Wildlife Around Me
Written on October 30th
Day: 23 — Position: N20 21.5’ W173 24.0’
Odometer since Waikiki: about 890M
Distance to Northern Marianas: 2336M
Water temperature: 81.3F - 27.4C
OCEAN ROWING RECORDS AS RUNNING TOTALS
Solo career total in days by Waikiki: 925 now 948 (New World Record)
Overall career total in days by Waikiki: 1,009 now 1,032 (New World Record)
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Solo career total in miles by Waikiki: 22,173M now about 23,063M
Overall career total in miles by Waikiki: 25,153M now about 26,043M
** Ralph Tuijn (NL) leads this with 35,635M
The numbers by the time I reached Waikiki are as recorded in the Ocean Rowing Society database. ORS uses the great circle distance between start and finish positions. They will adjudicate the additional time and distance that I will have rowed to my point of landfall on mainland Asia then append those to my career totals.
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Exploring By The Seat Of Your Pants (https://www.exploringbytheseat.com/), with the motto: “question, explore, conserve,” is an educational initiative by Joe Grabowski. It connects classrooms typically in North America with interesting guests, including field scientists, explorers, adventurers, crews on polar stations, even astronauts at the Space Station. Scheduled sessions are announced and classrooms from all over sign up to participate online or to follow on YouTube Live. You can see our last session here: https://youtu.be/J8hDJKifvKc.
As you know, I am an ambassador for the Ocean Recovery Alliance (https://www.oceanrecov.org) based in Hong Kong, also registered in California. Our goal is to raise awareness about the plastic pollution in The Ocean and to inform our audience about ways to reduce that plastic leakage.
Doug Woodring, the founder and president of ORA introduced me to Joe ahead of my launch from Crescent City. By now we have held multiple sessions from my rowboat using my satellite phone (see the link to our last session at the bottom). Such sessions are even more fun when on land, where video conferencing is possible with high bandwidth internet connectivity.
One of the questions that I receive regularly is what kind of wildlife that I see during my crossing. I would like to list some here.
Firstly, the only whale encounter on this crossing was near Crescent City when two whales rolled about a 100 yards away and flapped their fins on the water then one breached as if to say: “I sense you are near, I want to see you!”
Dolphins have been numerous, especially between California and Hawaii. Oddly they have been absent since Waikiki. They will show up again eventually. Over the last couple weeks, I have observed mostly Ahi Tuna with occasional Yellowfin Tuna breaking the surface in a feeding frenzy when I assume they circle a school of smaller fish.
Dorado encounters are directly proportional to the concentration of flying fish around me. I see them near my rowboat when sunlight highlights their various shades of blue, green and yellow in tiger patterns. On cloudy days or at night under my weak white navigation light, they appear ghostly grey.
The flying fish are the choice of food for the birds. Squid are also on the menu judging from the black poop that boobies left on my deck a few times. At this location where the nearest land is Lisianski Island 340M to my north and Johnston Atoll 320M to my SE, Frigate Birds which do not alite on the water, effortlessly soar high overhead looking out for a chase at the surface. If there is a powerful fish like tuna or dorado giving chase, obvious churning water gives it away. Odds are good that the smaller prey fish will jump out of the water in its fright, which will typically be a flying fish that will be nabbed mid-air by the lanky Frigate Bird performing aerobatics to match its trajectory.
Any time that the Sooty Terns which are mostly white with black and grey trim on their wings, a black crown and jet black eyeliners, identify a chase, they give it away in their frantic calls of excitement as if they want to alert everyone around to join the feast. They fly with their young that are grey in color which remain in calling distance as they roam for fish. Most of that ruckus is perhaps to train their young. The juvenile flies lower constantly calling to which the adult responds briefly from above as if to say, I am here don’t worry, or maybe, turn this way, you went too far away… Along with their inflight antics like scratching the top of their downturned heads with a foot or preening mid flight with their contorted necks, they are endearing and fun company.
The Shearwaters gracefully gliding along the waves and the Sooty Terns are the most numerous out here. The delicate little White Tern which used to be called Fairy Tern, show up in fewer numbers. I saw a few Tropic Birds with their antenna like tails and just two Storm Petrels since Waikiki.
I don’t know how far west my resident Red-Footed Booby intends to travel with me; it has made a habit of using my rowboat as a mobile hunting platform over the past two weeks. It figured out how to stick the landing on top of my rudder cassette avoiding the VHF antenna on the final upwind approach and now it defends that spot from other squatters. That perch is really the best spot: it is lower than either the cabin top or the spare oars, placing it near the rolling axis of my rowboat. The side to side acceleration is minimal, making it an easy perch. Besides, I don’t care about its poop back there; I will scrub it all with hot water once I make landfall in March.
My resident booby returns between bouts of fishing and immediately takes to comprehensive preening and indiscriminate pooping. It is part of my routine to check the deck and the cabin top solar panels every morning to wash if other boobies also made a pit stop overnight.
I have not come across any turtles yet. Once I will have been on this crossing long enough to support a colony of goose neck barnacles under my rowboat, the turtles will let their presence known by bumping against my hull like a door knock while feeding.
Before Hawaii I was seeing a small grey variety of sharks. Since Waikiki, I only spotted White Tipped Sharks. I am glad to see them around keeping me company.
NOTE: Exploring By The Seat Of Your Pants - Website: https://www.exploringbytheseat.com/
Twitter & Instagram: @EBTSOY
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Exploringbytheseatofyourpants
Our last session on YouTube: https://youtu.be/J8hDJKifvKc