Johnston Atoll
After leaving Honolulu on the Hi’ialakai, we headed for Johnston Atoll, 700 miles to the southwest. Three days of transit allowed me time to brush up on my fish ID skills, read, watch movies, and fall sufficiently into a sloth-like state… I am now on the fish team, which means that instead of pulling rotten old nets out of the water, I now spend my days scuba diving, counting and identifying reef fish. I was pretty well versed in my reef fish ID in the Hawaiian islands from a few classes I took at UH, so it was a natural transition for me to build upon that and add another 150-200 species for the south pacific, our eventual destination. NOAA gave me ample time to learn my fish by giving me a generous two day notice that I was now on the fish team and would indeed be coming on the cruise…. Don’t worry, your tax dollars aren’t being wasted- I was able to cram them all in my head on short notice. And luckily, the species assemblage at Johnston is almost identical to that of Hawaii- A nice warm-up for the newbie fish-surveyor.
Johnston Atoll is an interesting place with a lot of history. The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw Johnston on the map for the first time, was “Isolation”….When looking at a map, one is hard-pressed to figure out why there is an island there at all. It is not visibly a part of any particular island chain and its closest neighbor is, in fact Hawaii, 700 miles away. A tiny spec of land with no immediate economic value (its guano deposits had already been mined to depletion in the late 1800’s), it was designated as a Wildlife Refuge in the 1920’s. At that time, the atoll consisted of a small sandy islet, 23 acres in size, protected by a north-facing barrier reef. It was home to thousands upon thousands of sooty terns during breeding season, as well as many other seabird species. Well, when WWII came along, Johnston’s status as wildlife refuge took a backseat (aaaallll the way to the back of the bus) to the nation’s security concerns. Due to it’s location between Hawaii, Japan, and the Northern Marianas, Johnston turned into a bustling military hub. The expansive reef was dredged, and the resultant coral rubble piled up around the small 23 acre sand-spit, transforming it into a 267 acre military base- a tenfold size increase. Runways were created, towers erected and buildings and bunkers built. A population of 1300 military and civilian personnel lived on its shores. It served its purpose during WWII and became a permanent facility. In the 60’s Johnston was lucky enough to serve as a testing ground for nuclear missiles. Many missile tests were done, of which a few went awry… Two nuclear warheads were accidentally detonated just off the runway in the mid-60’s, showering particles of plutonium across the island. A half-assed effort to clean up the radioactive waste was made, which consisted of plowing the top three inches of topsoil off the island and piling it up into a big pile, which they dubbed the “plutonium landfill”. They contained this “landfill” with a seawall that was designed to last an incredible 50 years. This makes perfect sense because Plutonium has a half-life of over 20,000 years. The problem with plutonium is, that if you get even one tiny particle in your lungs, you’re pretty much bound to get lung cancer… The literature contains accounts of rather strange looking fish swimming in the lagoon- irregular morphs of normal species. Hmmm.. When the progressive 1970’s arrived, Johnston switched it’s job title to JACADS (Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System), aka chemical warfare dump of the Pacific. Several hundred barrels of the infamous Agent Orange were deposited there, where they were promptly stacked outside in a pile in the salt air and sea spray. Of course, the barrels immediately began to leak. Down into the soil and into the water table…. Once they discovered this problem, guess what they did? They plowed up a few inches of the topsoil into a big pile and called it a landfill. Then they burned the Agent Orange. Lots of different chemicals were sent to Johnston to be stored or incinerated over the ensuing years. Beth, a Fish and Wildlife employee who is onboard the ship as part of our terrestrial team, lived on Johnston for over a year in the early ‘90’s. She said that you did not want to be downwind from the smokestack of the incinerator, and they had “Bad Wind Days” where the winds would blow from the wrong direction and the center of habitation would all of a sudden be in the path of the toxic smoke… One of her colleagues there died of cancer. By 2003, the military had burned or dumped all the toxic chemicals that they felt necessary, and Johnston began its phase-out process. They razed all the buildings, save for a four-story concrete bunker apparently able to withstand an atomic blast (yet I’m told that the roof leaks), and moved all the personnel off the island. They then, 70 years after snatching it away, (and with more than a few stifled laughs I’m sure), returned jurisdiction to the National Wildlife Refuge system…
With all this in my head, along with a few stories from co-workers about diving amongst scraps of twisted metal, old submerged jeeps, and suspicious bomb-casings, I was not expecting much the first day I jumped in the water. But, miracle of miracles, it was AMAZING. Huge vibrant table corals the size of a VW, standing on a pedestal base only a few inches in diameter, bright colors, healthy fish, and great visibility. Guess you never can tell…
We were supposed to spend 6 days diving at Johnston, although after the first day of operations the weather kicked up and we were unable to launch the small boats due to NOAA’s policy on high winds. They were blowing steadily at 25 knots (the cutoff point for cancelling operations) and gusting to 40knots. So, we sat onboard the ship for 4 days straight, circling the island, gazing out the porthole. The island was covered mid-size ironwood trees with a few groves of palms. Suspicious-looking mounds bulged from under the vegetation, and piles of ill-concealed rubble showed from where the golf-course once had been (the golf course became the dumping grounds for the concrete from all the razed buidings).. The 4 story bomb shelter still stood, looking sort of like a high school gymnasium, easily the highest point on the island. The boobies had begun nesting on what was once mainstreet. A ghost town.
On our last day of 6, we were able to get back in the water, and actually landed on the island for a short walk after lunch. I tried not to breath much, as I don’t relish the idea of getting any plutonium particles lodged in my lungs…
Howland Island
After leaving Johnston we headed due south for Howland Island, 1000 miles away and located almost smack on the equator. Howland is not an atoll, but just a small, low, oblong-shaped island maybe half a mile long- a little bump in the middle of the Pacific. Only low, scrubby vegetation covers the island. The combination of poor soil, and fluctuating equatorial weather (some years it will be really wet and some years it is desert-like due to latitudinal shifts of the inter-tropical convergence zone) make for a harsh place for life to live. Howland, along with Baker Island (50 miles to the south), are outliers of the Phoenix Island group which is part of the republic of Kiribati (pronounced Kiriboss). Howland and Baker themselves however, are territories of the U.S. and under the jurisdiction of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Both are uninhabited.
After four days of transit, during which I spent all day and night cramming my head with new fish species, we hit Howland. It is perhaps most famous as the island that Amelia Earhart never reached on her famous round-the world attempt in the 1930’s. A runway was built on the island in anticipation of her stop there before heading on to Hawaii. But, as everyone knows, she disappeared somewhere after leaving Lae, New Guinea for Howland, and never made it. A small memorial was built on the island for her, which still stands today. The U.S. made a brief attempt at colonizing the inhospitable island in the late 1930’s by collaring a few graduates of Kamehameha school (Hawaiian blood only), and sending them down there to live off canned food and canned water- for what reason we can only guess. That plan was abandoned when the Japanese bombed the island from the air during WWII, missing most of the target but probably scaring the crap out of the poor kids living there. Later, the Japanese attacked again, this time from a submarine which surfaced just offshore. The sub lobbed shells into the little colony, destroyed most of the buildings, killed all but two of the inhabitants, and managed to blow the top off the Amelia Earhart memorial. Now that’s some good aim.
We had two days of operations scheduled for Howland. We concentrated all of our diving on the west side due to high currents and surf on the north, south and east shores. The west side is all sandy beach with a small shallow reef shelf that extends a short distance offshore, perhaps 50 meters. At that point the reef drops off in an almost vertical wall and goes from about 6 feet of depth straight down to an abyssal 2000 meters. This is fantastic feature for sealife. Anywhere you have a feature like that, deeper water is bound to be upwelling from the depths, bringing nutrients with it. I’m no oceanographer, so I may be completely wrong, but that’s what I envisioned was happening here.
A little about our fish surveys to give you an idea of what’s going on: We locate our site by GPS from the small boat. (some sites are already established and some we create on the spot), We dive down to whatever depth stratum we’re looking for at that particular site; either shallow- less than 30 feet, mid, or deep- up to 90ft. Then we lay out a 30 meter transect line on the bottom. We then conduct two different kinds of surveys, a belt survey and a stationary point-count survey. For the belt, we simply swim down the transect line, first looking for any fish over 20 cm in a 4m swath on either side of the line, extending vertically to the surface. We ID the fish, count them, and guage their total length. When we hit the end, we turn around and come back down the line, this time looking for fish under 20 cm, in a 2m wide swath. When that is done, we start the point count survey. One diver goes to one end of the transect line and the other goes to the opposite end (actually 7.5 m from the end) We then set up floats to delineate a 7.5 meter-radius circle on the bottom around each diver. We then sit in the middle of that circle (or cylinder, because it extends all the way up to the surface) and ID fish that are in, or swim into the cylinder. For the first five minutes we just write down the species we see. We don’t bother counting them or sizing them, just writing down the species. We have 4 letter codes for each species to make writing them underwater easier to do. For instance, Ctenochaetus cyanocheilus would be CTCY, or Parupenneus cyclostomus would be PACY. Down at Howland and Baker there are so many fish and so many different species that you may be writing frantically nonstop for the first 5 minutes, code after code, and may not even get through all the species that are present in your circle. Then, for the next 15-20 minutes or so, you count how many of each species there are, and how many are of which size. At Howland sometimes our totals reached into the neighborhood of 3,000-4,000 fish, just inside that small circle. Particularly frustrating are the clouds of Anthias. These are small purple and yellow fish that group together in mixed species schools, each species only different in very subtle ways from the next. They seem to be everywhere! We try to complete two of each survey type on each dive. This ends up making each dive about 60-70 minutes long. We do three of those dives a day, potentially four. We’re breathing NITROX though (an enriched air mixture with 32% oxygen instead of the normal 21%) so it’s easy to do without feeling crappy.
Anyway, we dive on the steep wall at Howland, our transect line clinging to the side of this face- The coral cover is pretty amazing. I felt pretty good about knowing my coral species in Hawaii, but down here there are probably four times as many, with god knows how many new genera. I had no idea what I was looking at. There were all kinds of cool plate formations, weird antler corals, wire corals that I first thought were pieces of rope snagged on the reef (I can’t help it if I got my start as a “marine debris specialist”) and one formation in particular that looked exactly like one of those crispy tortilla-shell bowls they make to put salads in…. Sometimes when you’re surveying, if it’s a little surgy, or there’s current, you just want to grab onto the reef for a minute to chill out or get your data together. You always try to grab something that isn’t live coral, like a patch of dead reef, or crustose algae or something. In Hawaii, no problem- 70% of everything is dead anyway. At Howland, I had trouble finding anything to grab onto on the reef that I didn’t feel bad about touching. Our first dive there was very murky, and immediately about five little sharks swirled up out of the depths and came to check us out. Just grey reef sharks, unfortunately. There were no appearances from the storied 17foot great hammerheads that previous NOAA divers have seen. Later on though, we had big dogtooth tuna swimming by, and a few appearances made by the endangered giant Napoleon Wrasse, something I had been waiting to see for a long time…
Baker Island
The funny thing about Baker Island is that it looks exactly like Howland Island. Same size, similar shape, even had a very similar looking little concrete memorial tower, for what purpose I do not know. I woke up the morning we arrived there and looked out my porthole and became confused, thinking we were still at Howland. One of our operational days was cancelled there due to high winds (go figure, this was supposed to be in the heart of the doldrums, the equatorial latitudes). But, the one day I did get to dive was pretty darn nice. In addition to intensive phosphate mining (digging up tons of bird shit) in the 1850’s-70’s, Baker had also been unsuccessfully colonized earlier in the 20th century, and had seen quite a bit more human activity than Howland. This impact manifested itself in the lesser amount of coral cover and Baker’s lack of over 70 of the fish species that are found on Howland, just 50 miles away. The two 10 foot manta rays that circled my head during my surveys and the high numbers of large snappers on the reef, however, seemed to suggest that not all may be lost. It still beat the socks off anything you’d ever find in Hawaii. I’m already getting spoiled…
After leaving Baker, we headed for the island of Tuituila in American Samoa, a 4 day sail. Baker is only 30 miles from the equator, so we were soon to be in the southern hemisphere- a first for me. There is a tradition- a ritual- for crossing the equator that all sailors undergo, and have done so for who knows how many hundreds of years. Prior to this cruise and the untimely set of restrictions that accompanied it, all scientists were allowed to partake in the crossing ceremony- a very secretive 3 day ordeal that involves much pomp and circumstance, ritual hazing, and inexplicable random acts of weirdness. Due to the litigious nature of our society, and the current trend among government bureaucracies to impose more and more restrictions, rules, and policies upon their employees in a stupid and futile attempt to eliminate all risk from an innately risky occupation, we scientists were not allowed to partake. All it takes is one person coming home with a story that arches a few eyebrows among the higher-ups at the Science Center, and that’s the end of it. So, the crew initiated their own members, and we scientists were not allowed to watch, due to the secretive nature of the ceremony- although when one of the crew comes to dinner wearing his clothes on inside out and backwards with a laundry basket over his head as a helmet, you can’t help but see it. Though I was not privy to the inner workings of the ceremony, from what I saw, here’s what goes on: Anyone who has crossed the equator before is a “shellback”, and anyone who has never crossed is a “wog”. The shellbacks get to torture the wogs for three days in whatever manner they see fit- by making them wear stupid outfits around all day, having signs taped to their backs saying various.. ahem.. things, making the wogs put on silly skits in the evening, traipse from the front of the ship to the back chained together, wearing blindfolds, not getting to eat at mealtimes, etc.. The ceremony culminated on the bow of the ship and I’m pretty sure it involved dumping of large quantities of stinky liquid onto the wogs’ heads, because there was a flurry of mopping and showering immediately afterwards. Every one of the scientists who would have been a wog, even myself, seemed to be bummed out that we couldn’t partake. Although for the life of me it is flawed logic… It’s just a sign of the times. In my lifetime I have seen the demise of dangerous (but fun) playground equipment, sledding on golf courses, the male girls’ basketball coach, and now the age-old equator crossing. Oh boy! What’s next?
We’ve arrived in Samoa. As I write this, I can see the lights of Pago Pago out my porthole. The ship is waiting for morning before heading into the harbor. Then it will be 4 days off to have fun in the sun and check out this new place. I’m hoping to do a lot of hiking, surfing, and walking around on the beach (living on a ship gives you new appreciation for getting out and walking for more than, oh, say, 220 feet)… More later.
