Tsunami pics from Midway

[eppefour]

Tsunami 2011

A tsunami generated by a powerful earthquake off the coast of Japan struck Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge at 11:36 PM on Thursday, March 10th and continued for the next few hours. Fortunately, Midway residents received approximately 4 hours of advanced warning and successfully implemented its tsunami emergency plan. All essential infrastructure and equipment were secured and all staff, contractors, and visitors evacuated to the third floor of the Charlie Hotel. Fortunately, no one was injured and no major damage occurred to the island’s infrastructure. Debris washed onto the airfield which caused its temporary closure for less than 24 hours.

The Short-tailed albatross nest was washed over again, but the chick was found unharmed about 35 m away and returned unharmed to its nest area. A minimum of 1,000 adult/subadult and tens of thousands of Laysan Albatross chicks were lost. Thousands of Bonin petrels were buried alive. Spit Island completely washed over. Eastern and Sand Island were 60% and 20% washed over, respectively. Thousands of dead fish were found in the interior of Eastern. Two live green turtles were rescued from the middle of Eastern. The impacts on Laysan ducks and monk seals are unknown.

Bonin petrel rescued from being stuck in the sand

Laysan albatross stuck in the debris - 3 were rescued

Rescued albatross chicks stuck in the debris

Group of albatross chicks on Eastern Island were spared

Short-tailed albatross chick survived the tsunami

Turtle being rescued on Eastern Island

Laysan albatross rescued and returned to Eastern Island

Muddy albatross chick

Part of the pier on Eastern Island ended up on the gun
All photos - Pete Leary/USFWS

[eppefour]

http://peteatmidway.blogspot.com/

Midway Tsunami Pictures
Here's some pictures from the tsunami. It's late here, so I'll write the text when I get up tomorrow. Thanks for your comments everyone! It's great to see that so many of you are thinking of us out here.
OK, here's the text:
It's been a long couple of days here on Midway. Starting out with the preparation for the tsunami, on Thursday night. We moved most of the vehicles, heavy equipment, and our big safeboat up to Radar Hill, which is our highest area here. After that, we all evacuated to the 3rd floor of "Charlie Barracks" where we waited to see if anything happened. This is the first time I'm glad I wasn't able to move into my house yet, since I am currently living on the 3rd floor already. We had all 67 island employees/visitors up here watching the news on BBC and watching our tide gauge data over the internet. We saw that we had about a 5 foot rise in the tide gauge level, but were glad that we couldn't see any water when we looked out the windows.

After looking at a bit of the washover on Sand Island, and setting a crew to work on digging albatross chicks and petrels out of the debris, Greg and I took the boat over to Eastern Island. On the way, we passed thousands of albatross adults and petrels that had been washed into the water and lost their ability to stay dry. Their feathers were messed up by being tumbled over the island and through the vegetation. We pulled some into the boat, but needed to get to Eastern Island, so we had to hope that most of them would paddle to shore.

Eastern Island was mostly washed over, so 10's of thousands of chicks were washed away. I'll have to look at our count numbers from Dec. to figure out how many chicks were in the affected areas. There were dead fish by the hundreds up in the middle of the island. The short-tailed albatross chick must really be wondering what kind of place it lives in because it was washed away from the nest for the second time this year already. This time, it was about 40 yards away from the original nest. It was easy to spot because all the other chicks were washed away in a previous storm. I didn't want to pick the chick up, because it was already stressed and upset, but the parents may not have found it that far from the nest. I put out a sheet of plastic and when it stepped onto it, I gave it a sled ride the 40 yards back to its nest. I hope that's all the excitement that it has for the rest of the season.

There were a lot of chicks and adults buried in debris (mostly dead vegetation). Greg and I were digging out stuck birds all day. We took our volunteers and some people from the visitors group over yesterday and dug out another hundred or so birds. We also found 2 turtles that were washed quite a way up onto the island, which were then carried back to the beach and seemed glad to get back in the water. At least we didn't find any injured Hawaiian monk seals or Laysan ducks. The seals were back resting on the beaches on Friday.
Although we lost a lot of wildlife, all of the people who are here because of the wildlife are safe.

The 3rd floor of Charlie Barracks wasn't the most comfortable place for 67 people. But it was safe.

The boat dock in the harbor has finally seen its last days.

Water washed pretty high near the cargo pier, and hopefully this little Laysan albatross chick will get fed and be able to preen that mud off.

A piece of the pier on Eastern Island washed up onto the gun.

Two of the visitors brought one of the turtles back to the beach on Eastern Island. Thanks Anna and Connie.

This was the biggest fish that I saw washed up on the beach. It is an Ulua (Giant trevally) that is about 3 ft long. There were at least 15 different species of fish on the island.

Here is where the short-tailed albatross chick ended up. It's a tough little bird.

The chicks and adults got washed up into big piles of dead vegetion.

There's no way to know how many bonin petrels were trapped in their burrows. We saved this one, since its head was still sticking out.

There are two Laysan albatross chicks and one adult stuck in this pile. We got them all out.

I could have taken hundreds more of these pictures, but I wanted to concentrate on digging them out.

All of these chicks would have been washed into the harbor had the naupaka bushes not been there to seine them out.

The debris formed a little island in the lagoon. Too bad the birds couldn't climb up on much.

One red-footed booby found something to stand on. The rest of the birds will have to swim for shore.

These 2 have about given up. We pulled them into the boat and put them on Eastern Island. It'll take a couple of days to dry out though.

Here are 5 Laysan albatrosses and one Bonin petrel that we brought to Eastern.
Posted by Pete Leary at 11:39 PM 56 comments
Friday, March 11, 2011
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[Questsportfishing]

takes a good heart to save animals and birds. thanks!

[Roddy Hays]

Fascinating post, thanks a bunch for that. Looking at those pics takes me back 15 years to my own time on the 3rd floor. We went through 2 tsunami alerts while I was there (though the airport was the preferred location for safety) but nothing happened.

Great to see you were able to help out the birds. What about the tropic birds and fairy terns ? Any of those perished ? Sad to see the boat pier rotting away like that. Sad to see in general that anglers cannot fish Midway any more. It was a very special place....

Good luck with the rest of the clear-up !

[crmarlinfisher]

man those are some sad pictures