I arrived in American Samoa, my last stop of the internship, the night of Monday, September 30^th. The next morning, the federal government shut down. Forbidden to enter the park, use park boats or equipment, or even enter the park office, I had to instead enjoy a two-week vacation on this beautiful island in the South Pacific.

Had Congress agreed on the budget, I would have been helping the American Samoa National Park marine resources team address an outbreak of Crown of Thorns (COTs for short), coral-eating sea stars. Although native here in the Indo-Pacific, occasional population explosions can devastate coral reefs. Historical data suggests that such outbreaks occur naturally every hundred or so years, giving reefs time to recover, but recently outbreaks have occurred across the Pacific every twenty, ten, or even five years, with detrimental consequences for coral reefs already staggering under the burden of pollution, overfishing, ocean acidification, and ocean warming. I had learned about the role of COTs in “natural” destruction of coral reefs from a particularly formative episode of Kratt’s Kreatures, but it wasn’t until now that I found out that there is indeed an anthropogenic contribution to COT outbreaks. COT larvae fare best in plankton bloom conditions, which have been happening more frequently due to increased nutrient input to coastal waters from agricultural and wastewater runoff. Three or four years after a large plankton bloom, COTs reach maturity and a huge outbreak overwhelms the corals. In an attempt to rescue American Samoa’s reefs, the NPS and other natural resource agencies have been focusing on COT removal for the past several weeks. They kill them by injecting them with sodium bisulfate, which disrupts their internal pH balance. So far these agencies have killed thousands of COTs in crucial sites.

With the government shut down, all COT removal activity was put on hold. This was distressing because each day we weren’t removing COTs meant the loss of corals that could take over a hundred years to grow back (if they can recover at all, given additional stressors like warming and acidification). It’s sobering to consider that our two-week government shut down will have consequences on the scale of decades and even centuries, as far away as American Samoa.

Crown of Thorns sea stars.

The furlough crew made the best of the situation by reveling in the natural resources American Samoa offers outside of the national park. I stayed with NPS Marine Ecologist Tim Clark, the island’s Chief Instigator of Adventure, and merely by waking up each morning and agreeing to whatever he had planned, I managed to fill the days with hiking, snorkeling, kayaking, diving, and general island exploring.

Vai’ava Strait, a National Landmark

Palagi beach

One fun and educational excursion was a tour of the NOAA weather station. American Samoa is home to one of four baseline observatories for parameters like atmospheric carbon dioxide; its fellows are in Barrow, Alaska; Mauna Loa, Hawaii; and the South Pole. It’s from these stations that we get estimates of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which recently made headlines when CO₂ hit 400ppm. I’ve seen the Keeling Curve (link to http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/)  in every one of my environmental science classes, but had never heard of the station in American Samoa. Station Chief Jesse Milton was still at work, so he gave us a tour of the instruments and sampling that goes on at the station.

NPS Marine Ecologist Tim Clark and I explore the weather station.

Other highlights included kayak expeditions to explore caves and fun snorkeling sites, a game of island golf, and checking out a flying fox roost at sunset. The National Park was created largely to protect these fruit bats, the only native mammals on the island. We saw both species: Pteropus tonganus and Pteropus samoensis.

Kayaking the north side of the island

Taking a break from kayaking to unwind in my newfound Jacuzzi.

Diving in American Samoa was fantastic. This was my first time diving in the southern hemisphere, and I was thrilled to see so much coral: unbelievably diverse, and the colonies were enormous. I was also particularly excited about the giant clams and anemonefish, which I had never before seen in the wild. Our diving adventures included persuading a local ferry driver to drop us off mid-ride so we could dive around Aunu’u island (it’s not everywhere that you can book a $4 dive boat!), and diving via kayak, towing them as we drifted. Tim’s neighbor Nick Saumweber, a soil conservationist with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, took advantage of the time off to complete his advanced open water diving certification with Tim, and I tagged along for his certification dives. I was especially eager to join the night dive, for which we left directly from the beach across the street from their front yards. We peeked at wide-eyed squirrelfish and parrotfish asleep in coral cubbies, listening for theremin echoes of whalesong.

Many thanks to Tim for hosting and entertaining me for two weeks! Thanks also to Nick Saumweber, Alice Lawrence, Wendy Cover, Mark MacDonald, Adam Miles, Christine Bucchianeri, and the rest of the Palagi crew for spending time with me, joining our adventures, and making my island furlough experience so fun and memorable.

Coconut Point Sunset

I returned to the mainland for a brief freshwater interlude at Crater Lake National Park. At the Medford airport I hopped into my rented VW beetle and together we traversed the Oregon countryside, leaving farmland for forest to reach the lake by mid-afternoon. The research boat had already gone out for the day, so after getting settled in the quaint and charming Naturalist House, I drove the 33-mile crater rim, checking out various hikes and viewpoints. Returning home after sunset, I was pleasantly surprised to find USGS ecologist Bob Hoffman, his wife and all-star volunteer Susan, and USGS fisheries biologist Mike Heck in the house with dinner on the table. They’re from the Corvalis research group and are continuing a long-term dataset on Crater Lake, and I would be working with them to collect water samples the next day.

Crater Lake

Checking out the sunset from the Watchman Lookout Station.

The next morning, we all reported to the ranger station, ready for a day out on the water. Aquatic ecologist Mark Buktenica, fisheries biologist Scott Girdner, and biological technician Drew Denlinger were packing up sampling gear, and we piled into the park van and drove to the Cleetwood Cove trail. The park does have a dive program, but they’ve finished diving for the season, and I was actually joining them for their final days of fieldwork for the year. Although I’ve heard it’s incredible to dive in Crater Lake’s perfectly clear waters, I was grateful we weren’t diving this week: the forecast for the day was 35 degrees and raining! As we hiked down the trail, the one legal means of access to the caldera wall, the clouds started moving in. We boarded the RV Neuston, the park’s research boat, and set out for a day of water quality sampling. We tied off to the permanent weather buoy in the middle of the lake and began to set up the sampling instruments. Clouds and fog poured over the rim of the caldera and across the surface of the water, shrouding Wizard Island in mist. Famously sapphire, today the lake was pewter. Crater Lake was a mid-game addition to my schedule, and I had only packed clothing for tropical climes. Fortunately they had survival suits and bomber jackets on the boat, since my six layers of t-shirts and assorted dive gear weren’t quite cutting it.

We collected water for sampling with niskin bottles, just as I had done in Kalaupapa. They collect water at depths ranging from 0m to 300m by attaching open bottles to a line, which is raised and lowered with a crane and winch. The bottles are set up so that by attaching a weight to each bottle, one can send down one messenger weight to trigger the shallowest bottle to close and release its weight, creating a chain reaction to close each bottle at its designated depth.   From the niskin bottles we collected water samples in specific bottles to measure parameters like dissolved oxygen content, nutrient contents, and primary productivity levels. In order to measure primary productivity (essentially photosynthesis), we collected water in both clear bottles and identical bottles that had been blacked out with electrical tape. Radioactive carbon-14 is added to each bottle, and then the bottles are put on a line at their original depths and floated in the lake for four hours before being placed in an opaque box and brought to the lab for testing. The idea is that the black bottles will block light and therefore photosynthesis, so only respiration will occur in those bottles. Both respiration and photosynthesis will occur in the clear bottles. In the lab, they can measure the uptake of the C14 tracer, and, by “subtracting” the black bottle from the clear bottle, approximate primary production. Sampling complete, we filled our water bottles with Crater Lake’s clear and clean water, collected at 300m. It’s too early to confirm reports of its life-lengthening properties, but it certainly was cold and delicious.

Susan and I toast longevity after filling our bottles with water from the lake, collected at 300m.

Niskin bottles

Bob, Mike, Mark and I then set off in a smaller boat to take stream samples. They’re collecting long-term water quality data from a few of the streams that feed the lake, comparing streams at varying distances from the visitors center and lodge on the crater rim. So far, Bob and Mike told me, they haven’t seen much of an effect of the center and lodge, but keeping tabs on the streams will allow them to address any potential pollution. At the end of the day we hiked back up the caldera, and as we drove back to the station, spotted patches of the first snow of the season.

The next day, Mike, Scott, and the Hoffmans stayed in the lab to process the water samples, while Mark, Drew, and I packed up the boat for zooplankton tows. They do vertical tows, raising and lowering a fine mesh net through 20 and 40m increments, down to 200m. As with the niskin bottles, sending a weight down the line triggers the net to close, so they can sample through, for example, 160-200m without collecting any more plankton on the way up. Crater Lake’s clear waters are indicative of low productivity, but we found a surprising amount of goop (scientific term), especially at the 40-60m layer. Yesterday a distant memory, the weather was sunny and clear, wisps of clouds reflecting in the absurdly blue water.

Since this was the last field excursion of the season, we also stopped at the dock on Wizard Island to collect gear and equipment to bring back up the trail. The park service has a storage facility on the island that also serves as a dive locker, so we brought the niskin bottles in to stay through the winter, and packed up dive gear and tanks to take back to the ranger station.

Bald eagles are a common sighting around the lake.

It was a brief visit, but well worth the opportunity to spend time in this spectacularly beautiful park. It was a pleasure to meet and work with Mark, Scott, Drew, Bob, Susan, and Mike—thank you all so much for everything.

I enjoyed my final sunset at Crater Lake along with about twelve other couples.

Wizard Moon

My final week in Kalaupapa went by all too quickly. Sly, Raf and I spent the weekend hiking around the Kauhako crater rim and snorkeling in the harbor. We searched for ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs allegedly hidden along the crater rim (unsuccessful) and nudibranchs in the corals just outside the pier (much more so). After volleyball, we headed to the tiny settlement bar for a lively game of hearts with Uncle Pali.

Raf and I pose on the crater rim

Maggie Sogin, a PhD student from UH Manoa, joined us for the week. She’s studying coral metabolism in response to environmental stress, and is collecting coral samples from sites in Oahu and Kalaupapa. We spent the week helping her collect samples from twelve of her Kalaupapa sites. We needed all hands on deck since each sample had to be brought to the surface and immediately flash frozen to stop any metabolic activity. Otherwise, Maggie explained, she would just see the stress signal from sampling. Maggie collected two species of coral: six samples each of Pocillipora meandrina and Montipora capitata. She used wire cutters to snip the tips of Pocillipora and a hammer and chisel to remove chunks of Montipora. These samples are small, comparable to parrotfish bites, and are not overly harmful to the coral. She put each sample in a numbered plastic bag and handed it to Sly, who free dived to relay each sample to the boat. Randall and Eric operated the boat, recorded the time the samples were sent up, and immediately placed them in dry ice coolers. My job was to keep photographic data of each colony from which the samples were collected. I took pictures of a slate with the site and colony numbers, and then pictures of each colony. I placed a ruler with red, green, and blue tape next to each colony for scale and color correction. Maggie also retrieved temperature loggers she had placed at each site on a previous visit. An unseasonably early swell came through mid-week, making it tricky to position the ruler and get the colony in focus before getting swept away. I was impressed that Maggie was able to aim her hammer and chisel in the rolling surge!

Maggie uses a hammer and chisel to collect a sample of Montipora

Thanks to our experienced and efficient team, we finished all twelve sites despite some delays. On Tuesday, we had to wait for more dry ice to come in on the freight plane, but when we finished four sites that afternoon, we knew were in good shape. While waiting for the ice we took the opportunity to tag the seal pup Eric and I had spotted on our last seal walk. This one was smaller and less feisty, and Eric, Randall, and Sly tagged her in just over three minutes. On Wednesday the swell was too high to go out, so we caught up with on-land work. Sly, Maggie, and I buried temperature loggers by the sea turtle nests on the black sand beach and everyone worked on overdue data processing.

With our sites completed, I looked to make the most of my last weekend in Kalaupapa. I savored a delightful and delicious final movie night at Tim and Raf’s house (I’m still dreaming about Tim’s homemade lilikoi ice cream), and accompanied Eric on his monk seal watch. We discovered that pup #9, a male, had been weaned and would be ready for tagging the following week. Maggie’s boyfriend Pat and his family came to visit over the weekend, so Sly took us on another peninsula tour, with some bonus stops. In addition to the crater, arches, and Kalawao settlement, we went exploring in the Old Ladies’ Cave. It is said that during times of war between the Hawaiian Islands, the people of Molokai hid in this cave, but an enemy boat caught a glimpse of old ladies picking mites out of each others’ hair by the cave entrance and knew to attack. Other myths surrounding the cave involve scouts using the cave’s lava tube to send warning signals, or that one old lady used it to cook for her husband, and smoke rising from the lava alerted warring ships to the hidden Molokaians. We also climbed down the lava cliffs to check out some tidepools. Filled by occasional surf, the pools were full of urchins, some juvenile fish, and gobies. The gobies have specialized elongated tails that help them skip out of the water into neighboring pools. On the way home we were briefly stymied by a dead truck battery and worn-out jumper cables, but Raf saved the day with specialized car resuscitation know-how.

The tour team at the Kalawao overlook.

The ever-intrepid Pat leads the way down to the tidepools.

We all went for a last snorkel expedition in the harbor. The swell had calmed down, and we found countless eels, nudibranchs, and the rare titan scorpion fish. Sly spotted an octopus, and as Maggie and I crowded in to look a green moray darted out of a nearby crevice and lunged at it, hoping for an eight-legged meal. In a flash of suckers the octopus oozed deeper into the safety of its hole. Tim, Raf, and Sly also took us to one of their favorite salt collecting spots. Kalaupapa is famous for its sea salt, which dries in pools on the lava rocks. With spatulas and strainers, we scraped off the flaky crystals and brought home bags of saline souvenirs.

It was tough to leave Kalaupapa and all my wonderful new friends! Maggie, Pat’s family, and I crammed all of our gear into the tiny plane and said goodbye. As the plane took off, everyone standing at the airport sent us off with the wave, a Kalaupapa tradition. Thank you so much to Eric and Randall for working with me and coordinating my stay! Thanks also to Sly, Raf, Tim, Claire, Maggie, the Currys, and the entire Kalaupapa community for being so warm, welcoming, and generous. I hope to come back and visit soon!

My second week in Kalaupapa has been packed with diverse and unique experiences. We started the weekend with a trip to topside Molokai to get groceries. Sly, Rafael Torres, and I donned our packs and started up the three-mile Pali (cliff) trail, which includes 26 switchbacks and over 1600ft of vertical cliff. The only means of land access to Kalaupapa, this is the same trail that brought mail, supplies, and visitors to the colony in its heyday. Today, the main users of the trail are guided mule trips that bring visitors to spend three or four hours at the settlement. Near the top, we did our part to curb invasive species by snacking on strawberry guavas, and were rewarded by the incredible view of the entire peninsula at the final overlook. In town, we perused the farmers’ market and got our essentials at the various grocery stores, stopped for local flavors of ice cream, and headed back down. We had just enough time to catch our breath and unload groceries before gathering for community volleyball, a twice-weekly event. Eighty-three-year-old patient Uncle Lelepali organizes and referees each game, and his calls are law. Players of all ages and agencies, permanent residents and visitors like myself, assemble each Saturday and Wednesday evening to rotate around the pitted grass court, while spectators chat and pass around six-packs from the settlement bar across the street. Laughter, cheers, and good-natured heckling fill the air until it’s too dark to play and Uncle Pali cries out a final, “Shake hands!”

The view of the settlement from the top of the Pali trail.

Community events don’t stop at volleyball. The (admittedly limited) younger crowd often meets for ultimate frisbee or a game of pool, and everyone invites each other over to watch the University of Hawaii women’s volleyball games or, in the case of law enforcement officer and die-hard Auburn fan David Ellis, the kickoff of the college football season. I was also encouraged to attend a mass in the historic St. Philomena church in Kalawao. Religion is a central part of life for many in the settlement, and the Catholic Church in particular is a big presence here, especially since Father Damien was canonized as a saint in 2009. Saint Damien worked in the settlement in the late 19^th century, built St. Philomena, and was loved for his compassionate treatment of the patients at a time when they were misunderstood and mistreated. St. Philomena has been restored to its original appearance, and the community holds a mass there once a month (there are places of worship for several denominations in the Kalaupapa settlement, but these monthly services in historic structures are particularly special cultural events). Kalaupapa’s Father Patrick delivered a beautiful and lighthearted homily, and a visiting church group provided rousing music. After the mass, patients congregated on the church grounds, and I met and chatted with the aunties and uncles, several of whom shared snippets of their stories.

Over the holiday weekend I learned more about the history of the settlement, reading several patient memoirs and Kalaupapa-related literature. Although today the patients are considered the community elders and command the utmost respect, historically Kalaupapa has been a place of great suffering. Hansen’s disease was poorly understood and highly stigmatized, and mandated quarantine meant families torn apart and victims sent to a life of exile. Most histories also gloss over the native Hawaiian communities that were forcibly removed from their land when the settlement was created. The patients that live here are true survivors, and I’m amazed by the incredible joy, humor, and goodwill they maintain. It is truly an honor to come here and be a part of this community, however temporarily.

The weekend over, I reported to the NPS office at 7am. The first task of the week was tagging a monk seal pup that had recently been weaned. Ten pups were born in the park this summer, a new record. This particular pup was a female, crucial to sustaining the population, and Eric and Randall had been waiting for her to get in a good tagging position for weeks. They want to tag the seals right after they’ve been weaned, while they’re small enough to be restrained, but they must wait until the seal is out of the water and away from lava rocks that could injure the seal or the taggers. Eric and I drove to the beach where the seals usually haul out, and luckily enough our pup was sleeping in the sand, in a perfect tagging position. I kept watch from behind the low-hanging pines while Eric radioed Sly and Randall and they prepared their tagging material. The seal was still rotund with baby blubber, occasionally trying to brush flies from her face with flippers that could barely reach over her chubby shoulders. The tagging team emerged, decked out in blue coveralls, and got to work quickly and efficiently to minimize time spent handling the seal. Randall restrained her while Eric and Sly attached red plastic tags to her tail and took tissue samples for genetic data. Less than five minutes later they released her and she blobbed back into the ocean. “She’s a strong one!” Randall declared. “She’s going to be a good mom.”

The pup shoots us a reproachful glance as she makes her way to the water. The red tags in her tail will identify her and allow scientists to track her movements and behavior over her lifetime.

Afterward, we packed up the water quality sampling gear and headed to Kauhako crater, site of the previously mentioned deepest pond in the world. The pond is only slightly bigger than a backyard swimming pool, but is over 800 ft deep. To hike down to the crater we had to fight through the heavily overgrown Christmas berry and use ropes to navigate loose rocks and soil on the steep trail. At the pond, which was a curious greenish-brown color, we ran the Sonde device and took water quality samples. The water was so full of algae and particulates that our filters clogged immediately. Eric also retrieved and redeployed temperature and water level loggers they’re using to track long-term weather and climate data.

This waterfall cove is one of our favorite lunch spots.

This was all the first day of work, and we still had a dive planned. Eric first briefed me on their fish and benthic survey protocols. They perform the surveys along a 25m transect, at several fixed sites as well as random temporary sites that vary year to year. The fish diver goes first, identifying, counting, and sizing the fish he sees, similar to the fish counts we did in St. John. The benthic diver, rather than recording data during the dive, takes a picture of the benthic substrate at each meter of the transect, using a monopod and fixed focal length for standardization. The photos are processed on land with a computer program that puts random dots on each image, and the analyzer records the benthic species or type of substrate intersecting each dot. They also measure rugosity, the complexity of the habitat, which tends to correlate with fish size and abundance. For this survey, one diver follows the topography of the habitat underneath the transect line with a 10m brass chain while another diver helps spool out and reel in the chain above him. A greater total length of chain used indicates greater rugosity. Water quality samples and Sonde measurements are also taken at certain sites. To spare me the task of learning all of Hawaii’s incredibly diverse fishes in a few days, I was assigned benthic photography and rugosity assistance duties. We did a practice run on land so I could get used to setting the white balance on the camera and using the monopod, and then headed to the pier for a check out dive and another practice run. It felt a little silly to bring so much gear down and not leave the harbor, but the trial was definitely worthwhile. It took me a few tries to find a strategy for balancing the camera in the slight swell, and after snarling the chain the first time I reeled it in, I learned to coil it carefully to prevent future tangles.

Unspooling the chain for Randall during a rugosity survey.

The next day, all the kinks (brass and figurative) worked out, we jumped into our actual surveys. They were on the eastern side of the peninsula, and we passed by Kalawao and Waikolu. The underwater habitat generally consists of big boulders with scattered coral and sweeping schools of fish. Lagging behind the fish divers and focused on the benthic substrate I was often oblivious to the more rare and exciting sightings Eric and Sly would exclaim about on the surface, but I was still blown away each time I looked up, and loved searching for colorful crabs and eels hiding in the coral. On the boat we collected water quality samples with Niskin bottles, which we lower to our decided depth on a line, and then send down a weight to trigger and close the spring-loaded lids. We would stop for lunch by the tiny rock islands scattered along the coast, or tuck into protected coves with striking lava formations and waterfalls.

Okala, the triangular island, contains an underwater cavern.

As we approached our last site on Thursday afternoon, we were surprised to find a boat anchored almost exactly where we were headed, with snorklers and divers in the water. We waited a bit, and as one snorkler surfaced we realized they were spearfishing. While fishing is technically legal in these waters, there is a long history of respecting Kalaupapa’s resources both as protected by the National Park and rightfully belonging to the patients. We radioed in to the rangers and they came to make a “courtesy call” to the fishermen. They were from Oahu and unaware of the customs here, but were cooperative and departed to fish further from the Kalaupapa coast. Our fish count arguably somewhat lessened, we completed the site. As a special treat, Eric then brought us to an incredible site to check out the spread of a non-native snowflake coral, Carijoa riisei. Okala, the triangular rock we had been boating around for the past few days, is actually an archway that creates an underwater cavern. Its walls are covered in amazing sponges and invertebrates, as well as the lacy snowflake coral. After inspecting the snowflake coral and taking in the general grandeur, I followed a Spanish dancer nudibranch as it fell from the wall and unfurled in the sand. It was about eight inches long, by far the biggest nudibranch I’ve ever seen (although apparently they can reach 15 inches!). Sly and I then surfaced in the small air pocket at the top of the cavern, and had a brief conversation, which mostly consisted of reminding one another of how awesome it was to be having a conversation inside Okala. On the way out we circled around the island, a sheer wall crammed with brightly colored sponges and zooanthids, a huge contrast to the bare boulders flecked with pale yellow and white corals of our study sites. I was enthralled by brightly colored fish, tiny neon green gobies scooting along identically colored sea whips, and an enormous octopus that coolly regarded me from within a crevice.  It was without a doubt one of the coolest dives I’ve ever done.

Randall swims near the cavern exit.

The Molokai lighthouse, stunning against the cliffs as we pass the point of the peninsula.

At the end of the week, Eric took me on his weekly monk seal survey. We started at the airport and traversed the rocky and sandy coast down to the settlement, identifying any monk seals sleeping on the rocks or sand or playing in the water. By conducting these surveys each week for many years, they can learn more about seal behavior, most importantly how the seals utilize different types of habitat. This will help park scientists determine why the seals are increasingly coming to Kalaupapa to pup, and inform decisions for habitat protection. For example, Eric has found that as pups the seals tend to favor the sandy beaches, but as they mature they’ll branch out to different types of habitat, and are more likely to haul out on rocks. This suggests that if the state or a federal agency were to set aside protected areas for Hawaiian monk seals, they would need to preserve multiple types of habitat. Over the two-hour survey, we saw about a dozen seals on the beaches or in protected pools. If we couldn’t see their tags, we took photographs of identifying features that seal experts topside will compare to existing images. The pup we had tagged earlier in the week was still hanging around the beach, holding her own in a playful and perhaps aggressive encounter with a much larger male. We also did a quick black-tip reef shark count. A large number of these sharks patrol a protected lagoon here, and the park is currently working on studies to figure out why. The sharks are more numerous in the winter months, but we saw three sets of dark fins slice the surface in our five-minute scan.

A remaining untagged pup. We’ll try to come back and get her another day when she’s not so close to the rocks.

The days certainly have been eventful! We have the weekend to unwind, and I’m looking forward to another week of diving and spending time with the Kalaupapa community.