Different shades of blue

Two days out of Samoa and all i see is blue! Blue sky, blue water. More blue water. More blue water! Nine days to go to Mangareva, luckily the ride has been pretty smooth. Unfortunately, the tradeoff for a smooth ride has been a top speed of about 7.5 knots. Patience grasshopper..... Writing this, it strikes me how truly fortunate I am to be here. I get the 430 to 7ish watch every morning and the sunrises are spectacular! The Phoenix Island project ran beautifully, even though we had to change a jet engine in 4k and put a new set of tail rotor blades on pa. Now that we got those out of the way, Henderson will be a party! With only one helicopter baiting, we were able to keep up with the Kiwi pilots but the real test will be with both choppers running at full speed! The second helipad should pay off the most here, as we can be loading one helicopter while refueling the other, and possibly load two helicopters at the same time. Now THAT would be cool! Now if only we had a third helicop
ter... Dear Santa... *sigh* hahaha ahh if only. Going from Samoa to American Samoa was pretty funny. In Apia, everyone knew us as the boat with the helicopters. In Pago, we were just the boat with two helicopters. There were probably five or six tuna seiners in town and each one had an R-44 on the deck for tuna spotting. Now that the satcomms are back up, I will be trying get a post out each day and hopefully a daily picture as well. stay tuned!

Well it has been almost a month since I was able to post anything to the blog. Unfortunately our satcoms went down after leaving Palmyra and we just now were able to get them fixed. So how can i put almost the entire month of July into one blog post... After leaving Palmyra we headed for Apia, Samoa for a crew change and to pick up anoth load of bait. After loading two containers of bait we departed for the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, a major marine refuge covering more than 400,000 square kilometers. While the refuge covers eight islands, we only treated two islands, Bernie and Enderbury. Unlike Palmyra, the entire operation was based from the back deck of the boat. While everyone had their doubts, loading the bait buckets with the deck crane worked flawlessly. Sometimes rare for a project like this, we finished the job ahead of schedule, under budget, and with no injuries. SWEET!! we were able to take a couple days to explore the other islands there, including Rawaki, Manra, and Kanton. Looks like i'll have to finish this up later as were heading to American Samoa tonight but stay tuned! and many thanks to the great hospitality of the Samoan Junior Development group! I had a great time and hope to see everyone again soon!

Southern Hemisphere!!

Well, like all good things, our time in Palmyra had to come to an end. The Aquila left Palmyra the evening of the first, bound for Samoa. As I write this we are two (TWO!!!) miles north of the Equator, about to cross into the southern hemisphere. Time to partayyy!

Were (almost) Famous!

Birdwatch UK has put out a wonderful article detailing the project! check it out :)
http://www.birdwatch.co.uk/channel/newsitem.asp?c=11&cate=__10926

Notice of Eviction.

At the request of the USDA and US Fish and Wildlife Service, I have removed all photos of the operation on Palmyra Atoll. Because preservation through eradication is a highly controversial subject, the major sponsors of this project have asked that I hold off on posting information about the project. This only concerns Palmyra Atoll, and hopefully we will get the all clear in a couple weeks. Thanks!

A Change in Time, A Change in Place

Greetings! (We come in peace!) I've made some changes to the blog layout to make things fit a little better and added a bit of an overview so people aren't left scratching their heads toooooo much. Let me know in the comments what y'all think!

Heli practice!

Well today we got to bring the heli out for a trial run! Peter brought 54K out with a bucket so we could start looking at how things are going to fit together for the next two projects. Hopefully in the next couple days we can bring one out again and do a couple dry runs with the bags so we can make sure everything will fit.