Hello from Palmyra Atoll! I’ll be here for the next three weeks tagging manta rays! A lot more on this and background on Palmyra later, for now – here is the story of our attempts to get here…

Palmyra Atoll is not an easy place to get to by any means. It is 1,000 nautical miles south of Honolulu, HI –  right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Arrival entails taking a small plane and landing on a tricky short runway where a pilot must navigate by visual approach… or finding a boat willing to make the long cruise down. Our plan was to fly down on a small jet on the morning of Thursday, June 19. Unexpectedly, the pilots from the company typically chartered for flights down to Palmyra all went on strike and our flight plans were suddenly up in the air. After much work, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) who runs the research station on Palmyra, managed to find a plane and pilot for flying down the next day!

 

  Early on Friday morning, the ten of us scheduled to fly down to Palmyra were on the plane and ready to go. After a smooth 2.5 hour ride, we were circling the mass of stormy weather that was covering the island. Ducking under the low cloud cover and flying about 400ft over the island, we realized landing in this squall would be all but impossible. But it’s the tropics – if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes..or so the adage goes, right? Wrong. After 30 minutes of circling we realized the squall was not going to let up. The pilots decided we would fly South to Kiritimati, the back-up airport for our flight plan. Kiritimati (pronounced Christmas) is part of the Republic of Kiribati, and is one of four islands in the  Northern Line Islands archipelago along with Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll, and Tabuarean (Fanning Is.). The plan was that on Kiritimati we would refuel, wait out the storm, and attempt another landing on Palmyra. 

    Upon arrival to Kiritimati, we finally managed to get ahold of someone manning the radio and alerted them of our situation. Soon after began a four hour marathon of negotiations as we attempted to convince them to allow us to refuel the plane and take off as the charter company had signed a fuel release for this flight plan. The prolonged negotiations eliminated the possibility of landing on Palmyra, since the only thing more dangerous than a stormy runway would be an unlit stormy runway. Instead, we headed back up to Honolulu and hoped for a second shot at a landing another day. 

We were finally able to find a plane, pilot, and window of bearable weather this Sunday! Now we are in the process of unpacking all our gear, setting up supplies, and getting ready to do some work! Stay tuned for a brief history on this place and the work I’m doing here!

cheers!