The Story the Seabirds Tell

In the summer of 2010, former KAHEA graduate intern, Marion Ano, participated in a transformative huaka`i to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. After she returned, we sat down to kūkākūkā. Below is an excerpt of what she shared:

Since returning from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, I've gotten really into seabirds. I didn't think much about them before, to be honest. Now I just think they are awesome. They are just awesome. 

For example, the moli (albatross) is such a strong species--way more resilient than we are as humans. These birds can survive out in the beating sun for five months. Their babies will stay on land for 30 to 40 days with no food at all from their parents, until the hunger finally drives them to go out in the ocean.

While that might seem cruel to us, we have to understand, that's part of what makes them so resilient as adults.  And when you really think about it, it's not cruelty, it's nature.

These birds are doing what they are meant to do, what they are designed to do. They are designed for survival. This is a beautiful thing.

There are three species of albatross in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and all of them are being impacted by plastic in the ocean. Albatrosses fly hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles in search of food for their young. In their search for food like squid on the water's surface, they can easily mistake floating plastic for for food. Back in their nests, they feed these bottle caps, lighters,  other pieces plastic debris to their chicks. These chicks can starve to death, with stomachs full of plastic. Really, these seabirds are indicator species. When they bring back all this plastic [in their bellies], they are telling us a story about the health of our ocean. And about ourselves.

Back in the 1930s, a man named George C. Munro was observing seabirds in Hawai`i, talking about how in just so many years, he foresaw that over one-half of these seabird species would be lost.

People like Munro, like John Muir--these people were visionaries. As were our kūpuna. They were predicting the future.

When these species are gone, our very language changes. When these species no longer exist, our language begins to die, because we aren't speaking the names of these animals and plants in context. We need to really think about that. We need to think about what extinction is doing to our language.

Even in a place so remote, we've heavily impacted that ecosystem. The NWHI isn't pristine. There's a whole history of human impacts, a whole trail leading up to us, today. The clock keeps ticking on the work that needs to get done.

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You can find a few more pictures from Marion's NWHI experience here.

Mahalo to Marion for her sharing, and her many years of aloha and support. When she isn't busy working at the NOAA Pacific Service Center, you can find her rocking out with her band, Kahuli.

You can click here to learn more about KAHEA's efforts in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and join the effort to protect this pu`uhonua.