THE SECRET LIVES OF SEABIRDS
On the first day of my jungle slog in Kauai with seabird biologist Andre Raine, I’m forced to devise a mental glossary to interpret and survive the man’s understated trail assessments. When he announces, “This next section is a bit slippery!” what he really means is “The already terrifyingly steep descent trail has become a vertical mud wall.” His refrain “This part has some tricky bits” translates to “Only advanced spider-monkey Jujitsu will prevent a 3,600-foot plunge to certain death.” And the repeated phrase “It’s a brief trundle away” more accurately means “It’s a godforsaken marathon involving unrelenting pain. You will cry.”
Earlier that June morning a helicopter had deposited us atop a towering and frighteningly skinny forested ridgeline. It was an emerald knife slicing the sky, one of hundreds crisscrossing Hono O Nā Pali Natural Area Reserve in Kauai’s remote northwest, alongside sweeping river valleys and dramatic waterfalls. Raine heads the Kauai Endangered Seabird Recovery Project, and two of his target species, the Newell’s Shearwater and the Hawaiian Petrel, have the unfortunate (for us) habit of nesting in the sheer cliff faces and ridge tops of this inaccessible fairyscape. In no way had this place evolved for human locomotion. And yet there we were, Raine, photographer Tom Fowlks, and I in our spiked boots, waving goodbye to a helicopter that might or might not return for us in three days. It all depended on the skies, which, as the chopper disappeared, began dumping nonstop rain.
True to his surname, Raine has no use for wet-weather gear. “I’ve been up here hundreds of times, and it hasn’t rained maybe twice,” he says as we troop off into the bush. His philosophy: Raingear ultimately fails. Don’t put off the inevitable.
In seconds we were soaked.
Our mission was to locate the 78 underground Newell’s Shearwater and Hawaiian Petrel burrows that Raine had previously documented in this part of the reserve, an area called Poōhākea. At each burrow we would look for the presence of an adult, an egg, and signs of predator intrusion.
