-: All right,
Aloha Kākou
and welcome to our presentation today.
Diving into the barf.
New insights into ʻAoʻū Christmas Shearwater
foraging ecology from Hōlanikū, Kure Atoll.
We're glad you can join us today.
Just a few housekeeping issues.
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please put them into that question
bar or the chat.
And we'll also be posting resources
into the chat and links
and other things for you to download.
But before we get started
with the presentation in Hawaiʻi,
it's very customary to open with
an Oli or a chant to
to open up the space for the presenter.
And we are very fortunate to have
our wonderful Malia Evans with us here today to
to open with a very special chant
called Mele no Papahānaumokuākea.
And that's the name song
for Papahānaumokuākea.
And I'll turn it over to you Malia.
Aloha mai Kākou
so glad that you all were able to join us.
So the chant is to set the space
for the giving and the receiving of information
and knowledge.
And hopefully by listening to this Oli,
this chant and viewing the stunning imagery,
you'll understand why,
why Papahānaumokuākea is such a sacred place
worthy of protection.
So I'm gonna turn off my camera
and enjoy this beautiful images
of Papahānaumokuākea.
(chanting in Hawaiian begins)
(chant in Hawaiian ends)
-: Wonderful.
Mahalo Malia.
So before we get started a little overview
about the National Marine Sanctuary System
and Papahānaumokuākea.
So this is our Office of National Marine
Sanctuary System,
our nation of underwater parks
across the United States and into the Pacific.
And we have sites on the East Coast,
such as some new ones,
Mallows Bay, Potomac river
National Marine Sanctuary,
Stellwagen Bank,
Monitor, Gray's Reef, Florida Keys
down in the Southern part of Florida
in the Keys,
Flower Garden Banks,
which was recently expanded
in the Gulf of Mexico,
a new site in The Great Lakes,
the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast site,
and also one that's under designation process
right now, Lake Ontario.
Another site that's primarily focused
on some of the fascinating shipwrecks
and the commerce in the Great Lakes region,
and Thunder Bay,
which is also a site with numerous shipwrecks.
On the West Coast.
We have Olympic Coast,
Greater Farallones, Monterey Bay,
and these sites protect really incredible areas
on the West Coast, in the United States.
And we're also looking at a couple
of other sites that may be in the process
for being designated along the West Coast
then potentially in Alaska,
out here in the Pacific,
we have two sites in Hawaiʻi
and the Hawaiian Archipelago.
that's the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale
National Marine Sanctuary.
And of course our site, Papahānaumokuākea
Marine National Monument,
which is co-managed by
the Office of National Marine
Sanctuaries, National Fisheries,
US Fish and Wildlife Service,
National Refuge System,
National Wildlife Refuge System,
the State of Hawaiʻi
and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
And down below us in the South Pacific,
we have American National Marine Sanctuary
of American Samoa,
and also another marine national monument,
Rose Atoll Marine National Monument.
So this site, this map comprises our wonderful
National Marine Sanctuary System.
And we are about to celebrate half-century
of protection of our ocean, great lakes,
coastal resources.
So keep an eye out for a lot of webinars
and we changed our logo
and other really fascinating things
over the course of this next year,
as we celebrate 50 years
on our anniversary next year,
right around this time in October of next year.
So we look forward to having many,
many unique events and cool products
coming out that celebrates
the work that we've done over this last
half-century.
And out here in the Pacific,
we are Papahānaumokuākea Marine
National Monument,
and we are the world's largest,
fully protected area at 582,578 square miles
of the Central Pacific,
Central North Pacific Ocean.
And the Monument extends beyond
the main Hawaiian Islands
all the way out to what we're gonna hear
about today, Hōlanikū, Kure Atoll
at the northwestern most extent
of the Hawaiian archipelago.
And if you overlay this area
over the United States,
it would extend from roughly New Orleans
all the way to Las Vegas,
the Hawaiian archipelago.
So it covers a vast area by comparison to
to our (clears throat)
to our country's overall area.
So today, um, my title is wrong
we have our webinar hosts
are myself, Andy Collins,
I'm an education coordinator,
and also work at our local
Mokupāpapa Discovery Center.
Over in Hilo.
We also have Justin Umholtz who is our
education coordinator also
works over at Mokupāpapa.
And we have heard from before Malia Evans,
who's our native Hawaiian education
and native Hawaiian outreach specialist.
And so we will be your host today,
and we all work at a wonderful facility
and Hilo in Mokupāpapa Discovery Center.
Unfortunately we've been closed due to COVID
and the pandemic,
but we really hope to open as the
as the pandemic hopefully recedes.
Maybe potentially early next year.
We have a wonderful 3,500 gallon
salt water aquarium
exhibits in the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and English.
Many in
many in some interactive exhibits.
We have a beautiful facility
right on the waterfront.
So if you get to Hilo,
please make sure to come visit us.
But overall, the National Marine Sanctuary System
protects biodiversity in the marine environment,
many maritime heritage sites,
including some incredible 19th century
whaling vessel record wrecks
in the Papahānaumokuākea National Monument,
cultural heritage.
This is a picture from Mokumanamana,
and of course these birds,
these red-footed boobies
and great frigate birds utilizing some of the
the Heiau, this ceremonial platform
on Mokumanamana
and the island has that that island
is the highest density of cultural sites
in the entire Hawaiian Archipelago.
And of course it's a shelter
and resting place for protected species,
such as the green sea turtle
and a Hawaiian monks seal
enjoying a non-social distancing moment
in the Monument.
We do a lot of education like these programs,
and we do that through our volunteers
and a lot of the outreach programs we have.
We do quite a bit of research to understand
these areas and to see how they're changing
over time.
And that plays into our monitoring program.
How our human activities and global phenomena
are affecting these environments
and how are they doing?
We put out reports that rank the
the state of the different sanctuary
sites and Monuments.
And we also do some restoration efforts.
This is an incredible program in the Florida Keys,
where they're out planting some coral fragments
to try to restore the reef in South Florida.
And these are just incredible places
where we can go to,
to bond with our, with our spirits,
connect back with nature.
And I think many of us have discovered
that during the pandemic
and this time of distancing that basically
feeding our spirit is as important
as just about anything else.
So that's one of the reasons
why we protect these places.
And if you are interested,
you can volunteer with us
in our Mokupāpapa Discovery Center,
or if you're elsewhere, as many of you are,
I saw that there were people representing
20 different countries around the world
and almost many different states
across the United States.
So find your local sanctuary
if you're in the US and,
and volunteer.
But today I would like to welcome
our wonderful presenter,
who is, Ilana Nimz, sorry.
She is an ecologist with
Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge.
She is from Oʻahu and has been working
with the Monument since 2010.
She recently graduated from
Hawaiʻi Pacific University's
Master's of Science and Marine Science Program,
where she studied ʻAoʻū foraging ecology.
She's currently an ecologist
at Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge
where she manages an albatross education program.
She'll tell you about later,
called Winged Ambassadors.
And we partnered with them on back.
Nimz is also the vice chair
of the Friends of the Hawaiian
Islands National Wildlife Refuge,
and an incredible artist
and enjoys sharing stories and paintings
of Papahānaumokuākea.
So at this point Nimz, you can turn on your webcam
and
and mute yourself and I'll share
the presenter role with you.
-: Hi everyone. Thanks for having me.
-: Okay. You should, you should have control now.
-: Everyone see my screen?
Andy: It's great.
Looks good.
-: Awesome.
Let's see. Perfect.
All right, well, thank you all
for having me today.
I'm really excited to talk about
two of my favorite things.
Kure Atoll and barf from birds. (laughs)
So this talk will kind of be in two sections.
I wanted to take the opportunity
to share about how wonderful
the management program on Kure Atoll is.
So this was also created in partnership
with Cynthia Vanderlip,
who is the supervising manager
of the Kure Atoll Wildlife Sanctuary
for the division of land and natural res-
Department of Land and Natural Resources
or DLNR.
So we're gonna start with 10 years
of management on Kure Atoll
before diving into Shearwater part.
So Andy gave you a quick orientation
to where Kure or Hōlanikū is.
It is a 30 million year old atoll.
It's the oldest Hawaiian island
still above water and the world's
northern most atoll.
And at one time it was on the hotspot
or the Big Island currently is,
and it slowly moved, northwards
started eroding away.
And a fun fact,
it was claimed in the 1900s
by King Kalakaua.
And so because of that,
it's actually the only island
in Papahānaumokuākea that is managed
by the State of Hawaiʻi.
And technically it is within the city
and county of Honolulu,
even though it's 1400 miles away.
So Honolulu is a bigger city
than most people realize
because of this.
And supposedly we got to get the rail
across Honolulu.
So maybe we'll get a rail
out to Kure one day. (laughs)
Now holding my breath,
but because it is the state managed,
it's the only year-round,
fully managed Northwestern Hawaiian island
besides my Midway due to funding and logistics.
And this little island has about 220 acres
of emergent land.
That lagoon you see is about six miles
in diameter and provides 80,000 acres
of coral reef habitat.
So just think about how Kure was before people.
A vibrant seabird colony, native plant habitat,
a safe haven for migratory shorebirds,
monk seals.
You have your albatrosses and shearwaters
returned to this little oasis in the Pacific.
Young monk seals had empty
beaches to relax on.
Hawaiians did access this island,
but it is far within Pō
or the realm of their ancestors.
So to my understanding,
the island was not heavily used
by the Hawaiian people,
but it was frequented.
So in the 1950s, you know,
after World War 2,
and we're all familiar with Battle of Midway,
the 1950s, the US Navy and the US Coast Guard
set up the LORAN station,
which is long range navigation,
and kind of the precursor to GPS.
They constructed this runway that you see,
on island here and had this giant antenna
with all these guide wires that came out.
And if you think about a 600 foot antenna
with wires coming radially out from it,
it's kind of a nightmare for these seabirds.
Additionally, this is when many species
introductions occurred to the island,
including invasive plants and rats.
And up until the nineties,
it was managed by the military,
but the State of Hawaiʻi took over
the island management in 1993,
with the goal of restoring
it to pre-military status.
And this was a daunting task.
It started off slow with annual trips,
about three to five months.
And they also began initiating
strict bio-security protocols
to prevent the introduction of new species.
And one of their biggest accomplishments,
right from the get-go in 1995,
the rats were eradicated from Kure,
and that is a huge win for the seabirds
that nest there.
And in 2010,
DLNR began these year round field camps
to initiate an intensive
habitat restoration program.
And that's what I'll be focusing
on for the first half of this talk.
So what were once military buildings
and an active runway
has now become the Kure Atoll Wildlife Sanctuary.
The camp headquarters has a,
is made up of a couple of remnant buildings
from the Coast Guard era.
It's now a kitchen, bunkhouse, and office
for the field stuff.
The runway is still a prominent feature
of the island,
but it's no longer active.
And now hundreds of thousands of birds use it
as well as native plant habitat.
The DLNR are starting to break up the coral
rubble and put in some naupaka.
So reclaiming the runway. (giggles)
Just to give you a glimpse
on life on Kure.
This is a (giggles)
few pictures.
We've got water catchment systems
to collect rainwater for
doing dishes or out planting.
Drinking water is usually gathered
from the ship or there's an, a reverse osmosis
system on the island.
This is my messy bunk room from 2012
when I was out there,
but it is very cozy.
And you could really add personality
to this space,
especially when you're out there for six months.
You want it to feel comfortable and like home.
We might be the only Northwestern Hawaiian island
or one of few places in Hawaiʻi
actually that has an over the water
yoga studio here.
That's actually an old pier
that is not super functional,
but it's used to store marine debris
and to just gaze out
and watch the sunset.
And this is just an inside picture
of the bunk house.
We have a little library and art
from former Kureans.
So it's really a wonderful place
to spend some time.
And seabirds love it to.
18 seabird species use and breed on Kure Atoll,
And it also provides overwintering habitat
for five shorebird species.
Additionally,
a population of Laysan ducks
was translocated to Kure Atoll
as a backup population from Midway,
and they are doing quite well
and seemed to have a lot of ducklings.
They're very entertaining to be around
and seem to get into a lot of trouble.
You know, they poop on our dishes,
but we just absolutely loved them.
And it is also critical habitat
for the Hawaiian monk seal.
So there are about a hundred or so individ
individual monk seals that seem
to call Kure their home base.
And if you hadn't heard one
just did a really epic journey
from Kure Atoll to Honolulu,
and it took her about a month.
And that was actually one of the seals
I tagged when I was out there in 2015.
So that was pretty impressive to see.
So there's about 1400 monk seals
in the world in Hawaiʻi.
And so that's about 7-8% of the population
is on Kure Atoll,
but trying to accomplish restoring
an island to its previous state
is not an easy task.
A lot of planning is involved,
working in tough conditions,
making sure everyone's safe,
making sure there's enough money
so that the people out
there can get picked up in 6 months.
There's just a lot of moving pieces
and it's really a full-time and stressful job
for everyone involved.
Additionally, recruiting volunteers
every year is a challenging task.
You want plot, you know, competent people
to be out there.
And even the best workers and crew
can only last for so long.
So training for the staff to lead field camps
does take several years,
but there's many hurdles to overcome to achieve
these longterm goals,
but there are a great advantages
for habitat restoration.
And so far,
all of these challenges have been tackled
head
head on by the DLNR team to really make
Kure a true jewel and Papahānaumokuākea.
So I'm just gonna start off
by touching on some
of the primary wildlife habitat restoration
objectives that
DLNR has,
including maintaining
bio-security for the island,
managing invasive species,
propagating and establishing native plants,
removing the marine debris,
and then monitoring the ecosystem and research.
And that's when we'll transition
to learning more about one particular species,
our wonderful little shearwaters.
So, overall there's a lot to get done
to accomplish these goals.
And it starts with preparing to go out there.
Here is the team that just left,
planning for food and supplies
for six months.
Takes a lot of planning to acquire
all the supplies that you'll need
and especially anticipating maybe
having to stay longer as they did
in the pandemic.
Beginning when the ship wasn't able
to get them on time.
And obviously there's no Costco
or hardware store out there.
So a lot of the planning involves
anticipating what could go wrong
or what can break and
being sure to pack enough of that,
to deal with problems on the island.
And the big key to success in this project
is prevention.
And that starts at the beginning.
When we acquire the supplies,
everyone that goes to these islands
attends bio-security training
impacts gear accordingly,
and this involves removing excess
packaging from food items
and inspecting all things
before deployment to the
Northwestern Hawaiian islands.
And this includes things like just simple tests,
like removing cardboard boxes
on cereals or pastas or cake mixes
because little bugs can live in
or seeds can be living in that cardboard.
One of the downsides to this
is ending up on the island
without instructions
for your cake or brownie mix.
So baking fails are not uncommon in field camps,
but always amusing.
Additionally,
everything you wear must be brand new
or previously used only on the island.
And that includes all your supplies as well.
And everything is frozen
that can be to kill any bugs
that might be in there.
And then everything gets fumigated
before going on the ship and to the island.
Everyone is constantly on alert
for potential threats.
And this is where we do our first quiz question.
Malia: Okay. So I'm going to launch our poll.
And the question you need to answer audience
is why do we remove excess packaging
from items before going to Kure?
So go ahead and register your vote.
And let's see,
is it to bring less trash?
Island already has lots of marine debris,
or maybe it's reduced the risk
of packing cryptic seeds or bugs,
or is it to play a prank on your camp mates
that want to bake a cake?
So go ahead, register your vote.
I see that
78 80% of you have voted.
We'll give you about five more seconds.
Let's see if we can get a 100% voting
on this first question.
And 3,
2,
1,
we are gonna close the poll
and see what our audience has come up with.
All right, here's the results, Ilana.
We have 8% who said it's brings less trash.
Island already has a lot of marine debris.
We have 90% who said it reduces
the risk of packing cryptic seeds or bugs,
and 2% who are the pranksters on the camp mates.
(Ilana laughs)
-: Excellent. Yes.
Malia: How did they do?
-: 90% got it right.
But 8%, you know,
that's not the wrong answer,
but it's not the primary reason
that we remove the excess packaging.
And those 2% of pranksters,
I don't know if I wanna be
your camp mate. (laughs)
Just kidding.
So moving on.
So we want to avoid cryptic seeds
and bugs because that is how we got
our Kure's most wanted criminal,
the Verbesina encelioides
or the golden crownbeard.
This is a very beautiful plant.
If you're not really dealing with it
or managing it in its habitat,
it's in the sunflower family, family,
and it's an annual plant.
Each has a prolific seeder or flowerer.
Each flower contains like up to 350 seeds.
The seed bank can last almost seven years
and these plants can grow over six feet tall.
So of the 32 plants species
controlled on Kure,
complete and permanent eradication of Verbesina
is the highest management priority.
And a lot of the funding for this
came from NFWF National Fish
and Wildlife Foundation.
So the negative impacts
of this plant are numerous.
And the big one is, has to do with the seasons.
So in the winter with increased rainfall,
Verbesina is just sprouting after the dry
summer season die back.
And this coincides with albatross egg
laying and hatching in December and January.
So the Verbesina kind of grows
up with the albatross chicks
and grows around it,
causing and entrapment hazards
for parents trying to find
the ways to chicks
and a lot of heat stress.
When you think of an albatross colony,
you think of a flat land
and all the albatross stick
up like bowling pins.
And that's because they're using
the wind to thermoregulate,
but here you can't even see the albatross
because the plant is higher.
So they're not getting that wind flow.
And a lot of them can overheat.
This plant also displaces
and out competes the native species.
And it harbors ants that farm invasive pests
like mealy bugs on the plants.
So about 80% of the workbook
for the state of Hawaiʻi
is plant management.
In the nineties,
when the state took it over,
the camps were limited to the summer season.
So the Verbesina had already flowered
and dropped seeds.
So progress to eradicate this plant
was pretty slow and only
small areas were maintained.
So in 2010,
when the year round camps began
with the intention of targeting
Verbesina in the winter, prior to seed drop,
a real progress is made
in a really quick timeframe.
So over four years,
full island searches and treatments
for the plant occurred every six weeks.
And in 2014, the island was relieved
of the pressure of Verbesina.
So we'll just run through a few
before and after pictures.
Here's the Monument.
You can see that anchor here,
kind of fell over in this picture,
but Verbesina as far as the eye can see,
you see the albatross clustered
in this one small open area.
And once the pressure of Verbesina was removed,
the albatrosses are scattered throughout.
They can take off and really opened
up more habitat for them to nest
and native plants started filling in as well.
So another before and after,
the section of a little hill where
the albatrosses come to get the air,
when the Verbesina was so thick,
so they'd come spread their wings,
take off and land here,
but now that the Verbesina has gone,
they can do that anywhere throughout the colony.
And just one more final picture.
This is a actually in 2009,
they built a seep. They dug seep here.
You can't even see it because
of the Verbesina.
And here's the seep right here.
And that's used by those Laysan ducks now,
and just a really nice before and after.
So with 11 years of rear of year-round treatments
successfully eradicating Verbesina
is just around the corner.
It's not quite eradicated yet,
but the birds are responding positively.
So this leads us to our second quiz question.
What season are Verbesina plants small sprouts?
Malia: Okay.
So there you folks have it,
go ahead and register your vote.
When are the small sprouts in the spring,
the summer, the fall,
or the winter?
Let's see who is paying attention.
All right. We have about 50% of you have voted.
Let's give you another five seconds
and let's see what the results
are gonna be.
4, 3,
2, and one,
I'm gonna close the poll,
but 70% of you have voted
and let's see what the results are.
Alrighty, well, Ilana,
we've got almost 50% saying winter,
5% at fall,
10% at summer,
and 37% during spring.
How did the audience do?
-: Yeah. Winter is the correct answer.
The plants die back in the summer and fall.
They'll start sprouting in the winter
when the albatross are nesting.
And then by the spring,
there's already some flowering.
So targeting the plants before
they even start to flower
was the really main goal.
So good job.
The next big effort that deal
and decided to tackle was eradicating
the big-headed ant.
These ants form these super colonies
and can swarm seabirds that nest
on the ground.
And they can even chew at the soft tissue
on seabird feet and webbing,
around the eyes.
So it was really stressful for these birds
and negatively impacts
their reproductive success.
So in 2014,
an application of Amdro granular bait
was applied to the island
and after two full
island applications and
semi-annual monitoring,
the ants are basically gone
from the ecosystem and the ecosystem
has responded positively.
There's kind of a wait period
before you claim something is eradicated.
So I'm just gonna say success
is just ahead as we wait out that period
to make sure that there definitely
are no ants on the island.
Native plant propagation
and establishment is a really wonderful
effort that has had great success on Kure.
A lot of the nursery work
is done on the rainy days.
As you can see the two people
with their raincoats,
because you can't do the spraying
for the habitat management in the rain.
So they're preparing some bunch grass
or Kawelu,
that's really great for seabird burrows.
It has these strong roots that stabilize
their sand burrows.
And in this corner here is
Popolo, Solanum nelsonii an endangered plant.
This is a really beautiful picture
showing all the natives that have reestablished
in the foreground.
We have the morning glory ipomea.
A little bit dying back seasonally,
but it's Alena boerhavia ground cover.
We've got Kawelu, the bunch grass.
And then this layer out here is now paka.
So native plant re-establishment
definitely a success.
Marine debris is a constant battle.
And just based on the position of the island
in the ocean,
basically the current spring,
a lot of trash and these big net
conglomerates to the island constantly,
and thousands of pounds
of entanglement hazards are removed
from Kure every year to prevent seals
like this from getting entangled
and additionally entanglements happen,
but people are there monitoring
to remove entanglements from seals.
And not only does it wash the shore,
but birds bring it.
So birds like albatrosses ingest plastic
inadvertently as most of us know.
Ocean plastics smells like their food,
and since they didn't evolve
to know what plastic is,
they unknowingly knowingly ingest it
and feed it to their chicks.
So the
before the chicks leave the nest and fly to sea.
They throw up these hard items
they can't digest.
Squid beaks and pumice stones or some natural ones
that they would, but nowadays it's plastic.
And I can't do a presentation
about barf without showing you bird barfing.
So quick clip.
Quick and easy.
Sometimes it doesn't go that quick.
And especially if they're struggling
to get it out,
they make these high pitch like (squeals)
sounds at all hours of the night.
So it can be quite alarming
to wake up to a bird
bolusing right by your head.
Most of the time plastic is not lethal,
but it can be.
And it always ends up taking up valuable space
in the bird's stomachs,
especially for these growing chicks,
sometimes plastic overload can kill them
and cause detrimental stomach issues.
Here, this bird is chock-full of plastic
and likely it died from complications to it.
But most of the time,
they are able to regurgitate these things
and head off to sea.
And so this is a bolus from
a black footed albatross.
So this is our bird barf,
and the plastic barfed up by albatrosses,
well, terrible and sad,
has a higher purpose.
students worldwide get to learn
about the threats to marine wildlife
and global plastic pollution problem
by dissecting albatross barf from Kure Atoll.
Every year, staff collects hundreds of boluses
for education and research.
Educators loved the bird barf,
some quotes like this has been
one of the most engaging activities
because it connects to so many environmental
topics far beyond just the albatross.
And another educator simply said,
actually cutting the boluses open
is profoundly impacting to students.
So since 2008, over 2,400 boluses
have been sent to 7 countries
and 42 US states and have reached
over 180,000 students.
So surprisingly barf is a really hot
commodity and a powerful teaching tool.
And we're really grateful for Kure staff
picking up boluses for educators.
And this bolus project
is paired with a free five-part
ocean literacy curriculum
that was developed by Oikonos and NOAA.
And it is a major outreach component
for Kure Atoll.
Lessons are all set for teachers
to use and edit as they wish.
We just did a big update to the lessons.
So if you have used it before,
check them out now.
It covers things like sanctuaries that,
protecting sea floors, ocean hot spots,
tracking where albatrosses go.
And then there's also a whole lesson
on the bird barf and using real data from boluses,
from Kure and Tern islands.
What I'm really excited about.
I'm gonna do a quick little demo here.
We just developed with Tara Alvarez,
a really cool tool
that uses virtual bolus.
So can you still see my screen here?
Hopefully.
We have a virtual bolus dissection activity.
This is a bolus from Kure,
so you can click the item
and students can measure it,
they'll get a length and they can
also classify it here.
So we have a hard plastic item
and it keeps a tally of every item
that you've done.
And there's a worksheet and an ID guide
that goes with this bolus.
So since boluses are a hard item to come by,
cause it takes a lot of effort to collect them.
We developed this.
So students still get that
interactive bolus activity feel.
So that just was finished
a couple of weeks ago
and we're releasing it in this next week.
It's very exciting.
So this is our next quiz question.
Malia: All right. So here we are folks,
how many students
have participated in a bolus dissection
using bird barf from Kure in the last 12 years?
Go ahead and register your vote.
And I got to say it is a very powerful lesson.
We've done the bird barf
and bolus dissection at Mokupāpapa
and students are hugely affected by this lesson.
So let's see how many of you
have voted about 70%.
We'll give you about five more seconds
and we'll see what you all,
if you have the right answers. All right.
3, 2, 1.
And I'm gonna close up that poll
and let's see what the results are, Ilana.
So we have 62% of our audience members
say 180,000.
-: Yes.
Malia: Is that correct?
-: That is correct.
And I really liked the enthusiasm
of the 2% that said 1.8 million.
I hope we'll get there one day.
Awesome. Thank you.
So finally DLNR monitors the ecosystem,
obviously you're doing a lot of changes
to it with this habitat restoration.
So wanna see how animals are responding.
Is the hard work paying off?
So setting up small monitoring plots
to understand how the ecosystem is changing.
Here we have a vegetation plot
in here we're banding a black-footed albatross.
So this is just a really quick graph
here with time, 2012 to 15
summer and winter seasons and a percent coverage
in those little vegetation plot cover it,
vegetation plots you saw.
So overall, we're seeing an increase
in native plants and a decrease
in non-native plants,
especially Verbesina dropping off.
And there are some seasonal variability there,
but looking at the overall trends in 2016,
200,000 individual Verbesina plants
were counted,
in 2021, 15,000 were counted.
So that's a 92% decrease in that Verbesina
seed bank over the last few years.
And if the downward projection keeps going,
we're expecting maybe 6,000 plants
in 2022 and eventually getting rid
of that seed bank.
So really great progress there.
And this is a graph showing the nesting
Laysan albatrosses.
Here's our population here.
And the red is the chicks and the blue
is the nesting.
There's a lot of variability with survival,
but overall, we're seeing an increase
in the nesting of albatrosses.
And so we're a little over 40,000
nesting pairs, really exciting.
And this is the Christmas Shearwater.
This species was nearly extirpated
in the Coast Guard era
because of all the activity and runway
nonsense going on.
So from 2000 to 2014,
started a mark recapture study,
looking at the population is increasing.
And it certainly is,
before rat eradication in 1995,
there are only about 40 to 60,
and now they're over 400 individuals.
So this is a really another example
of the slow success of ratting,
eradicating invasive species,
but it's a great recovery story.
And this is what leads into the next segment
of our talk,
which will focus on this special seabird.
So this is the Christmas Shearwater.
I personally call them chocolate shearwaters
because of their color.
And I just love chocolate.
So (giggles)
if you hear me interchange Christmas
and chocolate, it's the same bird.
They just got a new Hawaiian name,
which was really exciting.
It's ʻAoʻū.
And that's because of their sound.
They make this really cool call
and what I'll do right now.
Aw oohh hoo hoo.
So that's what they sound like.
It's really cool.
It's kind of creepy, but adorable. (laughs)
They breathe throughout
the Pacific, Tropical Pacific.
Major colonies are on Christmas Island,
which is their namesake.
And in Papahānaumokuākea
Marine National Monument
and their marine range is kind of this green blob
estimate around the Pacific.
And so I've spent several seasons
on Kure and was really enthralled
by this little seabird.
I decided to do my master's research
on this species because
there's not a lot known about them,
especially what they do when
they leave the colony.
And really what are they doing
in this green blob we have here?
Additionally,
this was listed as a species
of high concern in the 2008 Monument
Management Plan
and also in the 2021,
US Fish and Wildlife Service,
Birds of Conservation Concern.
And this is due to declining
populations worldwide,
loss of habitat in some colonies
that are habitated,
changing ocean conditions and predation
at colony sites.
But they are part of this
foraging guild called the tuna birds.
So this is a group of seabirds that associate
with subsurface predators
that drive prey to the surface.
And this makes it easier pickings
for shearwaters, terns
noddies and boobies
that are all part of this foraging guild.
And fishermen like seabirds,
because it's a clear signal
that indicates where those big fish
are and where they put their lines in the water.
So not much is known about what these chocolate
shearwaters waters are doing.
There's been observation
that they've dived more than other shearwaters.
So just seeing that they're highly aquatic,
but nothing has really quantified
how they're getting their food.
So I just wanna share a few fun facts
about shearwaters underwater.
They use their legs to kick and propel
and an adaptation is their leg bones
are flattened and streamlined
to allow them to move through
the water really easily.
Their wings are used to fly underwater
and species with short and stubby wings
are better at swimming.
They have this hybrid vision
for seeing underwater and in air,
and that is made possible by flattened cornea,
to compensate for loss of refractive
properties underwater.
And additionally, they don't take big breaths
before they dive,
their oxygen is stored in their blood.
So this allows them to stay under longer
and not have buoyancy complications.
And we're gonna just watch a really
quick wonderful David Attenborough clip
of shearwaters. It'll be a little bit slow.
So you see the subsurface predators
pushing those
the bait to the surface and all the birds on top.
And you can see them really spreading
their wings and propelling themselves
with their legs and feet.
So they, the hosts will share this link.
So you guys can watch the full clip
a little bit later.
They know it's a little hard
to see on the webinar.
So here's our next quiz question.
Malia: Okay, here we go.
The question is what is an adaptation
of diving shearwaters?
Is it flattened leg bones,
long slender wings,
large lung capacity
or rounded corneas?
Go ahead and register your vote.
And we'll see,
who's been paying attention
to this fascinating bird.
The shearwaters or the ʻAoʻū.
All right,
we'll give you a couple of more seconds
and I'm gonna close the poll,
and let's see what the results are, Ilana.
So we've got 70% flatten leg bones,
18 but long slender wings,
4% at large lung capacity
and 8% with round corneas.
How did our audience do?
-: Did really great.
Flatten leg bones is right,
streamlined, help them kick, really good.
All right.
So I'm just gonna do a quick overview
of some of my thesis research
and what we learned about
the chocolate shearwaters.
So my two big questions were,
how deep are they diving
and what are they fave
their favorite foods. (giggles)
So to answer these questions,
looked at what tools we have available.
So to look at how they dive,
we instrumented the birds with the little
dive recorder,
and then what their favorite foods
thought about,
what do we have at Hawaiʻi Pacific University
and we have access to genetics lab
that can help us develop
a way to see what these birds are eating.
So in the spirit of Halloween,
we're gonna get into the mode
of catching a bird to instrument it.
So kind of think of us as the big'ol aliens.
We've got our tractor beam of red headlamp,
and we find them at the colony
at night because they're there with their chick
during the day they're foraging,
at least that's our hypothesis.
So we chose for that.
We knew would return to the same spot
because they had a chick to feed.
We captured the birds.
Sometimes their natural defense
is to barf on us because of this,
we try to wait till we hear them feeding
a chick before we capture them.
Sometimes we still get barfed on.
So to not let the meal go to waste
and we can't feed it back to the chick,
we collect it.
We then touch these little time depth
recorder tags to the underside of the tail.
They look like this,
and they're only about 1% of the bird's
body mass,
really small. We tuck it in.
So it doesn't really impact their diving
or flying.
And there were set to record every second,
when the bird goes underwater,
and then we release the birds
and cross our fingers and hope
that it will bring some awesome data back.
We let it go for at least three days
until we tried to find it again.
So from eight birds,
we got 33 days of data
and that was about 1500 dives recorded
and really big success of this
was we got all of our tags back.
So really cool was we found
that these chocolate shearwaters
can dive to 24 meters.
Really impressive.
Not all of them dove that deep,
but they all dove below 10 meters.
So for us Americans, it's 35 to about 80 feet
and spent up to 30 seconds under water.
This is just a graph of the deepest dive
with time on the bottom
and the depth from the surface
to 25 meters here in each dot
is one second that the tag recorded
the bird really kicked down
to get that prey item and then spread it
swings and floated back up.
So also fun fact,
that depth is the equivalent
of four and a half giraffes.
But when you think about a free diver,
a typical free diver,
they are descending and ascending
at a rate of about one meter per second,
give or take.
So this little tiny chocolate shearwater,
your water's going much faster about
1.5 meters per second.
We also use this information
to see when they're diving.
It's a little bit complicated,
but I'll walk you through it.
So we have midnight to 11:00 PM
on the bottom here.
And the proportion of all the dives we recorded,
this is the nighttime, sunrises in this pink.
We've got daytime foraging
and then sunset in this other pic here.
I'm looking at this line,
it's flat until a little after sunrise,
that's when they're sitting at the colony
and they're not out foraging,
they're a little bit late risers,
not the early birds
getting worms. (laughs)
Late risers, getting some fish.
They are diving throughout the day,
but peak diving occurs
in the evening before it drops off
and they returned to the colony.
And we also wanted to see
if they were using Papahānaumokuākea to forage.
So using a little middle-school math here,
because unfortunately these tags
don't have GPS locators on it.
We decided to try this out.
So get your pens and pencils. Just kidding.
You're not (laughs)
doing too much here,
but we've got the time.
So the time was when the last divers
recorded on the tag.
And then when we picked the tag up
on Kure Atoll from the bird,
we've got multiplied by speed.
And this is from the published literature
for similar species.
They can probably 24 to 39 miles an hour,
and that equals distance.
So this orange circle here
is the maximum zone that they
would have been diving in.
So they are foraging anywhere
29 to 130 miles off the shores
of Kure Atoll for their last dive.
We can't calculate all the other dives
that we recorded,
but we know they're at least
using the Monument a bit to forage.
And when you think about the peak in graph,
where they were diving a lot
before returning to the colony,
kind of suggests that Papahānaumokuākea's
has protected areas,
really important for these species.
And that leads us to what's for dinner.
I'll try to run through this quickly.
I know we're running out of time here,
but shearwater eats basically fish, squid,
and a bunch of mush.
But if I gave you a taxonomic key
in this pile of barf and told you
to figure it out, you'd have a tough time.
I'll take a quick step back.
We collected this barf not on purpose,
but the shearwaters were handled
for that mark recapture survey
that told us the population of the birds.
When we pick them up,
sometimes they puke as a natural
defense mechanism,
and instead of letting it go to waste,
we collect it and store it in fresh water.
So it was a huge freezer
full of bird barf stored up.
So we can answer questions
about what they eat and connect
how they're diving to what they're diving for.
I'm not gonna go too much details into it.
You can email me some questions and we're,
we've got a publication coming out
next year about this,
but we use a technique
called MetaBARFcoding,
which we coined.
It's really genetic Meta bar coding
to process barf.
And instead of using the individual prey items,
we kind of use the water that we stored
all those tissues in,
concentrated it,
sub sampled it,
ran it through a PCR machine,
got our Tʻs, Aʻs, Gʻs and Cʻs,
which translated into species IDs.
So on the menu for these chocolate shearwaters
were going to the dive bar
to see what they are eating.
Turns out there's 68 species
that they have consumed from our data.
The popular dishes for these guys,
the brick soldierfish about 40%
of these shearwater customers
chose these species when they came
to the dive bar.
But there were some interesting things,
limited quantity on the tasting menu.
About 5% of the birds
ate these really cool Obama fish,
deep sea myctophids,
marlins, mahi mahis, moon fish.
These are some things that we,
but they're already in the juvenile
forms of them.
So if you're a little shearwaters out at sea,
this is what it looks like to you.
You're out in the open ocean.
And most frequently you're gonna
be eating these aerial families
that are coming up into your realm
or in the surface.
Also these reef fish.
So some of these,
especially that brick soldierfish,
if you're familiar with diving in Hawaiʻi,
these guys are nocturnal
and live in caves during the day,
but these shearwaters are not eating
them at the reef.
They're eating juvenile forms,
which are pelagic and out at sea.
They also eat things that are huge fish,
but they're eating the small juvenile
versions of jacks, tunas, mackerels, and scads.
And they're also eating really deep sea
fish that either vertically migrate
or occasionally occur at the surface.
So these are usually found below 200 meters.
So this is our last quiz question.
Malia: Okay, friends, last chance,
here we are.
Question is how are CHSH eating nocturnal
reef fishes?
And your choices are cave dives during the day,
at night when the fish are out hunting,
or catching young ones far out at sea.
Go ahead and register your vote
and let's see,
how are they eating these nocturnal reef fishes?
All right, we'll give you a few more seconds.
About 70% of you have voted
and three, two, and one,
I'm gonna close up the poll
and let's see what the results are, Ilana.
So we've got 74% said catching
young ones far out at sea.
20% at night when the fish are out hunting.
And 6% of our audience says,
Cave dives during the day.
-: 74 -: How did the audience go?
-: Right. Yeah.
Catching young ones at sea,
the juvenile forms of fish
out at sea is how they're getting them.
They're about the same size as an adult fish.
So it'd be really hard for them
to eat them. (laughs)
All right. So just gonna end this,
talk about these chocolates shearwaters
with a little food for thought
and going into, you know,
warmer ocean conditions with climate change.
How is this gonna work for these little birds?
So they have this generalist diet, you know,
there are some species
that they tend to eat a lot of,
but they seem to be able to have
a wide diversity.
So this is good for them in a changing ocean.
They're not highly dependent
on one or two particular species
and they can make do with
whatever they come across.
And additionally finds squids and flying fishes,
which are their dominant prey
tend to be very populous in warmer waters.
So hopefully these populations
are stable in warming sea conditions,
and they have these multiple foraging
techniques since they can both touch food
at the surface and dive deeper
than some of their competitors
in that foraging guild,
they have more opportunities to feed and succeed,
but there are some things to think about,
Tunas are targeted by fisheries
since say predominantly forage with tunas.
This could impact the frequency
that they encounter, these subsurface
predators and have these, you know,
great all you can eat buffets,
but that's why Papahānaumokuākea
is so important to be maintained
as an area protected from fisheries.
So these tunas can still provide
this benefit to shearwaters.
And another thing to think about
those reef fishes make up a large
portion of their diet.
Coral reefs are heavily impacted
by climate change and reef fish recruitment
is understudied.
So with that, I know Halloween's coming up.
I just wanted to share some of the fun
outfits we've worn on Kure over the years.
We love a good costume party,
especially made out of marine debris.
So happy Halloween, everyone.
And if these pictures hopefully
inspired you to want to join the Kure Atoll team,
they are recruiting for field camp
volunteers for next year,
March, October 2022,
it's really an amazing experience.
And it's just an honor to provide such,
you know, provide your energy
to help such a special place and special species.
So you can contact Kure Atoll
and I'll just leave a few links up here.
Join the Kure Atoll Conservancy Facebook Page,
lots of fun information and updates
from the field are posted there.
Learn a more about my work
with Oikonos and Oikonos in general
at oikonos.org.
And if you're an educator or you're just
really interested in bird barf,
you can download the Winged Ambassadors
curriculum,
newly updated @downloadwingedambassadors.org
and try out the virtual bolus activity.
And I believe our hosts will be sharing that.
So with that, I thank you for joining me.
-: Okay, I was muted.
Great talk. Fascinating.
We loved your creative graph
graphs and other things that was, sorry.
We went over a little bit,
but thank you again for joining us.
I'm gonna grab back the screen.
I have a few sides to share with you
on closing
and let's see.
So thank you again,
everybody for attending us and thank
you Nimz for wonderful talk.
So this talk, hopefully will be archived
on our webinar archive.
I said hopefully,
because there's always some
weird technical thing.
Wait, when I was about to hit recording,
it said we had run out of space.
So I think I freed it up and it will be recorded,
but this time I'm not a hundred percent sure.
So with that,
you could check that page
and also you'll get a certificate of attendance
for attending this of an hour
professional development.
You'll get that email by tomorrow
and we have some great upcoming webinars
next month.
We're going to feature the awesome work
of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project.
Kevin O'Brien,
the president and founder of that
non-profit specific Papahānaumokuākea
Marine Debris Project
we're presenting.
On the amazing work they did this last week,
the last couple of seasons
and removing marine debris
from Papahānaumokuākea.
And also this is the time
when our humpback whales returned
back to Hawaiʻi.
So Hoʻi Kohalā the return of the humpback whale,
series of webinars hosted by our sister site,
the Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
So be sure to check that out.
Some of them are posted on that link below,
and there are other events.
If you sign up to the listserv,
you'll get this announcement.
And last but not least,
please do remember to fill out
the survey at the end.
We really use that information
for knowing what we can do
and what we, I can improve upon
in these webinars and which you might
like to see.
So again, mahalo for joining us
and look forward to celebrating
50 years of ocean, great lakes protection
over the last 50 years
with the National Marine Sanctuary System,
keep an eye out for events and posters
and updates and all sorts of cool things
over this next year.
So everybody stay safe, take care, mahalo, aloha.