community present, we made the very best of our last night.  It was the tearjerking speechfest we all hoped it would be.  It really was the best.  And the barbecue was delicious.        

June 24^th, 11pm

Spent last night on Turtle Island (Geilob)! We had been aiming to travel there our whole time in Ulithi so far, but weather has so far prevented us.  The island is a little ways outside of the main atoll lagoon.  There were strong currents headed out there yesterday morning.  We arrived at the uninhabited island, which was relatively unmarred by the typhoon.  Still damaged, but somewhat less so than the other islands.  We set up camp, a tarps stretched over the sand between trees, and then out for coral size frequency transects.  The water was rough here and I didn’t last too long.  For dinner, we wove our coconut frond plates, and the Ulithi guys caught fish and coconut crab for dinner.  The coconut crabs are huge and purple blue – gorgeous animals.  There are highly endangered, redlisted, but they try to take the older ones, and not too many.  I feel that old conflict rising up, but remind myself that these are sustenance fishers and this is how it is.  You don’t blame sustenance fishers who have been surviving here for centuries for the shortcomings of modern overharvesting.  But still, though.     

Also it’s delicious.  Despite everything, I am extremely grateful for this meal.  In addition, in the mix of fresh fish is the sweet lips that Cole has managed to successfully spear!

Hanging from a tree we spot a fruit bat!  Just chilling, eating some fruit, spitting out the untasty parts.  Fruit bat things.  Also saw a pair of green sea turtles mating in the surf, not a super common thing. 

Night falls on Turtle Island and we sit on the beach as the sun goes down.  Sam plays the uke and we are all excitedly still, waiting for instructions from Junior and the commencing of the sea turtle data collection that we are here to do tonight.  The females are coming up to lay these nights, hauling their hard, heavy bodies up onto the sand, up further and further until they are satisfied with their nesting location.  While they lay, the turtle team (three Ulithi men, part of the Ulithi Marine Turtle Project, which Junior supervises) will measure them, count their eggs as they come out, and either tag her or check her preexisting tag.  At around 10 or 11pm, we mobilize, walking in small quiet groups, listening for the scraping sound of sand being thrown from a hole.  I come to where most people are observing – there is a female green laying.  She is huge and beautiful and her eggs are perfect little orbs.  The team works quickly, taking measurements and recording data.  Then she needs to leave.  The typhoon has left a good deal of debris on the beach, fallen branches and logs.  Sometimes the females, exhausted after their nesting expedition and confronted with the obstacle-ridden return, can’t make it back to sea.  Their bodies lay under thick twisted branches here and there, spent for the sake of their offspring.  This female is in a similar position, so the team must manhandle the heavy creature towards the right path.  She drags herself to the waves, each stroke of her flippers taking every ounce of strength and determination she can muster.  Each one makes me hold my breath, watching her labor back home.  The water comes up to meet her and she is gone. 

Down on the sand, we see it – the sea turtle hatchlings!  They are coming up!  The laying season has every female mating and laying a few times each, so there is an overlap of laying and hatching.  They are tiny little big-headed discs, flipping their comical fins on instinct, flinging themselves towards the water, leaping almost.  Life is so cool. 

At around 4am, heaving beating rain starts, drumming on our tarp.  I like it. 

Breakfast is eggs and pumpkin and octopus and coffee.  I pack up my tent, and give it to Carolyn, the Peace Corps girl who joined us for Turtle Island.  She could use it more than me.  It is hot, very hot.  Even for Ulithi.  I lie under some coconut trees and stare at the birds flying overhead.  The black ones are frigates, but what are the small white ones?  There were boobies earlier, too!  Super cool birds.  Two green lizards chase each other around a coco tree trunk, the type I caught yesterday.  There are hermit crabs everywhere – Turtle Island has more hermit crabs than any of the other islands I’ve seen.  Huge ones!  The sand moves with them.  They come out of their shells if you whistle! 

We pack up our campsite and it’s back on the boat.  The science team hits another site while junior takes us to Lizard Island, aka Losiep.  No one lives here and no one will.  It is known by the Ulithi as a dark place, dangerous, and full of monitor lizards.  Locals do not like the monitor lizards, not at all.  They are invasive, anyways, but they don’t like them for reasons far beyond that.  But we think they’re still cool (to a degree, we all know what invasives do).  The most painfully obvious thing on Losiep is actually the pigs.  Huge pigs, destructive pigs.  They weren’t here the last time Junior was here (I think he said two years ago – this is not a frequented island, even by Ulithians).  He is very clearly distressed.  The pigs ransack, they eat, they destroy the underbrush and the seabird nests and, basically, everything.  They go insane over the coconut husks we discard – a large (so large!) female gets a running start and flips a smaller pig up into the air with her head.  Their presence here is a job for Island Conservation and I hope their effect can be mitigated one day. 

As we leave, Carolyn has an armful of coconuts.  There aren’t too many coconuts back on any of the other islands.  “Leave those here!” Junior instructs.  Like I said, the Ulithi don’t like Lizard Island.  You don’t bring back the coconuts from Lizard Island.     

We rendezvous with the science team at the nearby Bird Island and all three boats turn towards Falalop. 

Then tonight at the lodge, at dinner, Peter breaks out a secret tub of Nutella and the crowd goes wild.

After dinner, as the Ulithi kids come over and everyone settles in to project Jurassic Park III on the wall, Sam and I get to do something we’ve been pining to do.  Avigdore lets us use the (expensive, expensive) equipment that he and Peter have been using to see the coral larvae recruitments at night.  The UV lights and the amber filters that fit over our snorkel masks!  He gives us (slightly foreboding) instructions and tells us to be back in 30 minutes.  Cole joins us (we’ll share equipment) and we walk the short walk to the water in the starlight.  The ocean is cool, the first time it has felt kind of cool on my skin.  Or maybe that’s the nervous anticipation.  First we dive just with the regular flashlights.  It is beyond amazing.  The nocturnal fish are out, saucer-eyed schools.  Crinoids bloom and undulate in the current.  A crown-of-thorns seastar bristles from a rocky reef outcropping.  And up near the surface, the opal moonlit surface above us, seven tiny bioluminescent reef squid are suddenly facing us.  Just facing us, nothing more, and they let us put our palms underneath their bodies and they are but little handfuls but they seem giant in our eyes.  Then, as if one of them gives the signal, they raise their two longer arms up, ink, and are gone. 

With the UV lights and filters, another world is exposed.  Blacks become blacker, kind of red, and coral planula are highlighted in neon green.    

I never thought I would ever see something like this.  We all grin huge, happy grins, even underwater.  We finally swim back to shore, and Sam and I sit in the breaking waves, laughing and shining the UV lights towards the water and it lights the waves up bright turquoise.  By the time we walk back into the lodge, Jurassic Park III is long over.  We carefully clean the instruments, and return them to Avigdore along with our deepest thanks.    

Tomorrow is our last full day here.

June 22^nd, 9:55pm

Relatively calm day today.  Relatively.  Morning beach cleanup, and ate heart of palm right out of the younger felled trees.  Then in a refreshing downpour, we went to Luisa’s house and helped to garden, planting sweet potato cuttings in the soft, sandy soil.  Back at the lodge, the rain is hard (rain showers!) and the wind picks up.  The science team left for Asor at about 1pm, and it’s growing dark without any sign of them.  At last, their boat comes in and we can have dinner as usual with Nicole, Giacomo, and Michelle – Peter and Avigdore can’t join in until they finish their nightly coral survey, using UV lights in the dark to see where pinprick clusters of coral larvae have successfully settled onto the reef.  There is brilliant thunder and lightning during dinner!  It's far off, over the ocean, lighting up the inky sky.  Just before bed, I help Nicole and Giacomo process Montipera fragment samples.
 

June 21^st

It’s bedtime on Falalop right now.  Spent all day yesterday through the afternoon of today on Federai Island.  We boated over early in the morning and dropped our gear off at the infirmary, where we would be staying the night.  There was a warm welcome from everyone, especially three of the girls, Orpha, Karen, and Zilla, all super sweet people.  A man named Albert saw me sketching and we talked about art.  Then off to the landing for coral size frequency!  Just where the water became deeper, there was a tall rock mound and above that, a huge deep red cuttlefish guarding it. He was football-sized, with arms up in a territorial display and we hovered around watching him.  His mottled white stripes pulsed.  He wasn’t too stoked on our presence but I was very happy to see him. 

In the heat of midday, we stretch on the floor of the women’s house as Kelsey interviews some of the girls about their experience with the recent Typhoon Maysak.  Later, after a community meeting in the men’s house about the status of the reefs, we projected a movie (a favorite of the Federai Chief’s) – a documentary about sharks and the crisis of shark finning.  The folks here are mostly indifferent to the sharks on their reef, they definitely don’t adore them, but everyone gets a kick over the footage of white people diving with and petting big spindly-toothed tiger sharks. 

Tomorrow is fathers’ day, which is a big deal here.  We met women today who were preparing food for the men’s banquet.  It will also be a Sunday.  So on this night, we go to sit in on the singing practice at the church with the Federai girls we met earlier.  It’s been a long day, and so we finally lay our sleeping pads down around the cement patio that goes around the infirmary.  The night is hot and humid, but there is a slight breeze.  Soon rain falls, fat and heavy and it deepens in pools and dips around the patio.  Dogs scrap loudly.  Some of the dogs on Federai have names and an affinity for people.  Then cocks crow and the first threads of sunrise stretch up.  

     

We’re up at dawn of today, wet and a little sore, but lots of coffee brings the life back.  The science team leaves to sample and the rest of us go to church.  The singing is lovely, and we all sit on the floor of the large structure as the day grows hotter and hotter.  Before the service began, I met an older woman named Maggie on the beach.   I was playing with one of the island puppies, and she laughed from behind me when I fell backwards in a game of tug-o-war.  After the fathers’ day service, we walk to her house and she tells me about the typhoon, the fishing practices, her life.  She likes animals and has a dog and a cat that stay near to her.  She told me about saving the family pig during the typhoon, a hulking animal that must be coaxed anywhere you want it to go.  “They can understand our voices, sometimes.”  I like Maggie very much.  Maggie likes Steven Segal movies.  Later she tells these stories for Kelsey’s camera in the women’s house, and we all massage each other’s stiff shoulders and feet. 

The science team returns and process samples, fish and coral.  Giacomo has more tiny gemstone clownfish in a water bottle.  When processing is done, we say some long goodbyes and boat back to Falalop.

June 19^th

Big water work day.  Piig Island, oceanic side and lagoon side and also Yealiil Island.  Science team went to a fourth site, too.  Beautiful reefs!  Saw a zebra shark – it was cruising lazily, pretty near to the surface, pretty near to midday.  They are nocturnal bottom-feeders so this was especially fortunate.  It was big, prehistoric-looking, from another world and time.  I swam after it, and it gradually let itself drop deeper, deeper, as it undulated forward, til it was out of sight through the crags of the reef beneath. 

We returned to Falalop, sunfried and exhausted, but with high spirits and smiles.  Kristin the statistician has arrived from the states!  Some of the interns and I hang out and chat with her on the beach, drinking tea and regrouping ourselves physically and mentally.  I watch four ants carry a wriggling caterpillar towards and then down into their hole in the sand.  It takes them 20 minutes to do this.

June 18^th

Today we made coconut oil!  The Ulithi girls showed us how.  We did a very small batch, maybe just 10 or 15 coconuts.  Ground the cocos by hand on their lathes, and cold pressed the shavings by hand.  Put resulting oil/water mix over a fire on the beach to reduce it to just the oil.  The result was just a few ounces, the bottom third of a water bottle.  But my hands haven’t felt so good and smooth since I’ve been here.  Smells delicious, too. 

We then went out to do more coral size-frequency in the reef outside the lodge – our initial data here from the first day of sampling was not nearly robust enough.  Lucas got some good fire coral to the leg.  Keenan found a huge leopard cowry!  That evening, the Ulithi kids came over and Sara presented to us all a summary of the data we had collected thus far.  It was really fantastic to see some graphs made up of what we had accomplished so far.  Put everything into context, too. 

This is Sara’s last night here – she is leaving in the morning, well before the rest of us.  So we threw her a party and sung her a song, of course!  Her presence here will be much missed but we’ll meet again one day. 

PS, Peter caught a baby monitor lizard earlier today!  Super neat.

June 17^th

                                                                                                                                   

Water work day! Woke up early to a rainbow over the ocean and a pack of feral dogs getting it on outside my window.  Had our routine morning briefing with Junior (in addition to other insider info, he’s got the scoop on weather reports via radio – not a thing here otherwise and upon which our daily boating plans depend).  To Lam to transect today!  Worked with Lexina and she is getting super good.  Sharp coral, shallow water, and strong waves!  A combination for adventurous transecting.  Super healthy reef, high diversity and density.  Then off to check out the sunken ship site, the merchant cargo ship ZHAO, run aground and abandoned, rusty red from the hull all the way up, looming and huge and tilted at a demented-looking angle.                               

Then to Pigleilei lagoon for more transecting.  Reef was deep and pretty, but a little worse off for wear.  Super heavy rain began crackling on the surface like deafening hail, but the ocean was warm and calm underneath.  It felt so safe under the surface of the water, you’d get pelted above it.  I ate clam that Keenan and Miles pulled up and opened right there in the ocean.  It was bitter at first, becoming sweet and cucumber-y as you chewed the tough meat.  Giacomo caught some tiny baby clown fish (there are I think eight species in the lagoon) and they look like brilliant little fiery jewels.    

We caught a lot of air on the boat ride back to Falalop, almost as much as the flying fish around us.  Little bi-plane looking guys, bright blue.  Then rest and reading and tea at the lodge before more data entry and equipment organizing for the next day, our nightly ritual. 

There is a big old wall gecko in my and Shanthi’s room and I hope he’s hungry for bugs.  Goodnight!

June 16^th, 10:25pm

Just now settling into bed, first time I am here before Shanthi is asleep.  First thing this morning, Doctor Nicole patched up my angry, purple-red knee with iodine and triple antibiotic, feeling better even after snorkeling today.  We sampled a ton at Mogmog landing today, reefs are in pretty bad shape there.  Lots of invasive Montipera (cabbage coral) and low rigosity otherwise, thus poor fish habitat.  Then to Mogmog Island, the spiritual center of Ulithi Atoll.  Very traditional here, even compared to the other islands.  No board shorts on girls (this is accepted on us elsewhere), no hats on the boat or standing up a we approach.  No shirts on the Ulithi girls, which they have very mixed feelings about.  There was a meeting going on with the Mogmog chief/community and Mark from FEMA (or was he US Aid?).  He was talking about cash to families, “transportation” support money, etc.  Was strange and kind of uncomfortable .  Their community just doesn’t work that way – it is very nuanced and socially communal, and the western template just doesn’t quite fit.  But Mark is a nice guy and means very well.  He has a laugh like a dolphin!  Kelsey left to interview him for her documentary and Nicole, Junior, and the science team took over.  They spoke about the Mogmog reef, the worst hit by Super Typhoon Maysak, sadly in the worst condition of the atoll.  There was discussion of management importance, using the aid money for boat fuel to fish further out in order to relieve pressure from the immediate reefs.  One man was four when Typhoon Ophelia hit 60 years ago, too young to vividly recall the reef as it was, but knows it used to be much healthier when he was young.  We ate lunch on Mogmog, PB&J, and biologists Avigdor and Giacomo (from Israel and France, respectively) told us stories of their first encounters ever with the thing called peanut butter.

The science team went to sample at Songetigech Island (I think), and we boated back to Falalop.  Big waves!  Flying fish!!  Too cool.  When the science team returns we get our data logging on, and later that night, the Ulithi kids return and Nicole gives a presentation on corals, their life cycles, and their importance to fish and the creation of islands.  Then we watch National Treasure on the projector, of course. 

We’ve taken to whistling the Jurassic Park theme song on the approach to each island.  It's very fitting.

June 15^th, 9:55pm

Today was labor!  My kind of day.  Beach cleanup with Ulithi kids (they’re hardly kids, but I like the way Ulithi kids sounds…).  Massive pile of old palm fronds and cut up logs, from their former loooong trunks, felled by Maysak’s gales.  Some of the Ulithi guys scale the remaining trees and bring coconuts and in this moment, in the heat, their water is the most refreshing thing I think I’ve ever had.  Working in a long skirt is not the greatest but if feels kinda nice in a way.  When in Rome.  After lunch and much cooling down (or attempting to cool down – have I mentioned it’s freaking hot here?), some of the Ulithi girls cane to the lodge and taught us how to weave coconut frond plates!  The boys can do it, too, though I’d much rather eat off of one that the girls made, just sayin’.  The lovely ladies who cook our food at the lodge brought out lava lavas for us to wear, and Skyla told us the story of her first lava lava.  It is a woman’s traditional wear that she dons at age, never to wear any other type of garment around her legs again.  They are very pretty and colorful, but thick and stiff and must be tied just so.  We did an okay job… okay.  So we sit and weave and  craft and drink coffee and wear our new lava lavas and talk.  We make gifts for each other out of things we find.  It is lovely and at this moment I feel like I could be here forever.   

PS, I cut my knee on some coral on the first day out and I think it’s getting pretty infected.  Cool.

June 14^th, 10:40pm

After breakfast this morning, we went to church with the Falalop community.  Their singing was absolutely beautiful.  The original church is gone, destroyed in the typhoon, so they are using the men’s house instead.  Men and women both inside, not the norm.  But as a church, it is a neutral space.  After the Catholic service (the dominant denomination here… since WWII?), a community meeting is held with the science team, Junior, us interns, the Falalop chief, and of course, the community.  We all did our introductions, and the chief sat and listened to Nicole and the other scientists discuss the sort of management questions they intend to answer here, and how it will benefit the reefs and the people.  Afterwards, Rick introduced the Explorers’ Club flag, and group photos featuring it front and center commenced.  Several with the flag upside-down… then later with the flag right-side up.  Honestly, I wouldn’t spot the difference.    

Later, we got in the boats (we have three small motor boats at our service), Ulithi kids included, and headed to the island Mas, stopping at Asor on the way to ask for permission, as is custom.  In the waters of Mas, we worked on coral morphologies with them, for stronger transecting skills.  Completed some full transect lines here.  On the other side of Mas, the oceanic side, the currents were much, much stronger, with a sudden (and awesome) deep dropoff looming close.  Whitetip sharks cruise the edge of the reef, before the dropoff.  Some transecting here, some snorkeling for fun.
 

Then back in the boats to Asor, where we were welcomed by the small (<80) but very warm Asor community.  A woman named Laurie showed us her vast and dense garden, still recovering from the typhoon but impressive nonetheless.  Taro, bananas, corn, squash, and big giant green pumpkins.  She gifted us each a pumpkin to take back to Falalop, and we carried them close to our chests like treasures.  We emerged from the jungle garden just in time for the most amazing meal of my life, to date.  It was a farewell dinner for an American man named Matt, who was there doing scholarship aide.  Hand-woven coconut frond plates and roasted and fried fish, all the tropical fish we were just familiarizing ourselves with in the water – parrot, emperor, unicorn.  Stewed octopus with white, hot pink, and golden-orange rice, sweet potatoes in coconut milk. Put it on your woven plate, eat it with your hands.  And sea turtle eggs!  Very briefly cooked, one per person.  Don’t freak out!  This is sustainable here, and normal.  I felt honored to receive this, but still with my American confliction lingering.  Very tasty, though.  We washed our hands in the ocean and bid farewell to all the little kids we played with before dinner, and to Laurie.  Had fun with the GoPro on the boat ride back – these rides are fast and thumping and fun as hell. 

We returned to the lodge – sunset, a far-off storm, drizzle.  And data logging.  Data logging forever!  It must be done.  A nightly briefing (FEMA people coming tomorrow, maybe?), then I take a bucket shower.  Now sleep.