Hello!
My name is Nick Wenner, and I am writing the blog after our first day at work on Palmyra.
Here are a few important things about myself:
I like nectarines.
I like the feel of rain on my back when I'm floating in a hottub.
I feel bad hanging up on telemarketers.
I aspire one day to visit the deep sea.
I wonder what happens to balloons after you let them go.
I am an Earth Systems major at Stanford (our version of environmental science), and I am working at Palmyra this summer (officially) to complete an internship. Unofficially, I am here to see thousands of seabirds, coral reefs, sharks, and manta rays. Manta rays! In general, I intend to bask in the glory of this amazing lively place.
This first thing I noticed upon arriving on Palmyra was how many creatures I found around me. As we walked on the dirt road from the runway, meaty hermitcrabs scuttled clumsily on their way and thick ferns lapped at the edges of the road. As I peered over the edge of the dock with my nose almost touching the water, dozens of delicate shrimp hovered in the water below me, their slender antennae and attentive eyes tracking my every move. Everywhere I looked I found charismatic organisms - and lots of them - living their own beautiful and unique lives.
This Homo sapiens' life has been beautiful and unique lately as well. Today, our group split up and worked throughout the entire atoll and saw many of its natural attractions. I worked on a three-person team hiking across the southern coasts of the atoll setting insect traps, and as we crawled through underbrush and waded across the shallow lagoons linking the many small islands that make up this atoll, we found beetles, nesting boobies, pufferfish, and ghost crabs. Ten or more black tip reef sharks cruised in packs in the shallows of Kaula Island, forcing schools of very oppressed looking reef fish into the rubble at our feet! We saw baby black tips - no more than 16 inches long - and several large jacks feeding on bait fish in the inner lagoon. All this and a beautiful blue sky broken only by refreshing squalls of rain, undisturbed white sand, and the impressive roaring thunder of waves on the outer break: This is a nice place to be.
Sadly, I have no pictures to share today. We spent the day digging holes, crawling through brush, and wading through lagoons, and it was very wet, sandy, and dirty: No place for a camera! I am very excited to practice my wildlife photography, however, and I will hopefully be adding many shots in my posts to come. I hope to share with you some of the beauty of this place and its inhabitants.
Until then, goodbye!
Nick
P.S. Hi Mom and Dad!
