“Brandy, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be”

We hear the 1972 single by Looking Glass in the distance. “That song is in the new one!” I exclaim referring to our conversation about the movie Gaurdians of the Galaxy II. “Who does that song?” Kaile’a asks us. Sallie quips, “I don’t know, I was too busy listening to rock n’ roll when that song came out. ‘What a good wife you would be?’ Gimme a break!” We all enjoy a laugh together and continue to load the boat for our day of diving.

After we idle through the harbor, the breakwater gives way to a extraordinarily calm ocean. “Welcome to Lake Kona,” Kaile’a remarks. I am on the island of Hawai’i helping the team at Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park (KAHO) with benthic (seafloor) surveys. We are surveying sections of coral reef within the park that Sallie Beavers (Natural Resource Chief and Marine Ecologist) and Kaile’a Carlson (Biotech) have been monitoring for an extended period.

Kaile’a Carlson hangs out at a safety stop.

The benefits to their long-term study are numerous. Seeing current functionality trends and finding drivers of the ecosystem allow the park to adjust their management strategy and protect their resources in the short-term. With long-term data, they can also look at historical responses to ecosystem disturbances (think giant storms, extreme warm/cool periods, and outbreaks of disease, invasive species, or predators). Thus, they can predict the way the ecosystem will change and how to best manage that in the long-term as well. In short, these studies help keep the park up to date (and potentially a step ahead) with what is happening to their resources.

Sallie and I are diving together today and Kaile’a is wo-manning the boat. Sallie is force. She is an incredibly self-motivated person and manages many people at the park. For this reason, and her “rock n’ roll” attitude, I am really excited to dive with her. We drop in to the warm and crystal clear waters of Kona coast and search for our starting point (marked by a metal bar and zip tie) for our survey. There is supposed to be one zip tie on the starting point and two zip ties on the ending point. The first metal bar we find only has one zip tie on it. I set my compass bearing to find the terminal point and begin to roll the transect tape (underwater measuring tape) out in that direction. Meanwhile, Sallie is looking at me like I’m crazy. Of course, we can’t speak to each other underwater on open-circuit SCUBA equipment, so she tries to communicate via hand signals. I’m not understanding some of her signals. I thought I was doing this right. It seemed simple enough. Then she points down at the metal bar we found and puts up two fingers. I get it.

Sallie and Kaile’a told me the coral has been taking a beating at KAHO, but it looked pretty healthy to me!

We found the terminal pin but one of the zip ties had fallen off of the metal bar. Ahhh, the benefit of experience. Sallie knew this was the terminal pin after diving this site for years. Meanwhile, I was swimming the wrong direction, clueless.

Some soldier fish lurking on a wall.

The rest of our survey day goes smoothly. Sallie and Kaile’a both keep insisting that the coral reefs around the park are extremely degraded after a few serious bleaching events in the last couple years. They could have fooled me. The reefs in the park contain the healthiest and greatest abundance of hard corals I have seen this summer and I’m pretty excited about it. “Wow! That reef must be eating its kale. I haven’t seen anything that healthy all summer!” Sallie was kind enough to give me a courtesy laugh.

It’s 7:30 AM inside the air-conditioned NPS office at KAHO. I’m half-zoning out, looking at a poster showing the sizes of various fish when they reach sexual maturity when I hear Kaile’a shout, “Do they have red butts?!” Some anonymous voice from the other room replys, “Yeah, I think so.” “Those are ok, the ones with the red butts aren’t the invasive ones!” Kaile’a informs the anonymous voice that is looking at ants under the microscope.

Kaile’a in a red cave…no ants here!

The dive team at KAHO doesn’t only work on the water. Sallie and Kaile’a maintain and protect park resources on land as well. One pesky creature they have been dealing with lately is a tiny invasive fire ant. Not only can you hardly see these ants with a naked eye, but you can imagine working with “fire” ants has obvious downsides. These ants pack a punch in their bite. The worst part is, you literally can’t see it coming.

Sallie sent out an NPS team yesterday to set fire ant traps (popsicle sticks glazed with peanut butter). The teams then collected the traps and are now looking for fire ants on said traps. This will give them a spatial idea of where the fire ants are. Once they know where they are, they can try to manage them.

Of course, we aren’t working with fire ants today (though I did get to check out some red butted ants under the microscope). We are on our third day of benthic work. Today I get to get my camera in the water.

Getting the boat in and out of our parking space can be pretty tight (behind the engines, in front of the black boat).

After loading the boat in the Kona heat, we arrive at our dive site and Kaile’a and I hop in. Kaile’a is a string bean of a woman. She is as calm as the water of the Kona coast and has a very palatable sense of humor. We have a shared interest in photography, though Kaile’a is more science-based in her approach. Today, she is taking photos of a rectangular plot of reef. After we are done for the day, she will upload those photos to a computer software. The software will stitch them together to create a high-resolution 3D model of the reef. Kaile’a is pushing for this sort of monitoring in the park, because these 3D models enable NPS to see exactly how much the reef is growing/degrading each survey period and which corals are healthy or struggling. It’s a much more robust way to monitor and survey coral reef.

Kaile’a takes a 3D photogrammetry survey.

After the photogrammetry site is set up, I don’t have much responsibility. This means I get to take some photos of my own. While I’m taking a few photos of Kaile’a, we both notice a large patch of murky water behind us. We go to investigate and see that a semi-solid mostly-fluid solution is being puffed out (think the way an older man would smoke a pipe) of mostly dead coral heads. It’s clearly a spawning event, where some organism is broadcast spawning (releasing their eggs and sperm into the water column where they will eventually meet and fertilize). After several minutes of staring into a dead coral head, I find it. Scallops! I’ve never witnessed a spawning event like this on a dive. Once one scallop started the event, hundreds of scallops immediately followed. It’s an incredible site to see.

Look closely at this dead coral head for patches of murky water and you’ll see solid white gametes in the water.

We are both pretty giddy about it. After a little bit more exploration, we head back to the boat and begin our drive into the harbor. On our way back in, we see a giant streaky yellow line on the ocean surface. “What is that?!” Sallie says as she slows the boat and turns around. “Might be coral spawning! We should go pick some up and take it back to the lab!” Kaile’a grabs a ziplock back, reaches over the gunnel of the boat, and fills the bag with the yellow-y water. “Two spawning events in one day?! Apparently the park service surveys are very romantic events,” I remark.

Back at the harbor, we pull the boat out of the water and give the hull a deep clean. The boat will be on a trailer all night, so we need to clean off all the algae that has grown on it. Sallie starts cleaning the bow, while Kaile’a and I start at the stern. Eventually, I come up the bow and find some really hidden algae spots. Sallie sees me cleaning a section she already did, “did I miss a spot?” I respond jokingly while laying in a pool of water on the ground, “it’s no big deal! It’s impossible to expect everyone has these kind of eyes. They don’t call me ‘resident legend’ for nothing!” Sallie and Kaile’a crack up. “What we would we do without you ‘R.L.’?” Sallie says.

It’s 6:30AM. The light is just peering through my window and I can see my backyard. “MANGOS!” I shout. There is a mango tree in the backyard full of ripe mangos (one of my favorite foods). Today is going to be a good day.

Today is also going to be a unique day for me. No diving today. Instead, NPS, the US Coast Guard and the Coast Guard Reserves, and the Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation are having a training on how to deploy an oil boom. The park is involved in case they need to protect the park in the event of an oil spill.

After we unravel the giant boom, we put it in the water and our first team goes out on the boat to try and properly deploy it. The boom has anchors that attach to each end and then the boom itself sits on the surface as a physical barrier to oil spreading out of the containment area. The training turns out to be really valuable to all involved, as properly setting the anchors turned out to be more difficult than we thought.

Back at the office, I say my goodbyes to Sallie and the team. “Thank you so much for coming out R.L. We really would have been in a tough place without you,” Sallie tells me, continuing our joke from yesterday. I thank Sallie and Kaile’a abundantly for having me out. They were such a joy to work with and KAHO was undoubtedly one of my most enjoyable stops.

“I might head to Puako this afternoon to shoot some turtles,” I text Kaile’a. She responds, “you don’t have to go all the way to Puako! Go to the aiopio (traditional fish pond) in the park, you’ll see a ton of them!” I was sold. The park is much closer than Puako and getting photos of turtles in the park is a service to the park itself.

When you can see the turtles in shin-deep water, you know you’re in for a fun time.

Two hours later, I’m walking on the dirt path down to the aiopio in my dive boots with my 30 pound camera rig slung over my shoulder. After getting some intriguing looks from other park visitors, I “hop” in the water near the hale (traditional Hawai’ian house). I hesitate to say hop. It was really more of a crawl as the water is less than 2 feet deep. Visibility isn’t good, but Kaile’a was right- there are turtles everywhere. I would have to close my eyes to not see them. The best part is, they are incredibly friendly. The turtles I encountered in the Caribbean were giant (much bigger than the Hawai’ian turtles) but impossible to approach. The smaller Hawai’ian turtles would surely say yes to a dinner date with a friendly snorkeler.

I crawl along with one turtle for quite a while. This guy/gal really doesn’t mind me. In fact, he/she swam right over my camera dome at one point on the way to more delicious sea grass.

Visibility wasn’t good, but these turtles were everywhere.

Turtles are really charismatic animals. The general public loves turtles and it’s easy to get people to care about them. Bringing these turtles to life in my photos may help push public support to protect the parks, other places, and (indirectly) other species along the Hawai’ian coastline. At the end of the day, that is the best feeling I can go home with.

8 AM and I’m ready for some lava! Anne Farahi (whom I worked with at Kalaupapa National Historic Park) is based out of Volcanoes National Park and mentioned that I may be able to go out with a US Geological Survey (USGS) crew and sample some live lava. Needless to say, I was extremely excited about this possibility.

Akaka Falls is a Hawai’ian state park on the big island. I made a pit stop here on my way to Volcanoes National Park.

Anne hadn’t heard back from the USGS crew by noon, so I decided to head over to the Hilo side of the island in case the opportunity would present itself. The shift starts at two, so I have plenty of time. My first stop in Hilo is an important one. My sunglasses fell out of my tent when it got blown over in Molokai. Luckily, Anne and Amanda McCutcheon (another woman I worked with there) recovered them the following week in the backcountry.

“You are a saint!” I tell Amanda as she steps out of her ultimate Frisbee tournament to give me my shades. Life on the road just doesn’t feel right without some quality sunglasses!

Now that my eyes are adequately shaded, I drive to the far northern portion of Volcanoes National Park. Anne lets me know that she hasn’t heard from the USGS team and that going out with them is likely not going to happen. I quickly make a back up plan. $15 later, I’m on a mountain bike surrounded by lava fields. At the end of the road, the chase for live lava begins.

The lava fields make for a dystopian landscape.

The guy running the bike rentals told me to go right and look for smoke, so that’s exactly what I do. I charge through the endless black, dystopian landscape until I hit the first patch of smoke I see. I look around for orange glow and hope to feel intense heat, but there’s nothing. It’s just a sulfur vent. I jog over to the next steam plume. Again, just a sulfur vent. I do this for the next 3 hours and find many sulfur vents and no live lava. As the sun starts to fall, I come across a small family, “I think some people were headed up that way. Said there’s live lava!” I thank them for the tip and jog off towards the mountains.

The first thing I saw- lava flow into the ocean.

One hour later, I can feel the heat. I’m close. I stop and listen and can hear the crackling. I look that way and see an orange glow. Lava! I found it! It is incredibly hot. I can feel the soles of my shoes starting to melt and I am sweating profusely. I take a few photos and poke the lava with a stick (a Hawai’ian tip).

Live lava!! So excited to see this.

As night falls, I want to high-tail it out of there. One small predicament though- everywhere I turn, I am semi-surrounded by at least a little live lava. I channel my inner hummingbird and lightly run across the searing surface until I’m under the moonlight hiking back to the road. At the road, I’m captivated once more by the big lava flow going directly into the ocean. During the day, this flow is just a giant steam plume. At night, it is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.

The omilu are beautiful fish. It’s not my greatest photo, but at least I got the fish’s color to show up!

It’s my last night in Kona. I’ve been in Kona once before this week and I really wanted to do the famous “manta dive.” The dive consists of divers sitting on the seafloor with dive lights pointing toward the surface at night. All the while, manta rays are cruising your head and chest bumping you. The last time I was in Kona, my dive got cancelled due to swell.

A crown of thorns sea star out at night. These stars can decimate coral reefs if their numbers are high enough.

Tonight is my chance. By 2PM I haven’t heard anything about adverse conditions, so I assume the dive is a go. Sure enough, by 5 PM I’m descending for my first dive. The first dive is full of wonderful tropical fish and my favorite Pacific jack, the omilu (blue fin trevally). In reality, the first dive is like buying an extra bag of popcorn when you arrive at a movie too early. The main show is the manta dive.

The manta dive lives up to the hype.

The manta dive is probably the most touristy thing I’ve ever done underwater. That being said, it lives up to its billing. There were 10 or more mantas gracefully gliding over our heads and petting us from time to time. They would dance beautifully in front of our lights, somersaulting to catch more plankton. Mantas are truly gentle giants. They dwarf any diver and have no interest or ability to hurt humans. If I could take someone who knows nothing about the ocean on a dive with any animal, the manta ray would be my pick.

A manta soars right over my camera

Kaloko-Honokohau energized me in a way few places have. After constant travel and field work for several months, I became a little worn down mentally. This internship is such an immense blessing and one that I could never complain about. However, I needed this recharge. Maybe it was Sallie and Kaile’a. Maybe it was the Big Island of Hawai’i. Whatever it was, I am extremely grateful for it. I leave the island with two new friends and feeling like I contributed to the park service. As much as I’ll miss KAHO and my backyard mangos (I think I ate about 30 in 5 days), I’m looking forward to my next stop in O’ahu where I will dive some historic shipwrecks and connect with old faces at Valor in the Pacific National Monument.

The mantas of the Kona coast.

I can’t see anything. I’m just pushing brush away from my face and blindly taking the next step, hoping it’s not a deep hole. “The trail sure got grown over from last year!” I hear Eric Brown, Marine Ecologist at Kalaupapa National Historic Park (KALA), shout over his shoulder. We are hiking deep into the backcountry of the Waikolu Valley. At the valley’s floor lies Waikolu Stream, the natural feature that brings us here.

Waikolu Valley from the water.

Further up the trail, the brush gives way to infinite guava trees. I can see at least 25 guava trees at any given time without turning my head. As I pull a ripe one off a tree, Anne Farahi mentions, “make sure you don’t have any cuts on parts of your body that will be going in the water. That’s how you get lepto. Senifa (previous biotech at KALA) got it last year and it was not a fun experience for him.” Good to know. I crunch into my guava and keep walking to checkpoint- the mango tree.

Anne Farahi crosses a stream in the Waikolu backcountry.

“The mango tree” is the largest I’ve ever seen. It is close to our first survey site of the day. At the mango tree, we check our GPS and make our way down to the stream. Our surveys at the stream are similar to the surveys I was doing last week with Eric in the ocean in that they are both long-term monitoring projects. Eric has been monitoring this stream for many years. We are conducting fish and snail surveys, measuring water quality (in the same way that we did in the ocean), collecting data on bottom composition/boulder size, and tracking stream flow. Since Eric and the KALA team already have past data from the stream, they can quickly see if something is out of the norm and strategize how best to combat any issues that may arise.

The difference between this study and many others is the remoteness of Waikolu Stream. KALA itself is fairly remote already and far out of cellular service. Waikolu is a 30 minute drive and then another 45 minute hike to base camp. The other big difference is that most monitoring projects monitor things that humans use. Waikolu Stream used to be KALA’s main water source, but it hasn’t been for a few decades.

The hike into Waikolu backs up against breathtaking sea cliffs.

I ask Eric about this, why does the KALA team monitor this stream? “We don’t want this stream to change. So many streams have been dammed up in Hawai’i, this one actually was as well at the bottom and Native Ancient Hawai’ians diverted the stream to put water into taro fields. This stream is still in very good condition though, and we want to keep it that way.”

This resonated with me. Eric and I see eye to eye when it comes to keeping wild places wild for the sake of keeping them wild. Very few people take this approach to conservationism, which is really more of a preservationist view. I’m glad Eric (or as his friends call him, “the good Dr. Brown”) is doing it, and I’m glad to be apart of it.

When I say lay in the stream, I mean lay in the stream.

When we get to the first site, Anne is putting on a 5mm farmer john wetsuit. Seems a bit like overkill to me until I see Anne literally lay down in the stream and start counting fish. She is the perfect person to have in the backcountry. She has the most generous heart, quietly has a bit of wanderlust in her, and never complains. Furthermore, she’s been working with the Pacific Parks NPS Inventory and Monitoring team for many, many years. Even salty veterans admit that Anne knows her stuff.

Amanda McCutcheon counts fish during a survey.

While Anne begins counting fish, I work with Eric measuring stream flow. “Always start at the point furthest down stream on your survey line. You don’t want to go upstream and alter the data down stream,” he tells me. This is also why we are starting with the site closest to our basecamp (which is where the stream meets the ocean) first.

Go with the flow! Eric and Laurene use the stream tracker to measure stream flow.

We use a piece of equipment called the stream tracker to measure flow. It can be difficult when the stream gets deep in some spots and really shallow in others. This is because the computer reads the flow as an error when it moves slowly over a deep spot after rushing through a shallow passage. After we get the data and I start to get the hang of things, we take water quality samples just as we did last week in the ocean and move to our next site.

Completing a survey is quite the process and takes about 2 hours at each site with a team of 5 people working. Luckily, we only do two today since it is our first real day in the backcountry after unloading, setting up camp, and doing one survey yesterday.

“Found it!” Eric says as he puts secures the stern anchor behind a big rock. “Toss the line in!” he shouts. I give him the long bow line to swim to shore. He hands it to Anne and Amanda McCutcheon on shore to tie around a giant boulder. “Ok, I’m ready!” Eric tells Laurene and me. We start handing him coolers and dry bags. One at a time, he swims them to shore and unloads them to Anne and Amanda who carry them up the rocks. This is controlled chaos at its finest.

The process of getting gear onto the beach at Waikolu is a tricky one!

Somehow, nothing gets wet and the process takes less than 20 minutes. “I think that’s a new record!” a sopping wet Eric Brown exuberantly proclaims. Laurene hops in the water and swims to shore while Eric and I make the return mission on the boat through the rough backside of the KALA peninsula back to the harbor. Once there, we will drive to the trailhead and hike back into Waikolu Valley to meet the rest of the team, help set up camp, and conduct our first survey.

Once we are back in camp after our first survey day, it’s time to eat. Eric prepares some delicious vegan chili for us, which is a perfect hardy backcountry meal. There’s only one issue. Everyone is having trouble pouring water out of the giant 10 gallon water filter bag. I tell the group, “I think I can make something to help us. Does anyone have some rope or parachute cord?” Luckily Eric has some, and I get to work.

My contribution to our camp- a tripod.

Growing up in the Boy Scouts, working at a Boy Scout camp, and eventually reaching the rank of Eagle Scout, I never thought I would use lashings much. I’ve been surprised how much I’ve used them through the years. Once I find three tall pieces of drift wood, I use diagonal lashings to create a tripod that elevates the water bag and makes it easy to pour. “This is quite the invention! It’s really useful! I definitely had no idea what you were doing over there with some sticks,” Anne says with a laugh. I respond, “that’s my one contribution this trip! Had to get it out of my system early ha ha.”

After a rainy night and early start getting onto the trail, we are already far past where we surveyed yesterday. Today is our most challenging day where we are going deep into the valley. We have been squashing guavas and wading through brush in intermittent drizzle for about an hour and a half. All of a sudden, we see a cute but terrible scene- a den of tiny kittens. These kittens are unbelievably adorable. Tiny little fluff balls.

Kittens! Not a good sign…

“Ohhhh no. Not good. We’ve never seen cats this far back into the valley. This means there is a mother and father as well. We are going to have to kill them,” Eric states, very matter of fact-ly. Eventually Anne and Amanda’s pleading works and Eric doesn’t kill the kittens. Though, I would not be surprised if he went back and did it.

We arrive at the site soon thereafter and complete our first survey. On the way to our next survey, we see remnants of a housing structure. “This is where the workers would stay overnight when they were putting in and working on the water lines,” Eric tells us. “They would clear brush all the way back to here and use Jeeps to drive up as much equipment as they could.” I’m amazed. We are deep into this valley. Installing a pipe and building structures back here must have been so difficult logistically. It was certainly a feat of engineering.

It is truly unbelievable that workers built infrastructure deep into the valley many decades ago. Here is a house they used to sleep in overnight.

At our second site, I work with Amanda counting and measuring snails. Once we are ready, Amanda lays in the stream and sticks her face in the water. Without looking up, she hands me 3 snails. I measure them, record that data, and place the snails in a calm pool of water beside me. We do this until all the snails in our survey area have been counted and measured. Amanda pops up from the water, “30 spat, 60 eggs.” She gives me the count of spat (juvenile snails) and snail eggs.

Amanda points to some snails in her survey plot.

Amanda is a seasoned Pacific Island scientist. She completed her graduate school at the University of Guam and has been working with the Pacific Parks NPS Inventory and Monitoring team since. She is based out of Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park, my next stop. I appreciate Amanda’s understanding of the importance of communicating science and her efficient, workman-like mindset in the field.

After our second site, we make our way back down to basecamp. We experienced a little bit of wind and rain up in the valley, but apparently it was much windier at camp. 3 of our tents have blown up into the valley, including mine. I head out to grab it through some razor sharp brush. The tent is too heavy to pick up, so I have to empty some items into my backpack and then try to move the tent. This works, and then Eric helps me look for my missing stakes. I’ve done quite a bit of camping and backpacking in my life, but I have never had a tent blow away on me.

My tent wasn’t the only one that blew away. Here, Laurene, Amanda, and Anne work to put another tent back into place.

After the tent fiasco, it’s for me to start cooking dinner. I put some rice on to cook and debate whether I’d like to take a “shower” tonight or not. Usually, I go pretty light on showers in the field. It’s hard for me to justify getting salt/dirt off myself when I know I’m going to throw it right back on in a few hours. However, tonight, I decide to bathe. Before I head over to the stream, I let the crew know, “if you hear someone screaming, it’s me being a wimp in the cold water.” Even though I spend a lot of time in cold water back home, it never really helps me deal with cold water. The stream certainly isn’t freezing, but it’s quite a bit colder than the ocean.

Dinner time at base camp.

However, the real reason I’m bathing tonight is that I want to try a traditional native Hawai’ian shampoo/soap that grows all over the trail. It is a type of ginger with a large red bulb that grows above ground. Squeezing the bulb releases a soap-like substance that the ancient Hawai’ians used as shampoo. Turns out, it works really well. Combined with the cool stream, the bath was energizing and invigorating.

The dinner I’m cooking is a peanut sauce stir fry that has few ingredients and is easy to whip up on a camp stove. It’s still a little challenging to cook for 5 people on a single burner with small pots. Once the food is done, everyone piles on the rice, veggies, tofu, and sauce and we feast. The first person to go for seconds is Laurene (she took one of the smallest portions). “Laurene! Going for more?!” Eric asks. Laurene states, “yes! I’m hungry after all that hiking!” To which Eric responds, “Laurene! The bottomless pit!!” We all crack up and hang out around the dining area for a while before cleaning our dishes.

Some of my first shots were of Laurene’s tent.

Around 9 PM, everyone is starting to think about bed and I’m starting to think about getting my camera out. The stars are out in force tonight. It is a new moon with spotty cloud cover, and the Milky Way is coming out. I decide to take my camera out and get a few shots. Unfortunately, I have no way to take my camera out of its underwater housing. I vacuum sealed the housing and don’t have the equipment with me to release the vacuum. It’s still shoots fine, it just weighs about 25 pounds more.

I’m getting some good shots of the stars and Laurene’s tent, but the tent-night sky shot is overdone. I come back to the crew, now completely ready to go to bed and ask, “anyone want to do a stream crossing?!” I mostly get groans and a chorus of “no thank you,” except for Anne. “Sure! Why not? I’m not doing anything else.”

Anne Farahi during a late night stream crossing.

We head to the stream and I have Anne step into the water and stay still. “Ok! I’m ready, stay steady…headlamp on! Headlamp off!” I get the shot I was hoping for, but some clouds block the Milky Way in the photo. “That was so close to perfect! Let’s do a few more, we need these clouds to cooperate,” I let Anne know. She seems pretty excited as well. We take a dozen more shots (they take 30 seconds each to take, so this isn’t a super fast process) and then try something new.

“Susanna from the SRC (Submerged Resources Center) challenged me to try to get an over/under shot of the Milky Way on top and coral reef on the bottom at the beginning of this summer. We can’t get that here, but I want to try an over/under with the stream and the Milky Way,” I say.

The shot proves to be a tough one to take. We give it about 20 tries using my camera strobes and then our headlamps, in and out of the water. Eventually, we find something that works. “Ok, this is it! Ready…headlamps on…headlamps off!” I tell Anne. We only use our headlamps to illuminate the stream for about 3 seconds or they are way to bright in the photo. “That was it!! Susanna is going to be excited to see this!” (See photo at top of blog!)

It’s our last morning at Waikolu. I want to give Anne and Amanda something to use for the Pacific Parks Inventory and Monitoring team, so we head over to the stream for some photos.

Getting this shot was extremely difficult. Rain, lack of sunlight, and tons of suspended particles in the water made for a frustrating photoshoot. I came away with this one, which I was happy with. Here is Amanda with some snails.

We go to a part of the stream that I find particularly photogenic- the old dam. It’s created a mini double waterfall. I want to try to get an over/under there, to showcase both the stream work and the beauty of the valley. Unfortunately, it’s raining. After a few dozen attempts at an over under, I hop in the neck-deep water for some underwater photos to document what we’ve been doing with the snails and fish all week. I wish that I could have had a little bit more time to figure out the best way to get a photo there, but Eric and I need to hike out today to get the boat ready to go tomorrow.

As a rainbow greets us on our way out of Waikolu, I reflect on my time at Kalaupapa. It’s truly one of the most beautiful and haunting places I’ve ever been. If not for this internship, I would probably never get to go to Kalaupapa. This is truly a unique place within the NPS system. With that, comes unique challenges. Eric is the man that makes it all happen. I have nothing but the utmost respect for him and the team that he brings in. He finds a way to get it done under less-than-ideal circumstances and difficult logistical challenges.

A rainbow goodbye as we leave Waikolu. My nice camera was locked away in the housing with a wet dome at this point, so I had to snap this with my phone!

As wonderful as my stay at Kalaupapa was, this marks a personal challenge during my internship summer. I am incredibly grateful for all the opportunities and experiences the internship has and will continue to provide. It feels very uncomfortable to admit personal challenges during my internship, in fear of being considered unappreciative. However, I can also feel the past 8 weeks of constant field and computer work wearing on me mentally. Furthermore, logistic challenges with my equipment along lack of internet and phone service can provide further stress.

I know that I’ll find a second wind and I think it will come at my at my next stop on the big island of Hawai’i at Kaloko-Honokohau. I’m a little disappointed to be leaving KALA. I wish I could absorb everything that is here for a bit longer, but I’m so excited to be going to the big island. It’s my absolute favorite place I’ve been in the Hawai’ian island chain.

With that, I say my goodbyes to Eric, Anne, Amanda, and Laurene at the airport and say thank you for all that they’ve done for me. I get on my 8 passenger plane to the topside airport of Molokai, and in true KALA style, I have to take 2 more flights to get to the big island!

Sunsets at Kalaupapa are special.

The sun hasn’t risen yet, but the sky is no longer completely dark. I’m debating whether it’s more blue or more orange after only getting 4 hours of sleep last night. I came in from St. John, US Virgin Islands to my home in Southern California last night at 1 AM, and now I’m driving highway 101 down to Channel Islands National Park (CHIS) headquarters.

Feather boa kelp adds style to any underwater outfit. Here I am in my natural habitat. Photo by Kenan Chan / NPS.

I know where park headquarters is because I began working with CHIS this past spring. In fact, they blue carded me (gave me National Park Service diving credentials). I’m excited for this week and working with the park on their long-term kelp forest monitoring project (KFM). Not only I am familiar with the marine environment I’ll be diving in this week, I know many of the people that will be on the boat.

Cullen Molitor may have been born in the Midwest, but we’ll claim him for California!

“Cullen! Come here man! How’ve you been?!” The first person I see when I get to the park is Cullen Molitor and I give him a big bear hug. Cullen and I worked together on Catalina for two years. He’s a Midwesterner who has whole-heartedly embraced the laid-back west coast and is known to mumble hilarious dead-pan wise cracks. Cullen is one of the most talented divers I’ve had the privilege of diving with and I can’t wait to jump in with him this week.

We begin loading up the Sea Ranger II, our boat that we will be living on for the next five days. As I begin putting giant coolers of food into the fridge, Kelly Moore pops up from the births below. “Ahhh!! Shaun!! So good to see you!” For me, “so good to see you” is perhaps an understatement of how I feel seeing Kelly. Kelly is the Park Dive Officer (PDO) at CHIS, my diving officer as a CHIS diver, and the reason why I am the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society ® National Park Service Intern. She is the one who told me to apply in the first place, and I would never have done so without her encouragement. Kelly screams California all around, is bubbly ball of positivity, and is always excited to go in the ocean, no matter how many dives she’s had that day.

Kelly Moore is THEE woman! I owe quite a bit to this gal and was so excited to see her at CHIS.

Once the boat is loaded, we are underway in route to Santa Cruz Island. My plan was to sleep the entire way there, but I’m having so much fun talking with everyone on the boat and hearing about the dive plan that sleep isn’t an option. After being called out all too often in the Caribbean for my California flavor, I feel amongst my people at CHIS.

Josh Sprague, marine ecologist at CHIS, teaches me the monitoring protocol on the way out to the islands. The protocols are for the KFM program, a long-term ecological monitoring program that began in 1982 in the park. The operation on the Sea Ranger II is the most complex and impressive monitoring operation I’ve ever seen. This is the first park I’ve been to that uses a full-face mask surface-supply system. It is a boon to the team’s productivity. The diver using the full-face mask has a communication device in the mask so that he/she can talk to the surface support person. In turn, the surface support person is writing down all of the data that the diver is giving them. Using this system, the team is able to collect approximately 6 hours of underwater data in just one hour since the diver doesn’t have to stop every few seconds and write something down.

Josh Sprague working on a full-face mask survey.

The full-face mask diver and several other divers on open circuit scuba gear (“normal” gear) conduct benthic (seafloor) surveys, taking data on sea urchins, algae, and anything else that composes the bottom using several different methods at each site. Urchins are particularly important in the Channel Islands. Over the past 50+ years, we have overfished many urchin predators. In turn, urchin populations have exploded. Urchins eat the kelp that are the foundation of kelp forest ecosystems and provide habitat and food for every other organism in the system. Too many urchins can spell bad news for a kelp forest.

Kelly Moore staying warm as the surface support data-taker for the full-face mask diver below. She can communicate with the diver via the machine in front of her.

There are also at least four divers that are completing a fish survey. These surveys are challenging and what I have been tasked with. They are timed at 30 minutes and taken along 10m on each side of a 100m transect tape (underwater measuring tape). This means fish divers are surveying 2000 square meters and to the surface in just 30 minutes while writing everything they see down! It can be particularly hard when there are 500+ blacksmith above you. How sure can you be that your estimate was good? What does 500 fish really look like?

Anacapa Island from a distance.

All of these measurements give a complete picture of how healthy an ecosystem is, what processes are occurring in that system, and why it might be that way. Over long periods of time, the CHIS team can develop performance metrics for the submerged portion of the park and identify patterns in ecosystem deterioration and recovery. Because they have data from a few decades now in what is the largest marine dataset in the National Park Service, they can quickly determine whether something is an anomaly (a big deal, if you will) or just part of the natural cycle of that site. If there is an anomaly, CHIS can look at old data to figure out why and what can be done about it. Ultimately, this project informs management decisions made by the park and helps the park reassess old decisions to create the healthiest park possible.

One garibaldi! Fish surveys are never this easy…

As we are going over fish surveys, David Kushner, Regional Diving Officer and head of the KFM project, interjects, “how confident are you on fish ID?” “I’m pretty good on my pacific fish,” I tell him. “I need you to be 100% confident or I can’t have you taking data.” David is serious about his data, as any good scientist is. Though he can be frank and serious at times, he is also one of the biggest jokesters on board. He has the energy of someone half his age and anytime he has the chance to dive or snorkel, he’s like a kid waking up on his birthday. As the rest of the crew is catching up with each other after the weekend, David says half jokingly, “you guys have 5 whole days to talk about your weekend!”

Ron Hill of NOAA Galveston fame once asked me, “is diving in the kelp forests as spooky as it looks?” I have never thought of it that way, but I can see why he does.

As the Sea Ranger pulls into Little Scorpion cove on Santa Cruz Island, we prepare to dive. The first person in the water is Kenan Chan. “Yewwwweeeee Ahhhhh AH AH AH AAAHAHAHA!” Kenan screams through his full-face mask rig as he enters the cold water.. After 6 weeks in Florida and the Caribbean, I have fully forgotten what it’s like to put on 12mm of neoprene. Admittedly, this is the one part of California diving that I did not miss.

It’s always strange to hop in the water and get pelted by hundreds of these floating pyrosomes (tunicates) on Anacapa island.

My first dive was with Josh and David to conduct Roving Diver Fish Counts. I am supposed to stay with them. I see 5 kelp bass, 100 blacksmith, and a kelp rockfish. I start writing the data down on my slate (underwater paper, more or less) and when I look up, David and Josh are gone. I decide to keep taking data while swimming quickly and looking for them since there were other divers counting fish next to me. I continue my survey, looking down under overhangs and up towards the surface and pair back up with Josh and David.

A man and his honey. Josh Sprague forgoes the chips and dried fruit after a dive and heads straight for the honey.

I surface and David looks at my data, comparing it to his and Josh’s. “Not bad for your first time!” After our dive, it’s time to take part in a longstanding CHIS tradition- snacks. The CHIS team takes their snacks seriously, so much so that the entirety of Trader Joes is stocked in the cabinets. As I’m digging into some dried tangerines, Kelly says, “I did my best to pick up hummus, tofu, and all sorts of vegan goodies for you! They have your initials on them!” She went out of her way to accommodate my diet. The biggest downside to eating a (mostly) vegan is feeling burdensome to others. Kelly assures me that it was no burden. Admittedly, I really appreciated the effort. It is awesome to have some delicious snacks after a dive.

The view of Santa Cruz Island from our anchorage.

The sun is setting over the front side of Santa Cruz Island as we prepare to anchor in a protected bay on the backside. Cullen and I are waiting for Captain Keith Duran’s order to throw the stern anchor in. “Keith is pretty chilled out, huh?” I mention to Cullen. Cullen responds, “oh Keith? He’s super chill.” This really means something since Cullen is one of the most laid back people I’ve ever met.

Broken wetsuit- no worries! That’s Captain Keith for you.

A bit later, Kelly starts making dinner. I start talking to Keith about surfing, where we have quite a bit of crossover in our interests. Keith is a long, lanky, extremely tan guy who is usually sports some board shorts and a plaid flannel. Keith and David make the perfect team, because Keith is the ying to David’s yang- David is more excitable and Keith is as cool as a cucumber. “I mean, west coast, you know? Got to be mellow,” he says with a laugh.

Katie takes a plankton sample.

Right on cue, David comes into the galley, still halfway in his wetsuit and announces to us (all in dry clothing), “who wants to go snorkeling?!” After a day of cold, wet diving and an evening of warm, dry relaxing, David doesn’t find any takers. “Cullen! Come on, you know you want to go!” He might have convinced Cullen if dinner wasn’t ready. After a massive, delicious dinner, we all knock out for the night.

I hear the engine start and wake up. It’s 7:30 AM. All the other births are empty, I’m the last one up and semi-caught up on sleep now. When I walk upstairs into the galley, I see Kenan and Cullen along with two of our other crew mates, Katie and Connor, doing squats on the back deck. “We’re doing the squat challenge! Want to join us for some morning squats?” Katie asks me. Usually, I would accept. However, I’m still mostly asleep and Kelly cut and beautifully plated a pineapple.

“Title this one, ‘there’s a lot of love aboard the Sea Ranger II'” – Kelly Moore. David and Kenan keep us all laughing.

Once we get diving, I’m diving with Kenan and Connor. Kenan and I met during my blue card training, though this is his second year working on the KFM project. He and I get along quite well. He is a photographer that loves shooting surfers and went to school with one of my housemates. Kenan and David are certainly the two most charismatic people on board. As such, they like to give each other a hard time occasionally and have a brotherly sort of relationship over the last two years.

Kenan and Connor prepare to open up an ARM.

We descend and look for several ARM’s (artificial recruitment modules) on the seafloor. The ARM’s consist of a log cabin-like cylinder block structure contained inside a metal cage. Once we find our first one, we take all of the cylinder blocks out of the cage, record and measure every animal that is living in the structure, and then put all of the blocks back inside the cage how they were. The purpose of this is to get a snapshot of the diversity, abundance, demographics and distribution of organisms that are settling in crevice habitats on the reefs that we don’t sample using the other protocol.

After all the blocks are put back into the ARM, the creatures go back in!

We have just finished dinner and Kelly is keen to play some games. I’m easily rallied and Katie and Kenan are as well. This is also Katie’s second year with the KFM program. She is incredibly patient, self-motivated, amiable, and academic minded.

Kenan Chan checks out a pyrosome on the surface.

Kelly then pulls out a game called “Utter Nonsense,” where each player has to say a phrase with a specific accent like “Irish” or “giving birth.” It’s my turn to draw an accent card for the group, and I pick “New Yorker.” Everyone does a decent New Yorker accent- especially Keith who has a secret talent for accents. Katie is last to give it a shot.

She speaks at a blinding pace with some sort of far eastern accent and says, “IT’S A GOOD THING YOU ARE JUST A METER MAID–” before she is interrupted by all of us bursting into laughter. Kenan, Kelly, and I are crying and everyone is doubled over with stomach pain- including Katie. At a certain point, we were all ready to stop laughing until Kenan says, “what was that accent?! It was Chinese!” and eeks out one of his signature high pitch laughs, which then spread to the entire group.

One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure. Kelly clips her nails underwater after finding some new nail clippers!

This is really indicative of the closeness of the CHIS crew. They live together in small quarters, sharing meals and personal space several months a year. It’s trips like this that have been my favorite this summer- where I am living with the crew in cramped quarters. This sort of camaraderie can’t be replicated in an office and it’s the sort of thing that I love.

The big family-style dinners aboard the Sea Ranger II help bring the KFM family closer.

It’s a warm day out in the Channel Islands. Cullen and I are swatting kelp flies off of us while David pitches a pilot study to us under his wide-brimmed hat. The crew has been seeing brittle star barrens on the backside of Anacapa island. Brittle star barrens are what happens after urchin populations increases rapidly, eat all of the giant kelp (the foundation of a kelp forest ecosystem), and die off or leave. This barren, uninhabited landscape is prime for the taking, and brittle stars capitalize, disabling anything else (including kelp) from growing.

David teaches us how to make the fake algae.

David has noticed that there is a type of algae that the brittle stars don’t like. When the algae touches them, they leave. He has recreated the algae before using a variety of natural materials, all of which ultimately degraded or broke off, damaging other marine life. Plastic is his last resort, which he wanted to avoid, but he believes that it will work and the team can easily retrieve it when the study is done so no trace will be left.

The fake algae also makes a nice neck tie for the Captain.

The team starts assembling the plastic fake algae on a long weighted line, which will be laid on the bottom of a brittle star barren in an effort to displace the brittle stars. Though we are all focused on the task at hand, we can’t help but notice Connor’s sunburn. Connor is the only one aboard who spent some of his formative years on the east coast and this is his first KFM trip. Needless to say, his skin is not used to the sun on the Sea Ranger II. He’s a tall strapping lad who is wholesome in every way. He is just a likeable guy, so agreeable, polite, and hard working. He also has a super power of generating warmth underwater that isn’t shared by anyone else on board.

Connor’s advice on prepping dinner for a crew of 9? “Make way more than you think you need.”

As we set down our coconut La Croix’s (the KFM drink of choice) and dive in, the pilot study dive turns into a real treat for the crew. Captain Keith comes along as well in a 3 piece wetsuit (it was a two piece farmer john, but then one of the arms tore off). This is the first time in a long time that the crew gets to work all together on one task. I have my camera in the water documenting both the crew and what the site looks like at the start of the project. At the end of the project, they will compare the photos to mine and see if this management tactic worked.

I am blown away by the brittle star barren. It’s an incredibly boring landscape to look at, but one that I’ve never seen. It’s impressive- millions of brittle stars just carpeting the bottom. The real highlight of the dive for everyone though was the giant sea bass that cruised by us a few times. Giant sea bass are the largest fin fish around the Channel Islands, growing to 500+ lbs and 8 feet in length. Though they are more common now than when I was younger, they nearly went extinct in the 1970’s due to commercial and recreational overfishing.

Katie Grady checks out our giant friend.

I have dove with giant sea bass before and it’s hit or miss in terms of approaching them. Some are much more skiddish than others. This one was medium-skiddish. I ended up not getting the exact shot that I wanted, but I was just happy to see the big fella.

“You, making me happier

Now I am snappier, while I’m with you”           

I’m feeling great today and feel the need to sing this morning. “Anyone like Shuggie Otis?” I ask the crew. After getting a bunch of shoulder shrugs, Katie asks me, “who’s that?” “He is a musician! I’d say he’s like…one step below Zappa in terms of notarity.” Kelly spits out her coconut La Croix, “HA! Is Frank Zappa now a unit of measurement?!”

Eat, Drink La Croix, Be Merry. David sporting the KFM drink of choice.

Soon enough, we are all descending onto Admiral’s reef- a site known for it’s ripping current. Today is more mild than usual, but the current is still very strong. I get to step away from survey work again today and take some photos. My goal is to get photos of everyone, but the depth we are working in makes it difficult to spread myself out- particularly with the current. I start with Kelly, migrate over to Connor and David, and then spend some time with Katie and Kenan.

When you see the kelp starting to go horizontal, you know the current is ripping. It makes avoiding entanglement impossible.

While I am setting up a shot of Kenan, I notice an octopus on the backside of a rock. I get Kenan’s attention and we try to get a good shot of the octopus. I’m always mesmerized by good octopus shots, and after trying to take one myself, I respect those shots even more. Octopuses have an incredible ability to camouflage themselves instantly…which is exactly what this octopus did. How do photographers get an octopus to not do that so that it can easily be seen? After a few attempts, I had to race over to Josh before surfacing.

Find the octopus! Hint, it’s on the right side in the center of this photo.

I only get to spend maybe 3 minutes with Josh before I have to surface, but overall it was a productive dive. On the surface, David yells, “Cullen! We are going to get schooled!!” I already know he is talking about yellowtail, the fish of choice for seafood eaters in California. David convinces Cullen to hop in with him and look for yellowtail on our surface interval. David’s enthusiasm for getting in the water at any time of day is incredible and really sets the tone for his team.

Katie measures an urchin.

Today is the last day of my KFM tour. David feels good about what the team has accomplished this week and decides to let us do a fun dive. He chooses a spot where we might some giant sea bass. Josh and Keith stay behind on the first dive to keep an eye on the boat while the rest of us descend. After 30 minutes, we don’t see a giant sea bass, but we do get a visit from a curious sea lion. Cullen also takes it upon himself to prank David by putting a lobster carapace on his tank band.

A big group dive is the perfect way for me to close out my time at CHIS. CHIS really was a homecoming for me. It’s where everything started, from my Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society application to my blue card certification. I felt at home in the kelp forest seascape, surrounded by familiar faces that speak my California slang.

Something that Channel Islands does very well is outreach. Part of that is creating some of their own media. Here, Kenan is getting footage for an underwater video.

The CHIS team is one of the most tight-knit I’ve worked with in my entire life. They know how to perfectly walk the line of having fun and remaining productive. It was an honor to work with this crew under the California sun, but I can’t lie- I’m excited to head to my next stop in Hawai’i and lose 9mm of neoprene!

I’ll miss the Channel Islands, but I’ll be back before I know it! Here is the full KFM crew on the Sea Ranger II. Back (top-bottom): Kenan, Josh. Middle (L-R): Connor, David, Keith. Bottom (L-R) Myself, Kelly, Katie, Cullen.