Day 5 • 30 June 2016 • Life on Majuro

Arriving in the Marshall Islands meant that we had to go through the first of our several passport control points, and it went off without a hitch. We were picked up by a shuttle from our hotel and drove along the elbow-shaped atoll that forms the southeastern corner of Majuro.

The welcome sign at the airport.

To illustrate where things are on Majuro, the large photo shows the approximate positions of airport and hotel on an aerial view, and the satellite image shows in which corner of Majuro Atoll we find ourselves.

Everyone liked the license plates!

The Hotel Robert Reimers in Majuro. Colette Reimers, the manager, has been very helpful in connecting us to the right people, and she runs a very nice establishment.

After checking in at our hotel we were confronted with the first “irregularity” of the trip. These irregularities are, unfortunately, a constant feature of all the trips I plan, in some part because I don’t plan “normal” trips but insist on creating a trip that is better, more educational, or more unusual than the trip a typical tourist would experience. Sometimes the locations are extreme (as they are here), sometimes it is the specific activity we are interested in, but on every trip, something has needed to be modified, reshuffled, or otherwise fixed. Today we learned that the following day is when the most important fishing competition is being held. Not only that, but the boat considered the “ferry” to Arno Atoll, our next destination, is actually a fishing boat—and one that is part of the competition! This means that we have no transportation to Arno. Fortunately, in this close-knit community, people help one another out, and our host on Arno arranged for the mayor of Arno Atoll to give us a lift!

After lunch, we visited the Alele Museum, a small center in which the history and culture of the Marshall Islands—as well as the controversies over atomic testing and climate change—are on display. We had a wonderful talk with Carol Curtis, who is currently the curator of the museum and who has in-depth knowledge of the islands and their history. Carol explained many things about the islands, including how to get around, some of the difficulties with water sources in the age of climate change, her own visits to a variety of atolls, and the difficulties associated with life on a narrow corallogenic strip of land in the middle of a vast ocean.

Sign of the Alele Museum.

Students looking at the Alele Museum's exhibits on the history of the Marshall Islands.

Map of the Marshall Islands, using traditional map-making skills. If one is familiar with the overall position of the atolls in the Marshall Islands, it is easy to see how this map works and how accurate it is.

A narrow strip of land is sometimes all this atoll is. With the road in the middle and a house on either side of the road, there is only ocean beyond that.

In order to visit Arno Atoll, it is necessary to self-provision, and so we went shopping. Whenever I travel to a new place, a visit to a supermarket is always an educational necessity. There are a lot of things one can learn about a place via shopping for food! In the Marshall Islands, almost everything is imported, and it is not easy to obtain some of the things we take for granted. One of the meals we planned for was a breakfast consisting of instant coffee (the small all-in-one-packets) with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bananas. We could not find bananas, and there was not enough bread in the store for the number of days and people we needed to serve! In addition, many of the canned goods were past their due date, which meant we had to change our meal plan some, and visit a second store.

Carrying back the provisions from our shopping trip.

With the day’s mandated activities at an end, I suggested that everyone try out their snorkeling gear on the lagoon side behind the hotel. The team took up this challenge with gusto, and everyone was excited to see what secrets of the ocean he or she could discover. This discovery included the use of camera equipment under water!

By dinner time, everyone was suitably tired, from the odd “time-lapse” jetlag, from walking in the hot and humid climate, and from snorkeling. With another early day tomorrow, I expect we will all get a good night’s rest.

One more note: there is no Internet access on Arno Atoll, which means that I will not be able to post anything for three days. The next posts will go up when we return to Majuro on 4 July.

Snorkeling on the lagoon side.

First coral reef photography of the trip. Photo courtesy of Schawna Mitchell.

Day 4 • 29 June 2016 • Honolulu to Majuro

Traveling across the International Date Line is always an interesting phenomenon, and one is led to contemplate what “time” actually means. We began the day with a pick-up at our hostel at 5 am, Hawaii Standard Time (HST), which is 3 h behind Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) and 6 h behind Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). So far, so good. Keep this in mind.

After a rather extensive wait to go through security at Honolulu International Airport, we boarded United Airlines flight 154, the “island-hopper” service across Micronesia. This flight makes six stops (Majuro, Kwajalein, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk, Guam), which requires two sets of pilots due to the overall duration. Seats 1A and 1B are reserved for the extra set of pilots, and because they need to be able to sleep, these seats have an extra low recline that necessitates keeping Seats 2A and 2B empty as well—otherwise, the pilots would be reclining into the second row passengers’ laps! In addition, there are other weight restrictions, including the carriage of extra cargo and the short runways on these islands, that necessitate additional blocked seats to be able to fly a full-sized aircraft like a Boeing 737, and while this does not mean the plane is empty, it does mean it can never be totally full! This is the only flight that serves these islands, and it is in some ways a lifeline to the Central Pacific.

We departed Honolulu at 7.25 am and headed west for our 5-hour flight into the empty reaches of the Pacific. Well, not quite empty. There is first that International Date Line to consider, a line we crossed at about 10.30 am HST, and which instantly catapulted us into the next day. And when we landed, on time and without problems, we had not only jumped a day, but we came from several hours behind to being many hours ahead of the places we call home. It’s definitely odd from a time perspective, and it gives one’s jetlag a confused twist.

Thus, what appears to the body’s clock to be a single day on our travels is actually two, and this blog therefore continues, without an overnight, on 30 June. I arbitrarily considered anything until we stepped on land in the Marshall Islands as having occurred on 29 June.

The United Airlines island-hopper B737 at the gate in Honolulu at daybreak.

Saying goodbye to the island of Oahu, with Pearl Harbor visible in the center of the photo.

The map onboard the airplane shows the date line, and our approach from the east.

Here it is: the International Date Line. You can clearly see it in the center of the image. No, you actually can't. It is imaginary, and the U.S. military installations on Kwajalein Atoll, a large atoll that is part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands actually keep that atoll on the same day as the U.S. mainland. There is a Pacific Island country called Kiribati, which actually lies on either side of the Equator and on either side of the International Date Line, and they also keep their entire country on the same date, albeit in different time zones.

Flying into Majuro is, for many people, the first time they encounter an atoll. There is a lagoon surrounded by a narrow coral fringe, on which the settlement is built. That's the extent of it! It means that as you drive along the road you have ocean on both sides! One advantage: it's really hard to get lost driving.

Day 3 • 28 June 2016 • Bishop Museum and Manoa Valley

Today’s undertakings had a much stronger focus on strictly biological experiences, with a morning visit to the Bernice P. Bishop Museum and an afternoon hike into the lush Manoa Valley. However, biological explorers need strength, and for breakfast we tried the incomparable, delectable, warm malasadas (Portuguese donuts) at Leonard’s, a Honolulu icon. As Dakota Brooks put it, biting into one of these is a symphony of great flavor and happy feeling, as if you could bite into your favorite, fluffy, warm comforter. They are made to order with sugary topping or creamy filling and, did I mention they are warm? What an exceptional treat!

The storefront of the iconic Leonard's bakery in Honolulu. 

A sampling of four flavors of filled malasadas, including chocolate, macadamia, coconut, and vanilla. And they're warm! Mmmmh.

 At the Bishop Museum we began our visit with a behind-the-scenes look in the Vertebrate Zoology collection. We were hosted by Molly Hagemann, the collection manager, who led us into the alcohol room as well as the holy-of-holies, the dry collection, which is where specimens of many rare or even extinct Hawaiian species are stored and kept for research purposes. In the alcohol room, I gave a brief presentation on the origins of natural history collections and their importance to all facets of biodiversity and conservation research today, and Molly spoke about the tasks of collection managers. There were many excellent questions from our students, who were proving themselves eminently worthy of the moniker “honors students.” We finished the visit with a demonstration of how a scientist would examine snake specimens and collect data from them.

The main building of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu. This museum holds some exceptionally valuable items, including historical artifacts, items of special interest, and millions of natural history specimens (most of them insects).

Molly Hagemann, collection manager in vertebrate zoology, explains the significance of a Hawaiian fossil to my students. From left, Molly, Alex Mitchell, Ruby Resendez, Morgan Lewis, Mitzia Zambada, and Kaitlin Rickerl. Photo courtesy of Jose Huerta.

What would a museum visit be without a scientific demonstration? Dr. K is explaining how to extract data from alcohol-preserved snake specimens, and how specimens like these are allowing scientists to answer questions that hadn't even been asked when some of these specimens were collected. From left: Schawna Mitchell, Alex Mitchell, Morgan Lewis, Jose Huerta, Amanda Callahan, Ruby Resendez, and Mindy Hull. Photo courtesy of Dakota Brooks.

After the exciting visit to the collection, we visited the rest of the museum, which includes wonderful exhibits on Hawaiian history and geology, as well as a special exhibit on sharks. At lunchtime, we met up with my learnéd colleague Dr. Neal Evenhuis, who regaled us with stories of his fieldwork studying flies and gave us some of his insights for how our drone might even be useful to someone researching flies: for flies that live along the falling water of waterfalls, some in mid-fall only, it would be exceptionally useful to send a drone up and down the fall first to record whether there are flies present — before a researcher risks life and limb by climbing down the fall only to discover that nobody is home.

From the Bishop Museum we traveled inland, past the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus into the Manoa Valley, a deep cul-de-sac surrounded by steep volcanic ridges. From the trailhead we worked our way up the muddy and rocky trail towards the falls. This is a popular destination, and many people simply want to put their legs into the cool pool at the foot of the fall. As is our wont, we searched for organisms along the way and came up with a nice little list of birds — and a frog! Upon our return, we were rewarded with a stunning rainbow over the Manoa Valley.

The trail to Manoa Falls — the well-maintained section.

View of Manoa Falls from the splash zone, where we found a frog.

An individual of the Japanese wrinkled frog (Glandirana rugosa), seen along the edge of the pool below Manoa Falls.

Field photography is, in and of itself, an adventure. The contortionist in this photo is Kaitlin Rickerl, whose well-perceived goal to photograph the frog on a backdrop that included a small cascade led to this position. She succeeded.

A subadult individual white-rumped shama (Copsychus malabaricus). This was but one of the species we saw today. Others included red-crested cardinals (Paroaria coronata), red-vented bulbuls (Pycnonotus cafer), common mynas (Acridotheres tristis), and even a salmon-crested cockatoo (Cacatua goffini). Photo courtesy of Jose Huerta.  

At the end of our hike, we were rewarded with a rainbow over the Manoa Valley. Just as we liked Hawaii, perhaps Hawaii liked us back. Mahalo!

Tomorrow, June 29th, we are traveling from Honolulu to Majuro in the Marshall Islands. Our flight, United Airlines 154 is the only island-hopper flight that connects the various islands in Micronesia. There is no other airline that does so, and no other way to get around! As a consequence of the needs of the Micronesian islanders, the flight is usually weight restricted to accommodate extra cargo and shorter than normal runways. It will also be an interesting experience for most of the team members, as we will be crossing the International Date Line. June 29 will be the shortest day of most of our lives: we leave Honolulu at 7.25 am on June 29th and arrive Majuro ca. 5 h later, at 10.30 am on June 30th. More about that in our next blog!