ZECO TRAVEL TALK

Our visits this past week to Rano Island, Vanuatu, and Utupua and Santa Ana in the Solomon Islands were truly memorable, both for the incredible array of colorful sights, and for the warmth of our welcome by the villagers. Here are some brief excerpts from emails we’ve received from our staff aboard the recently-refurbished Clipper Odyssey on our Faces of Melanesia voyage:

…One thing that stands out—and everyone has commented about it—is just how amazing it is that each island is still so different. The dances are different, many of the flowers and plants are different, the people look different, and their clothes (or sometimes lack thereof) are different. But the warmth of the welcome is always the same! We are all loving coming to these remote places… when the Zodiacs hit the sand the entire village is there, often with flower leis or palm necklaces to greet us. They have huge smiles and are eager to shake our hands and welcome us. In many of the villages the little kids run up and hold our hand and escort us through the village… It’s very special and touching each time. The music has also been fabulous. My favorite new instruments are the pipe drums that are either made out of bamboo or PVC pipe and they’re played most commonly with a flip flop! It makes the most wonderful sound…you can’t help but sway your hips, tap your feet, clap your hands and smile!!

Rano – At dawn the Clipper Odyssey pulled into a lovely inlet surrounded by islands with white sandy beaches and fringed with palm trees. As we boarded Zodiacs, welcoming music by the local band echoed from shore, and when we stepped onto the island we were overwhelmed with color! The path along the white sandy beach was lined with birds of paradise, heliconias, hibiscus, and red ginger flowers. The women and children wore bright muu-muu dresses, the men had on Hawaiian-style shirts, and as we walked into the village a market of local goods was spread before us: sarongs of every color in the rainbow, dyed and dried palm baskets, and lovely purple and pink shell necklaces. Read more

After our relaxing day at sea, we were ready to hit the Vanuatu island of Ambrym running! The two incredible volcanoes were what first drew Captain Cook to its shores and our warm welcome was probably much the same. Our visit to the village started off with the traditional pig slaughter and a gift exchange ceremony with Little John, the Captain, and the local leader. We were then treated to the amazing Rom Dance—the performers, covered from the neck down in volumes of dried banana leaves, wear huge elaborate masks and stomp in rhythm to chanting and drum-beating. It’s such a hypnotic experience, and the opportunities for photography were fantastic.

We were able to really experience the local flavor of island life when we walked down the little dirt path “Main Street,” and visited the local school and looked inside local houses. We also tasted the traditional baked coconut “bread.” In the afternoon, the birders set out to look for the elusive megapode—which they didn’t find, but did get to see several nests. Many of us went snorkeling or diving in the 83-degree water and the color of the coral against the black sand was other-wordly!

We are excited to announce that joining us on our August 2008 Line Islands: Hawaii to Tahiti cruise is Hawaii native John Earle, research associate in ichthyology at Honolulu’s Bishop Museum. A diver since boyhood, John’s fascination with and wonder at the undersea world was fueled by his discovery of seashells previously unknown to science. And, when a fish scientist friend noticed a new fish in one of John’s 14 saltwater aquariums, the field of ichthyology quickly became his new passion.

During more than 30 years of diving, John has proclaimed Christmas Island, a highlight on our voyage, “my favorite dive spot in the world.” He has been compiling a checklist of fish species there and in French Polynesia, was a featured diver on the Discovery Channel’s Pacific Abyss special last year, and is an avid underwater videographer. Joining Zegrahm cofounder and marine biologist, Jack Grove, John will accompany divers and snorkelers, following up with lectures on board—quite an exciting duo for underwater enthusiasts on this adventure. “I am particularly excited about diving the virtually unknown islands of Malden, Starbuck and Flint,” says John. “Here we are truly “off planet” and there is a chance of real scientific discovery. We may even see new species swimming by!”

In a Seattle Times story—August 17, 2007—writer Craig Welch reported a fascinating sequence of events that spans 7,000 miles and two hemisphere, a sooty shearwater chick, a fish, and an electronic monitoring device… and the research scientist who was the catalyst for the story. We thought you’d enjoy a brief recap of a mystery with an amazing answer:

When Dale Whaitiri, a bird researcher, pulled a tiny monitoring tag from a dead baby sooty shearwater on an island off Southern New Zealand, he wanted to know where it came from and how it got there. That bird was about to be the dinner of local Maori tribesmen who “catch the delicious chicks for supper, but hand over the stomachs to Whaitiri and other researchers who monitor the birds’ diets.”

Some scientific sleuthing revealed that the tag was three years old and originated in a steelhead that was being monitored after it was released into Columbia River. Since steelhead migrate north, it was determined that a sooty shearwater must have been the carrier. These hardy seabirds fly thousands of miles to nest in warm weather and they are often seen in great numbers at the mouth of the Columbia feeding on steelhead as they make their way into the Pacific. The birds favor nesting spots in Japan and New Zealand and lay eggs in underground burrows.

Welsh reports that Jen Zamon, a seabird expert for the Northwest Fisheries Science Center feels the answer to the mystery then “…may be elementary. A sooty shearwater ate the steelhead on the Columbia, carried the indigestible glass tag in its belly for two years, then regurgitated it into the baby’s eager maw.”

The greater mystery, according to Welsh, ends up being: “How did the tag wind up in a fat, flightless bird about to be eaten by Maori tribesmen? And of the millions of …sooty shearwaters—called “titi” by the Maoris—how did Whaitiri manage to poke this one’s belly?”

“The odds are almost impossible to fathom,” said Zamon.

To read the story in its entirety: seattletimes.com

It is now official, a recently published paper in the journal Polar Biology, confirms what many of us have long suspected, there is more than one species of Rockhopper penguin out there!

For many years debates have raged with many an ornithologist having his feathers ruffled on the topic to split or not to split. The recent paper, by Banks et al. compared the genetic distances between the three Rockhopper subspecies and compared them with such sister species as Macaroni penguins. The results left Banks and his colleagues in no doubt, the three putative Rockhopper subspecies, currently living far apart in different areas of the Southern oceans, should be split into the following three species;

Rockhopper Penguin, Eudyptes chrysocome

Northern Rockhopper, Eudyptes moseleyi

Eastern Rockhopper, Eudyptes filhoi

This change in penguin taxonomy will now increase the number of penguin species from 17 to 19. For all of you that have traveled to Antarctica you will have seen Rockhopper Penguin as this is the species that is now restricted, as a breeding species, to islands off South America and the Falkland Islands. For those of you lucky enough to have traveled with Zegrahm on our historical Steppingstones of the Atlantic voyage, several years ago, you will now be able to check off Northern Rockhopper Penguin, as this was the species that we all saw so wonderfully well on Inaccessible Island. This species is now restricted to the islands of Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island, and St. Paul and Amsterdam Islands in the Indian Ocean. Finally we have the Eastern Rockhopper Penguin which is restricted as a breeding species to Crozet, Kerguelan, Heard, Macquarie, Auckland, Campbell, Bounty, Antipodes, Marion, and Prince Edward Islands. Read more