HI-10-08-Halloween

Mrs. Parker (Chief Cook) did an amazing job of throwing a fun party at sea. We had punch, a pinata, apple bobbing and great food. I missed a lot of it because I was running in and out doing CTDs, but still had a blast. Here I am with my roomie, Lyndsey (ENS Keen). Now everyone is all jacked up on candy to get through the last week of the cruise.

Party Headquarters

HI-10-08; Kauai

The breathtaking N coast of Kauai. I Hope to get back over the winter and hike.

HI-10-08; Men At Work

Jesse (Chief Engineer) and Gordy fixing my CTD. In rough seas the night before it swung in on recovery, HARD, and hit the deck and busted an Aluminum weld surrounded by lead weights. The weights and weld came off like butter! They worked all the next day on it and I was able to put it back in the water that night. Our engineers rock!

HI-10-08; Oahu

The Moks from the ship. So close to home....

HI-10-08; Work time

Shanannigans in the dry lab

HI-10-08; Maui

Gorgeous E Side of Maui

HI-10-08; Big Island

Lava me now or lava me not.

Gorgeous day hanging out around the lava flow on the E side of the big island yesterday. Last night we transited to Maui and will be here the next 5 days. The cruise is going really well so far-amazing to see the islands from the ship.

It was a beautiful sunset for our last night of CTDs

Good times on Midway

Ahhh, felt SO good to get in the water. Jumping in off of the pier was awesome after a run. I have had some inquiries and the answer is no, I am not naked.
Photo by Ray Boland

The view the scientists get everyday for ops. They make me stay on the big ship :)
Photo by Kelly Gleason, who is currently obsessed with her super cool fish eye lens

Hi'ialakai crew and scientists getting some deserved R&R on the Midway Pier.
Photo by Ray Boland

Sarah and I at Midway, so nice to be on land for a couple of days. We went for a relaxing run and ran into Capt at Rusty Bucket Beach.

Molokai/Maui

The past few weeks were the longest we have had inport since I joined the Hi'ialakai. During the week I mainly worked per usual, but the weekends were a blast. The first weekend in I spent with my friend Andrea relaxing in Waikiki. One week during the last short inport I went over the island of Molokai, and two of the three weekends we were just in I went back, (for two, three-day weekends!), and on one of those hoped over to Lahaina, Maui for two full days. It has been awesome to relax and explore, and now we are back out at sea for 30 days in the NW HI Islands again. So far, it is a great cruise with smooth seas and night-time CTDs for me again. These photos are of my three different weekends of island hopping, and a few of the cruise before this one. Love to you all.

The awesome, quaint little town of Lahaina, Maui. We managed to go to many of its finest bars and restaurants-imagine that.

A beautiful Maui sunset from a sweet little bar.

An awesome hike on the W side of Molokai on my first visit...I was told the beach was crowded that day, no doubt, there were 2 other people there.

A gorgeous Molokai sunset, complete with a bottle of wine-what could be better?! So simple...

Another beautiful look-out on Molokai.

HI-10-04

This was a short but fun Education and Outreach cruise to the NW HI Islands for 10 days, so not many photos to share. I worked for the deck again and had a great time. One awesome aspect of it was a drill with the coast guard helicopter ops on our way out. Extra cool-the pilot was my boss's wife. I had a pretty bad shot from my safe vantage point...sorry.

Dr. Carl Meyer is an awesome scientist that sails with us often, studying the migration and movement of sharks and other large fish. Here we were trying to locate a receiver that was 'somewhere' near the ship.

HI_10_02 Northwest HI Islands

A wonderful cruise to the NW HI islands. This science crew dove on shipwrecks, tagged sharks and were altogether amazingly pleasant. It was a wonderful cruise, not much survey work for me so I learned to handle lines, stand underway watches, and some various other things to help around the ship. Beautiful weather and seas for the most part, and as always, it is good to be back on land.

Hi'ialakai crew, chillin on Midway with some drinks. Ahhhh

My home, alongside in Midway

During one day of operations at French Frigate Shoals we were lucky enough to take a quick trip to Tern Island. It is always nice to get off of the ship for a bit. This island is pretty much a sandy strip with a runway and a TON of birds, and a few scientists staying on to study them, and the turtles. They were very loud and all over the place. Not my idea of a good time but they had a pretty sweet ping pong table and it seemed like a pretty peaceful way to live, if you can get over the constant bird noises close calls with them flying all over. I'll stick to the Hi'ialakai myself!

Birds...everywhere!

Turtles and birds

Our biggest small boat, HI-1 (10m), that we launch daily during operations. Coxswain Scotty was nice enough to take us to Tern Island for a little walk.

Our amazing snorkel spot the last day of the cruise-Ni'ihau Island, near Kauai. I saw amazing fish, sharks, and the best part-we swam with spinner dolphins spontaneously when we came upon a huge pod of them. When I was snorkeling I could hear them under water. And when we were just watching them they were jumping a few feet out of the water and spiraling and slapping back down, going on their backs and slapping their tails, and jumping in rainbow like arcs...it was AMAZING.

Palmyra Snorkel

Thanks to Lyndsey for these underwater pics from our recent snorkel trip at Palmyra Atoll. I do not have a pic of the huge manta ray that swam very close-I will see if I can score one from Kyle. In the meantime, here are great photos from Lyndsey, starting with the vibrant coral above, but of course it is impossible to capture how beautiful it was down there.

We saw awesome fish

We had about 4 curious friends like this around for much of our snorkel. Black tips.

Samoa Hike 2

These are a little out of chronological order but I just got some photos from the hike we did in Samoa on the second inport-some mine and some courtsey of Frank Mancini, who took some gorgeous photos. This is the same hike I did the first inport, except this time we got the amazing 360 view from the top, since we were not there the day after a typhoon passed, as we were the first hike.

A view of the Hi'ialakai from above. She's so pretty.

Looking out on the harbor from the peak of our hike

Another gorgeous shot from Frank.

Playing in Palmyra

Last night we arrived at Kingman Reef, just a short transit from Palmyra Atoll. We have our last final push of work here this week and then are headed back to Honolulu. I think everyone is pretty excited for some R&R. While at Palmyra we were lucky enough to be invited to an afternoon cookout by the people who live on the island (from the U.S., mainly Fish and Wildlife folks). The food was amazing, and I spent my 2 hours there mainly at the little platform by the rope swing, reading, watching some serious acrobatics, and swimming. The swing was a blast. The island itself was pretty neat-an old rusted out truck and crashed plane, and even some animal grave stones. Hope you enjoy.

Palmyra Atoll

Nice dismount for Kaylyn

Scotty on the swing

Kevin climbing and Moran hanging

A view of the Hi'ialakai from afar. Is it weird I miss her when I am gone??

The Palmyra Yacht Club...exclusive, fees are outrageous

Jesse and BZ in the awesome old crashed plane

A view of the cookout from afar

Lyndsey in the old truck

King Jesse

creepy grave with my name on it (left)

More Work Photos

Here are some more photos that David Vejar took (me by surprise). This is...pretty much what I do every night anywhere from 9-12 hours! :) We get the CTD in the water, I run into the lab and fire up the processing unit, run the software, watch the data stream, communitcate with the bridge and deck about ops, and fire any bottles for water samples (more on that below). Then when it is at the surface, I bring it back on deck with the winch operator. The whole thing takes about 30 minutes and then we steam to the next site. We usually do 10 CTDs a night.

This is the recovery end of CTD ops. I have in my hand, no lie, the happy hooker. I tag the CTD when it is still over the water with the hooker, throw the hooker back behind me and grab the line that is now attached to the CTD to haul it on board. On deployment, I just ease the CTD into the water with a line on it. During deployment and recovery the winch operator is controlling the CTD, I am just steadying it.

You can't see me back there but I am using the line from the happy hooker to haul it on deck-it is about to make touch-down here.

Happy to have had another successful recovery