satellite view from PMNM
E komo mai; welcome! Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge is surrounded by a lei of foam in the middle of the North Pacific; it's a beautiful, special place.

Not only are there albatross on Midway, but many other interesting kinds of wildlife, both on the land and in the sea. Please enjoy exploring FOAM, an educational blog actively done while on Midway from May through August 2010. Posts are added from off-Midway, as information becomes available. If you're interested in a particular topic, please use the search box or the alphabetical list of "labels" along the left side of the blog page.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Katie: US Fish and Wildlife Service Volunteer


It was a lot of fun having high school senior Katie on island for a week!  She helped with her mom's Hawaiian Monk Seal beach surveys.  In addition, Katie worked as a volunteer in various wildlife management projects for Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.  She helped:
But perhaps her favorite work was checking on the health of Laysan Ducks (LADU.)
photo by Kittipong Janthasang
For the weekly all-atoll wetlands survey, Katie got very good at using binoculars to see the ducks.  With the binocs, she could often read the code on colored bands that some individual ducks wear on their legs.  [Challenge yourself to read LADU bands in FOAM's "Activity: Laysan Ducks #1 -- Bands" and Activity: Laysan Ducks #2 -- Who's Who!"]  Then Katie entered the data into an Xcel spreadsheet in the Refuge's computer.  Every morning she also helped check each of the wetlands for any ducks affected by the disease, avian botulism.

Each of us needs to help take care of the living things around us.  Katie certainly is a good steward!  How can you volunteer for plants and animals in your community?

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