Fun in the Sun

Yesterday was AWESOME, I learned how to surf!! Tommy took Jake and I to one of the local surfing spots, and we both stood up by our 3rd try, which is pretty darn good if I do say so myself. It was SO FUN! I didn’t manage to do any cool tricks (yet) but it was still a lot of fun just hanging out and pretending to be legit. Hopefully I’ll be able to go surfing again before I leave so I can stand up for more than a couple seconds.

Today I had scuba! The weather was gorgeous and it was a great day to be outdoors. Bill, my dive instructor, is about 60 and is an extremely good teacher. We practiced lots of basic skills in the ocean, since they don’t have a pool, and saw some cool fish and corals. There wasn’t a whole lot to see where we were, but apparently next week’s dive spots are phenomenal so I’m looking forward to it. The only other person in the class is Ed, a 58-year-old who lived in Marin for awhile is now settled on the island. He’s super cool and it was a fun dive. I got home, made some stir fry, and am reading a Michael Crichton book I picked up at the Salvation Army. I also found a $2 tank top there! Yay! And bought some delicious malasadas (Portuguese donuts) at the farmers market.

Sorry for the lack of photos, I’m hesitant to get my camera too near water at this point, but I’ll try and be better about my visual aides!

3 Day Weekend Commencing!

Yesterday and today passed like a blur! Hard to believe I've been in Hawaii for a month and a half now... crazy. Only one month more, and I still feel like there's so much to do!

Wednesday was a lab day, as always, but this week I ended up sorting the Berlese funnels rather than the insects from the Malaise traps. Berlese funnels work by placing litter (leaves, branches, etc… from the forest floor) onto a wire mesh inside the cloth frame. It’s then placed beneath a lightbult, which dries out the litter and causes all the little bugs to dry up and fall through the mesh, where they’re caught in a vial with ethanol. Then this vial is removed and we can see what kind of bugs were inside the litter, and by extension the forest floor!

There’s 3 major steps to working with the Berlese funnels:
1. Removed the two-week-old vials from the funnel and put the contents into scintillation vials (see photo). Label everything! And then remove the litter into a paper bag.
2. Move last week’s samples from the right side of the frame to the left side. First remove the vial, then pick up the funnel and sift through the dirt to break up any chunks of litter that are still wet. These should be exposed for the 2nd week of drying. Make sure to catch all the little dirt bits that fall through the mesh, and then replace them into the funnel before moving it to the right side of the frame. Then replace the vial, adding more ethanol if you have a really juicy sample.
3. Place the new litter samples into the recently emptied funnels. Label the funnel, the vial, and the litter itself by leaving in its identification tag. Make sure all the lightbulbs are functioning!


So that’s what I did for about 5 hours, and then spent the next couple hours weighing the leaves and branches from the branch clipping samples. When Devin and Tad arrived, we sorted through their branch clippings and were done for the day!

I went to the beach after work and it was really pretty out. There are some crazy people who like to swim even when the water is rough. Good for them!

Today, Jake and I spent about 4 hours collecting rat tunnel tracking cards. It was pretty uneventful, although we were driving a Ford 250, which is the largest truck I’ve ever been in. I could barely get into the car, it was so tall! Totally unnecessary for our work, but we needed a car so we took what we could get.

Then we spent about 5 hours separating branches and leaves. Not too exciting, but I put my iPod on shuffle and was really impressed with the playlist that resulted. That’s the nice thing about having a small mp3 player – I have to carefully choose what goes on it, so I like all the songs!

Now I’m going to watch Watchmen. Should be fun, I’ve heard really good things about it! And no work tomorrow since we’ve already put in a solid 40 hours this week. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my day off... maybe just have a leisurely day at the beach! Word on the street is that there’s a ziplining place north of Hilo, so I hope to check that out at some point.

Marine Training Base + Restoration Work? Sure!

Today Jake and I shadowed another project up in PTA, the Pahokaloa Training Area, which is about 15 minutes part our normal work site. It’s a Marine training station so there were tons of armored vehicles, tanks, helicopters, young men in camo, guns, etc… as we entered and we had to show our IDs and get visitors passes. We also had to get trained on what to do if we found UXOs – Unexplained Objects – which are basically bombs that they dropped anywhere from 60 years ago to the present and failed to explode. Apparently they’re all over PTA, and just last week they found a 250 lb UXO that was still live. Crazy! We didn’t see any in the field but there were some cool ones in the training demo.

It was really bizarre seeing all those army guys walking around – I didn’t see any women except for the ones who were working at the general store. Crazy! We worked outside of the main training area, in the live ammunition and blasting area (of course) which was exciting because we could hear the bombs going off and helicopters sometimes flew over us. It was very empty other than that – PTA is over 50,000 hectares, so they have tons of space, and we were just doing work in some of the restoration areas.

We were specifically measuring 100 plants, 20 different individuals from 5 species, for their longest horizontal width and then the width perpendicular, as well a the height and estimating percent dead. They’ve been following the 100 plants at this plot for about a year now to see how they change over time, to estimate which plants will respond best and be the most robust if they want to use them for restoration purposes. It was pretty boring actually, but fun because Megan (see photo of her measuring) is really sweet and we were chatting basically the whole time. It was also a bit hotter out there because there’s no shade, and I didn’t have a hat! But I wore tons of sunscreen and didn’t get a burn or anything. I also saw some bones around our plants, and with Mauna Loa in the background it was just a cool picture. So enjoy! We also used a crazy hand-held computer that has all the capabilities of an Excel spreadsheet. It made data entry a lot more convenient and was also just really cool! Very nifty tool.

As we were leaving, we stopped back at PTA main station to return our badges and get some snacks/cold water. I got a Marines cap, which ended up being $6.50 because I guess all the gear there is 50% off and there’s no tax. So go figure! Now I feel hardcore. Also a bit foolish. But whatever!

After PTA, I went to see Harry Potter 6. It was really good! I still really dislike the character playing Dumbledore, but I’m beginning to accept Hermione’s bad acting and the rest of the characters were really quite good. I’d forgotten so much of what happened in that book! It was probably my favorite HP movie so far.

Exploring Hilo

Today I woke up around 9 and made some tasty scrambled eggs with cheddar, Babybell cheese, and baked beans! The baked beans were a little sketchy because they’ve been in the fridge for a long time, but I haven’t been sick yet and they tasted fine. Plus I cooked them – no big deal!

I cleaned my room and set out all my hiking stuff to air out and dry. It’s so wet here that everything starts to smell mildewy and gross unless you put it out to dry and air out every day, so I’ve been working on keeping everything nice. My rain jacket already smells better!

Tommy invited Jake and I to the beach today, but Jake just wanted a lazy day so Tommy and I went around Hilo looking for cool places to go. We jumped off the big pedestal at Coconut Beach (see photo - it was probably about 15 feet high) and then headed down the coast towards Richardson St. Park, where we eventually ended up. I didn’t bring my snorkel stuff but the water was pretty murky so we just swam around and then hung out on the beach people watching. There are a lot of interesting people at the beaches here – hippies, families, really fit old people, really large people of all ages, etc… so it was a lot of fun just watching the sights.

We headed to the Hilo Zoo afterwards, which was pretty small but had some cool animals. Lots of monkeys and some native animals, as well as a WHITE TIGER! The tiger looked really pathetic though, very flabby fur and it seemed pretty lonely. I feel bad for all animals in zoos, but this guy seemed especially pathetic. They should get it a pet doggie or something… The blue macaw (see photo) was getting pretty frisky when we went up to its cage and it kept “laughing” and trying to bit us through the bars.

We also stopped by the Macadamia Nut farm which is really close to Hilo and we got lots of delicious samples. Apparently they usually sell bags of the defective chocolate-covered nuts, so they’re a lot cheaper and just as tasty! After all, your stomach doesn’t care what they look like! But since it was a Sunday, they’d sold out their weekend supply of the defective ones. Guess I’ll have to go back!

For dinner, we made chicken enchiladas. They were REALLY good, but super spicy because Tommy put a whole can of jalapenos in the sauce. Oy. I stuck it out and ate most of it though!! I’m getting better at handling really spicy food.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, folks, I forgot my camera this morning! I’ll work on putting more up and hopefully will have more visual aids in the coming days.

Scuba!!

This week was pretty typical, picked out a lot of bugs on Wednesday, went on Powerline on Thursday and Friday to pick up rat tunnels and do tree measurements.

Here's a photo of the dirt that gets collected by the Malaise traps. We have to filter the bugs from the dirt, but there was almost too much to deal with!
Here are lots of vials full of many many hundreds of bugs, hand collected. Nice!
The kipuka were gorgeous on Friday morning, but it's been pouring since we came down Friday afternoon. Go figure!

Last night we went to see Shakespeare in the Park, and they put on a great production of “Taming of the Shrew” in a 1950s style. The acting was really excellent and there were many clever Shakespearean innuendos, and I laughed a LOT! It’s really fun just hanging out and enjoying some of the local stuff, although it started pouring about 1/3 of the way through and kept up a steady downpour for the rest of the show. Since the show went on, rain or shine, we ended up freezing and soaking at the end. But it was worth it!!

Today I had the first day of my Scuba certification, which involved about 5 hours straight of instructional videos and quizzes and little demos. It was raining all day so we didn’t actually go in the water, but the guy who runs the certification program is GREAT! He lived in Californi and did a lot of diving in Monterey, and has been a PADI instructor for 27 years in Hawaii at this point and knows all about the currents, best places to go, etc… He’s also very safety conscious and helps rescue sea turtles that are caught in fishing netting! So I have a good feeling about this process and I can’t wait to actually get in the water!

Tonight we’re going to see “Angels and Demons” at the dollar theater – we meaning me, Tommy, and Tommy’s friend, since Jake has already seen it and doesn’t want to go again. Although he might change his mind since it’s only $1.25.

Today dawned clear and gorgeous! Of course, by the time I started biking to work it had begun to rain and I arrived soaking wet, once again. I gotta work on my planning for the weather – especially since I forgot my rain jacket when we actually went into the field! It was pretty sunny the whole time, luckily, so it wasn’t a big deal and I ended up using a trashbag as rain protection when it started drizzling.

Here are some photos of the Malaise traps we set up - note how tall the uluhe (ferns) are in this photo! They climb up trees and it’s pretty wicked cool. Also very inconvenient.

Devin climbed the trees to set up rat tunnels and clip branches so we could remove the bugs from them.


Also, there are 2 volcanoes in this photo! Mauna Kea is the big one we’re facing, and Kilauea is in the mirror. Crazy!

Chilly in Hawaii?!

Today we went in the field from 8 to 3, off of powerline road. The trail off of Saddle Road is super hard to drive but I did a good job of driving us in - I bottomed out only once, and Jake bottomed out like 7 times as we drove out. That road is vicious!

It was raining on the way to work so I arrived soaking wet. I'm going to start bringing my field work clothes in my pack and change when I get there so I won't start the day chilly... and since it kept raining the rest of the day, I never really warmed up! Especially since I left my rain pants in the car when we went out so I would have more space in my pack for picking up Malaise traps. Sorry, no photos today because it was so damp and we got so dirty! My hands were filthy from picking up litter (leaves, etc...) off the ground so we can dry them and see what the floor-level forest productivity is like.

I had some tasty rotini pasta for dinner; I swear it tastes better than normal pasta! And I got some Parmesan cheese so it was just perfection. YAY!

I'll just leave you all with a photo of the sunrise from my campsite Saturday morning... because it's gorgeous!