by Carl Safina
BY MIDAFTERNOON the birds have thinned. The sea seems again devoid and elemental. Time slows and gets syrupy. The ship’s crew hammers and paints and scrapes rust. The afternoon fades. In the inactivity the mind can wander to worries at home, but I fix my attention on the waves until I am free of thought and the world acquires a feeling dreamier even than sleep.
AT SUNSET SOME OF US are on the bridge for the best view, watching the sun give itself to the sea, savoring the day’s blushing afterglow. As the pilothouse goes dark, the officers place transparent red plastic over the instrument screens to dim them. Outside at the rail, we look down at the glowing bioluminescence in the bow waves—tiny living things making mysterious light. We look up at Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter, arrayed in a line ascending from the horizon, embedded in very dense stars. The boat is rocking gently, the forecast mild. The overall effect becomes hypnotic and calming.
BY SUNRISE, LAYSAN ISLAND is in view. Today the new biology crew is getting dropped off for five months. But for the next five days the old crew will remain on the island, training the newcomers. Meanwhile, the ship will leave to go farther west to Lisianski Island, where it will drop off that crew for their five months. When the ship returns here on its way home, it will pick up the old crew and me, and take us out.
We are still a few miles away, plowing toward a little bulge of land. Laysan keeps a low, sandy profile, partially clad with windswept vegetation. Black-rock reefs armor the island’s surfy perimeter. A central saline lake, unseen from offshore, occupies a fifth of Laysan’s area, holding water much saltier than the sea. The sky over Laysan is impressively dusted with seabirds. The ocean here crawls with albatrosses. Within view, hundreds—perhaps thousands—are converging from millions of square miles. Sweep the calm ocean with your binoculars and your eyes reveal birds almost everywhere you look. A hundred or so albatrosses are bobbing in a big “raft” about a mile and a half offshore, as if exchanging stories about their recent journeys. But actually no person knows what they’re doing.
Standing at the rail looking shoreward, I say, “It’s absolutely lovely.”
Petra responds, “I think you’ll like it. A lot, I think.”
There are rules for going ashore here, and they’re unlike anything you’ve ever heard of. Any clothing—all clothing—must be brand-new. New shoes, new socks, new shoelaces. New underwear. New hats. And everything has to be frozen for several days, until the minute before you put it on for shore landing. This leads to the interesting sensation of donning frosted underwear.
Jerry Leinecke of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did a pretty convincingjob of explaining the rationale. Jerry has devoted fifteen years to protecting and restoring these islands. He appealed to me: “Please don’t think our rules are silly. It’s hard to get people to understand why they need new shoes and frozen underwear. But if you’re me behind the budgets you realize that introduction of an alien grass may mean crashes in seabird populations or even extinction of a species, and that it will cost a decade and millions of dollars to get a type of grass off an island because somebody had seeds on their socks.”
His example is not hypothetical. The grass they’ve been trying to eradicate was probably introduced to Laysan as a seed on a scientist, perhaps on their shoelace or in their pant cuff. If it seems like a long shot that it arrived here accidentally via scientists’ clothing, consider this: I noticed it growing right out of the wharf in Honolulu where the research boat docks.
Leinecke continued, “Something as simple as ants hiding in cardboard boxes can change the ecology of whole islands. The ants now introduced on those islands need moisture, and one of the only moisture sources is hatchling birds. I’ve seen chicks get eaten alive by introduced ants.”
After hearing that, putting on frosted underwear seems the least I can do to help. And hidden in his comments is an interesting point: when, like Petra, you wake up with thousands of ants stuck to the sweat on your body, remember that no ants of any kind occurred naturally in Hawaii. They hitchhiked with people.
These islands are excellent examples of places that exist within a fragile ecological balance. Because of their remoteness, the living things here have evolved specific ways of coexisting. Introductions of new things can threaten long and stable intimate relationships. Prior to people, neither native ants nor earthworms perturbed Hawaiian soils. No amphibians, no land reptiles. No terrestrial snakes. No frogs. No lizards. Nary a mosquito. Prior to the Polynesians, no mammal’s foot had ever fallen upon Hawaiian rock. Hawaii’s largest native land animal was a small goose—now endangered. Since the Polynesians and Europeans arrived, much of Hawaii’s native fauna has been driven extinct or to extinction’s brink by the rodents, diseases, insects, and plants that tend to round out our luggage.
The alien grass Cenchrus, or sandbur, was first noticed on Laysan in the 1960s. It’s native to Central America but has spread worldwide, thanks to tenacious little seed burs that cling to everything. As late as the 1980s, its consequences here weren’t recognized, and visiting scientists were not directed to even check their socks for seeds.
By the early ’90s it was out of control, covering a third of the island with dense mats, displacing the native bunchgrass. Trading one grass for another might not seem problematic. But to wildlife the grasses differ radically. The native grass is needed by birds; the sandbur repels the birds.
Many birds rely on the native bunchgrass for nesting, because its tall blades flop over, forming little hollows that provide critical shade for surface nesters like tropicbirds, Christmas Shearwaters, Laysan Ducks, and the Laysan Finch. The bunchgrass roots also support burrows for underground nesters like Bonin Petrels. Conversely, the sandbur’s dense, matlike growth excludes surface birds, and its root structure causes burrows to collapse. The combination makes it a real threat to the birds. So the Fish and Wildlife Service decided to control, or possibly eliminate, the evil weed. The project’s been a huge success, because it exploits one of humanity’s chief talents: a predilection to eradicate living things.
The young interns here are titled “restoration ecologists.” That’s a glamorous way of saying “weed puller.” But the work is critical to hundreds of thousands of birds at risk of losing their nesting habitat and, in the case of the Laysans Finch and Laysan Duck, their last toeholds on existence. The work is even more important because few places like this remain. These islands are, as Dr. Beth Flint of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service emphasizes, “essentially the only undisturbed seabird nesting islands left in the Pacific.”
That’s true now. But Laysan was for decades plagued by problems wrought by the few people who reached here. Ironically, Laysan once had a different vegetation problem: it was devegetated. Rabbits released in 1903 multiplied true to cliché. They had no predators. And the vegetation here had no evolutionary experience with grazers. By 1923 virtually nothing growing remained. When the Tanager Expedition arrived at Laysan in April that year, photographer Donald R. Dickey wrote, “In my wildest pessimism I had not feared such utter extirpation of every living plant … . This is a glaring desert … the utter lack of green relief makes the drifted coral sand almost unbearable to the eyes.” He reported only two small patches of close-cropped weed “that still support a remnant of the cursed host.” The Tanager team brought poisoned alfalfa—a kind of Trojan Mr. Greenjeans. All of Laysan’s famished rabbits ravaged the ruse, and dined.
But by then most land birds were already extinct, or doomed. Seabirds requiring shade—such as tropicbirds—were scarce. Dickey wrote on April 9, 1923, “Not a trace of rail or honeyeater or millerbird could we find.” But two days later, one of the party found three honeyeaters in a tobacco patch (which the rabbits, though starving, would not eat). Dickey remarked that “their charming song is out of proportion to their size,” adding, “Old age and death now inevitably stalk this childless remnant of a vanishing species.” Twelve days after that, a sandstorm finished the last three Laysan Honeyeaters. A few days later, the party saw
the last two doomed rails on Laysan. (Some Laysan Rails had been transplanted to Midway a few years earlier, where they thrived until rats arrived.) Somehow the Laysan Finch survived, as did the lovely duck, which was down to fewer than ten individuals. Their future remains uncertain. Some of the problems the ducks now have—such as their chronically poor reproduction—probably result from extreme inbreeding, stemming from that time when they were flickering at the edge of extinction.
WE ANCHOR OFFSHORE and spend several hours loading enough supplies for half a dozen working scientists to survive and thrive until the planet has conveyed us all to the far side of the sun. We transfer hundreds of water jugs and waterproof buckets of food, clothing, equipment, and books over the side of the ship and into inflatable outboard boats.
Eventually it’s time for us to crack open our crisply frosted underwear and go ashore ourselves. Stone reels are piling treacherous breakers where we must land. There’s one little opening in the reef; we have to go through it. Our boat pilot, John Sikes, must time our arrival carefully. He maneuvers our boat just ahead of one of the swells, then guns it as the wave is cresting, so that for a minute we’re almost surfing. The commander, Dr. Lamkin, is with us, and for a moment we’re all yelling like cowboys. Lamkin shouts to Sikes, “And we pay you for having fun like this!” With surprising smoothness the craft slides onto a white sandy beach necklaced with a gleaming line of lapping wavelets. All along the shoreline stand little groups of Brown Noddies, sprinkled like handful of raisins in the sugary sand.
Sikes says he can’t imagine spending five months here. I can. Russ Bradley, who has been here for five months—and looks it—is on the beach. He has unruly curly blond hair and a woolly blond beard. He’s almost too eager to greet us, instantly super talkative—almost too friendly. “You guys got lucky with the weather for landing. Real lucky. Yesterday we had eight-foot waves where you landed. Last week, forget it—we had fifteen-footers. They were just spectacular. But you couldn’t have come in. No way.” He abruptly adds, “Excuse me if I’m overly chatty. We’ve been the only people for four hundred miles.”
In fact he’s so chatty that he reminds me of a scene from the book Cry of the Kalahari, when the two authors realize they are compulsively talkative after emerging from months in the African bush.
Russ suddenly says, “I hope you don’t think that I’m talking too much—like that scene in Cry of the Kalahari when they come out of the bush and overwhelm everyone.”
Michele Reynolds, a biologist who has been working with the endangered ducks, also comes to greet us. There’s a lot to do while we talk. Mainly, we have to move about 250 sealed buckets and water jugs from the beach to the tent camp. Some buckets have essential equipment. Some say things like ALEX—BATHING SUITS, FLIP-FLOPS, HATS; or PETRA. COFFEE.
The new gang’s all here: Brenda, Petra, Alex, and Rebecca, for the next five-month stint. And Ray Bolland has come ashore briefly.
EVEN COMPARED to Tern Island, Laysan sets a new standard for remote. Tern Island, with its runway and barracks and administrators and boats and videos and various work teams, seems a booming human metropolis compared to Laysan’s castaways living in tents. And while Tern hums with wildlife, Laysan roars. The birds are incomparably more abundant—something I could not have imagined. Tern Island has perhaps a hundred thousand Sooty Terns, which seems like a lot when you’re trying to shout over them. But Laysan has something like one million. Here you feel the heat of life at full burn. Laysan seems like a place we’re not meant to see, as if you’ve put the whole world behind you. The initial impression here is of such stunning island beauty that I almost cannot see—I automatically overlook—the beach debris washed ashore from all points Pacific.
Veils of rain have smudged the western sky awhile, but it’s been sunny and hot here. Now I turn and notice a heavy, dark cloud steam-rolling our way. Hardly have I finished saying, “It looks like rain,” when strike the first drops of a pelting, stinging storm, driven by unruly gusts. The good ship Cromwell, big and white as she is, and anchored less than a mile off, disappears behind thick curtains of downpour. The sky behind us darkens to an angry-looking blue-black bruise. But the foreground brightens, and now the light becomes extraordinary. The white Fairy Terns are no longer white—they’re glowing like luminous flying pearls.
When the rain clears, we walk up the beach for a wider view. From here we can see albatrosses for acre upon acre, over the dunes and in the swales, over two gently undulating miles. So dense are they that in the distance, the bright breasts of Laysan Albatrosses—their black capes notwithstanding—whiten the ground.
WE GO UP TO THE TENTS. One is the kitchen and headquarters. The others are for sleeping and storing some supplies. Water jugs, equipment barrels, waterproof buckets, and scientific gear surround the tents as if we’re all shipwrecked. Tame Laysan Finches that exist nowhere else are poking around the buckets and gear. Take off your sandals to go inside, and a fearless, curious finch or two will immediately investigate your abandoned footwear. They’re rather drab looking, but after the honking and wailing and croaking and braying of seabirds, the finches’ sweet call provides a startling reminder of the continents, of land—of home.
You have to be careful getting out of your tent. You could easily step on a young albatross. One large chick outside my tent is playing with a sock that has fallen from a clothesline, shaking it like a puppy would.
There’s no outhouse, just an outdoor seat over a pit latrine, surrounded by bushes on three sides, with a wide view of the sea. The latrine—the loo—is referred to by the Hawaiianized term “the loo’a.” One Brown Noddy likes sitting at the loo’a with you, only half an arm’s length away, communing at the commode’s commanding view.
WHAT’S LIFE LIKE HERE for months on end? We ask Michele Reynolds what they’ve been eating recently. She answers, “Canned food. We ran out of tofu a few months ago. Then onions. That really hurt. Then we ran out of cans of those nicely cut string beans.” She turns abruptly to me and says, “So what’s happening in the world?”
Considering where I’ve been recently, I’m not the best person to ask. I punt. Russ is part of the team that’s been here, but he got far enough into the outside world today to have an answer, and he’s eager to share: he tells everyone here that he went onboard the Cromwell in the afternoon and drank orange juice. Everyone in his cohort is so impressed and envious, it’s a little spooky.
Brenda comments, “You get inventive here, especially with cooking. We don’t just open a can; we make real meals. We are allowed to grow bean sprouts in jars, and we bake bread. We have a good system of fresh sprouts, and we have a good yogurt culture.”
Michelle adds, “And a really great sourdough starter that we’ve made from leftover gravy that went bad in the propane refrigerator.”
After five months on Laysan, when the workers returning to civilization glimpse Honolulu’s twinkling seaboard from the ship’s rail, they say things like, “This is overwhelming.” They seem sincerely astonished by all the lights and the buildings. Ashore, they may report that they can’t keep pace with the conversation. A little embarrassed, they’ll say, “Excuse me, but the conversation seems to be streaming past me.”
Petra explains, “The island becomes your world. You almost don’t want to know what’s going on outside. Every day is a new adventure to see what’s changed with the birds, or what the sea has cast up. You’re not tied to house or car payments. Once you live out here, you realize how many of the things we ‘can’t live without’ are really unimportant. Your expectations change in other ways, too. Like, you expect the islands will be pristine because they’re so far away. But when you see the washed-up trash, it blows your mind. You’ll see it when you get a chance to walk around. Then you realize: nothing is really remote.”
NEAR SUNSET, Michele, Rebecca, and I walk down long grassy slopes on narrow trails to the shore of the salt lake. Thousands of Laysan Albatrosses line the lake. But the main thing we seek is a look
at a lucky duck. These ducks are secretive, hard to see, small. A standing duck could find shade under an albatross’s tail.
These ducks were breeding on the nearby island of Lisianski as recently as the mid-1800s. They lived on Maui, Kauai, Oahu, and the Big Island of Hawaii until the Polynesians arrived and found them literally sitting ducks. Now Laysan is the duck’s last stand.
The goal of the research is to understand how many ducks exist, and the population trend. The last formal population estimate was ten years ago. Since then, a population crash—caused by drought, food shortages, and parasite infestations—knocked the numbers down by about half. They stand now at around 350. It’s Rebecca’s job to continue the duck studies and, in a sense, to continue the ducks themselves.
Many are her tasks. She has to count carcasses, to see who died. Because the ducks eat flies, she has to count how many flies land on a sheet of light cloth placed every twenty meters along a transect. She has to count brine shrimp (which the ducks also eat). She has to do observations of individual birds, noting all their behaviors. She has to get samples of duck droppings. She has to do radio tracking. After broods hatch, she has to follow duckling survival.
The only job the ducks have is trying to survive, but it’s full-time. Today a frigatebird came down to take a duckling from a brood on the lake. So furiously did the mother duck leap up to defend her baby that the frigatebird, a monster many times the duck’s size, gave up the attack and left.
For the moment, the ducks’ domain seems placid, and we’re fortunate enough to find a brood we can observe through binoculars: a female and her following balls of down, chowing brine flies.
