 Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart-Törner and this is Sustainable Hawaii, streaming live every Tuesday from noon to 12.30 at thinktechhawaii.com. Today we have a very exciting guest here to talk about her work and play in our beloved ocean. Writer and marine biologist Susan Scott lives in Hawaii and the Pacific Ocean aboard her 37-foot sailboat Honu. Our oceans and the coral reefs they host are extremely valuable for the critical services they provide us. While scientific knowledge about them has both increased exponentially over the past few decades, their health has declined at a comparable rate. Since 1987, Susan Scott has been chronicling marine species and sharing her experiences with us through her weekly ocean watch column in the Honolulu Star advertiser. She's also author of eight books about nature in Hawaii. A former registered nurse, Susan earned a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Hawaii and is a graduate of the university's marine option program. As a longtime volunteer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, she's counted albatrosses on Midway Atoll, tagged coconut crabs on Palmyra Atoll, and rescued monk seals and sea turtles at French frigate shoals Atoll. Most recently she's been sharing her discoveries on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. In 2014, the University of Hawaii Press published Susan's wonderful memoir, Call Me Captain, chronicling her harrowing sail through a midlife crisis and the intertropical convergence zone to reach Palmyra Atoll. Welcome, Susan. Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us. And we have here a few of your books, just a couple, and I want to point them out. The Poisonous Plants of Paradise and Exploring Hanama Bay. And this is part of a trilogy that I co-authored with my husband. He's an emergency doctor here in Hawaii, and so he sees a lot of these injuries. And the first is All Stings Considered, which is a marine book of marine injuries. And what to do is it's written for both. These three are written for both laypeople and medical professionals. And the other one is Pest of Paradise, so we've covered centipedes and pigs and everything on land. And then this is Poisonous Plants, which are not native to Hawaii, but people have brought a lot of poisonous things to Hawaii, and you don't really know how bad it is. Parents ask us about these, use this book, because they want to know what to plant. They have toddlers, and last week someone wrote me, they were getting a puppy, and they wanted to know what they should and shouldn't plant in the garden. The animals once that are poisonous to them is great, terrific. And then I'm a Bay guide. I worked with a wonderful photographer, underwater photographer, David Shrifty, who's no longer in Hawaii, but we had a wonderful time with that. I'm sure that's used a lot. That's probably one of the, one or two landmarks in Hawaii that people never miss. It is, and it's one of our very few, unfortunately few marine protected areas. And so this is our second edition. And you can see a huge difference with the reef when you're at Hanoma Bay versus anywhere else around the island. Right. It's amazing to be in a place where fish are not afraid of you. And that's really a lot of fun. And to know that they're not naturally afraid of us. Because when you go in a protected area and swim snorkel and dive in a protected area, you can tell immediately if people are fishing there or not. Oh, interesting. Because the fish, you know, come up to you and are friendly. Terrific. Yeah. And you've told us a lot of wonderful facts like this. But particularly what I love reading in the Ocean Watch column, which I've read for nearly the 30 years that you've been doing it, is about some of the most extraordinary creatures that we never think about. Or that we've seen and we just have no idea what the story is behind them. Tell us some of your favorites with your Ocean Watch column. Well, one of the really fun things about writing that column is I'm always learning new things. And so if I read something, for instance, that the certain seabird, these petrels eat, sea striders, I think, what's a sea strider? And so when I look it up, I'm learning something completely new. And they're the only marine insect in the Pacific Ocean. And they're like the water striders we see on ponds. And I think on the mainland, I haven't seen them here. But these are surface insects. And these birds survive just by eating those. So not only do they find them, that's all the nutrients that they get. So it's an amazing thing. Which kind of bird is it? It's the bone and petrels. And I learned about those from going to Midway. And so that's where I... So if those disappear, so will the bone and petrels. Fascinating. Everything starts in the ocean, really. It's an amazing thing. And the other thing about the column is that I get to go places because I'm writing about things. And so I've had this fantastic experience to get to go to Turn Island. I went there five times when they were still sending volunteer biologists there. And that's where I got to see and fall in love with albatrosses, black-footed albatrosses, lace-and-albatrosses, red-footed boobies. And so it's a pair of black-footed birds. Red-footed albatrosses. They made for life and they're very affectionate to each other. Hard to believe that's real, except that I've seen them quite a bit, particularly this last year at Cayenne. Yeah. They were prolific at Cayenne. Right. The lace-hands are there. And they... Yeah, this picture I took just walking by and I just got down and shot the picture. So just a few feet from them. And they're not... They have no natural land predators, so they're not afraid of us. And tell us where exactly is Turn Island? Turn Island is in French Frigate Shills, Atoll, about 500 miles northwest of Hawaii in the Leeward Islands. And Midway, just for reference, is about 1,000 miles, maybe 1,100. So it's halfway between here and the end of the chain. And how did you get there? I got there different ways. They used to fly there, but they stopped doing that. And then I went by boat a couple of times. But flying was much better. It's a long, hard trip. The waters offshore of Middle Pacific here are very rough. So yeah. Well, I'm surprised to hear that. Well, we're going to talk later about your incredible journey to Palmyra, but... And the column... The other thing about the column is that I have just been able to fall in love with things in the ocean because I didn't grow up here. I grew up in Wisconsin, landlocked, and didn't know anything about it, but I'm still as excited as I was when I first went to school here at UH about just how amazing it is. And I really love sharing that. And so when we first moved here in the early 1980, there were very few sea turtles. So we named our sailboat Honu, which was not a common name at the time. And now there's turtles everywhere, and people know the word Honu, which is pretty nice. And so I get to share those things with my readers, which is wonderful. And this is a green sea turtle? This is a green sea turtle, yeah, coming ashore. This is... Now, you didn't see them a lot because they were threatened. They were threatened, and they had only been protected for about seven or eight years at the time I was here. And so if you saw a turtle, it was a big deal. And now we really do see them all over the place. And we take it for granted, but when you get out to the South Pacific Islands of Tahiti or Marquesas, and I've just been in Australia, you don't see turtles like that at all. You don't. Not at all. And they won't let you get anywhere near them. It's really reassuring, then, that our protection efforts and all the work that marine biologists like yourself do pays off. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The turtles are a big success story, and you can see from, you know, however many years it's been since the Endangered Species Act, I think that was 74 or 76, that they've really come back. And so then that doesn't...you don't see that in other places. So yeah, protection in little areas, in certain areas, you don't have to protect everything, but you do need to protect some areas. Particularly their breeding grounds and their main feeding areas. And for fish, you know, if you protect one area like Hanama Bay, they multiply. And so then there's more fish outside. That's kind of hard to get done politically. We're going to talk about that. Tell me a little bit about the politics in Hawaii that you've experienced over the years. You've been looking at the reef all these years. I know you've seen some negative changes as well. What are some of those that you've not seen come back? Well, one of the problems, I think, is that people have grown up here fishing and doing fishing, different methods of fishing, in certain areas, all their lives, and their parents did it, and their grandparents. And it's really hard to change that. And so if you make a place, no fishing, it gets a lot of people very emotional, very fast. And so I don't really get involved in that as much as I did when I first moved here, because I think I can do more for protecting our wildlife by showing other people how wonderful it is and why we should love it, what these animals are, and what they do that we have no idea they're like aliens from another planet. They're so amazing. And so that's my contribution. And I also try to translate what researchers are doing from their scientific papers to the late terms, and so we can understand what people are doing too, because I think that's another thing that gets lost in the journals, and then people are doing some amazing things and no one else really knows about that. So that's my contribution, rather than trying to get marine conservation districts made, which is extremely difficult politically. Yeah, I know one of the current issues that's in everybody's mind is expanding Papa Hano Mu Kuakea National Marine Monument, and it's the battle between the fishermen who feel that they are protecting the species by the existing monument and staying away, but their fisheries will be threatened. And so where do we find that balance between meeting the needs of traditional fishermen as well as commercial to meet the demand for fish? And we all want to have a healthier diet, which includes fish, and protecting those so they can be flourish further. Yeah, it's a fine line. And one interesting thing I found over the years, too, is people in the conservation side of things who really want to protect things don't agree either. They don't agree that this area needs protection or this is the place we should protect, rather than this. And so it's really hard to get a consensus on those sorts of things. So the science isn't finite. No. Always changing. Right. Lots of different opinions. Yes. Just like politics. Exactly, it is politics. It is politics, yeah. And in the process, might we lose some specific species? What are some that you're concerned about? Right now there's a push to protect pilot whales, that Hawaii has its own, I think it's pilot whales. I was just reading about this. And so one of the environmental groups is suing the federal government, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make a protective area for these pilot whales because we have a distinct, I think it's, oh yeah, it's false killer whales, excuse me. False killer whales. That we have our own population and there's only 150, and if we keep, don't protect them, and I'm not sure what measures they need for protection, but I know a couple of the researchers who spent years studying them, you know, they'll go extinct. Right. So that's just one issue. But it's a battle for 150 whales to stop people from fishing, which I think is one of the issues, how you judge that. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about one other species I'm aware of that we all love. So we'll be right back with Sustainable Hawaii. In case you didn't understand me, University of Hawaii football team is going to kick butt under Rolovitch this season. So be sure to follow us on Think Tech Hawaii and Hibachi Top. I'll be at every game. And remember, aloha. My name is Kim Lau, and I'm the host of Hawaii Rising. You can watch me live every other Monday at 4 PM. Aloha. Hi, we're back with Sustainable Hawaii. And we're talking with the author and columnist Susan Scott. And she most recently wrote, actually in 2014, call me captain, which is a memoir I absolutely love. One of the things that you did so well was, besides the fact that you write well and it's very humorous, is that you keep us on the edge of the seat about the sail trip to Palmyra and your research. You make it come alive and sound so intoxicating. I love it. So tell us about call me captain in the trip. The funny thing about this manuscript, it went out to a peer review because it's a university press book. And it came back. And one, there's two reviewers. One said there's way too much personal stuff between the beginning and what happens to the sailboat. I would like to just get to the boat. And the other reviewers said, well, I didn't like the boat, the stuff so much. I wanted to know a lot more of the personal things. And of course, one was a man and one was a woman. So I thought, well, that's a great balance. It is a perfect balance. The man really liked the sailing parts. And the women liked some of the personal things because it was a hard time for me. I was sort of. Well, as a former sailor, I will tell you, I thought it had perfect amount of both. Oh, good. Thank you. Because I was fascinated by the repairing of the ship. Actually, the preparation, rehabilitating your boat that had been in dry dock, and then also the repairs that you had to do for your return trip. So if there are any boat lovers out there, you absolutely should read this book because it's almost like a fun, adventurous how-to manual on how to prepare for a major ocean trip. Because I did not know what I was getting into when I did it. So yeah, it was quite an adventure in all ways. So tell us about the trip to Palmyra. Since I volunteered for US Fish and Wildlife Service for the Northwest Chain, I got an offer to volunteer at Palmyra to do a study that they were doing for the Pisonia trees. And so I didn't have any way to get there. And it was a time in my life when I really wanted to go. It was about a four-month stint. And so I thought, well, I have a sailboat, so I'll just do that. And then I did sail there and work for four months. And it was just a fantastic experience. Palmyra is about 1,000 miles south of here, so it's not easy to get to. And there's co-managed by Fish and Wildlife Service and also Nature Conservancy. So there's a hard place to get to. And you make it sound easy. And I don't want to give the book away. But the trip itself was turned into quite an adventure. And it was trepidatious. And it's a great read. So I won't give it away. We had a catastrophic boat failure. So I'll leave it at that. And my husband sailed all of his life. He's been sailing since he was six years old. And he said, I have never seen that happen. I had never heard of it either. But it's something that we all have. So sailors, when they see what happened, they are just really surprised. But we made it, of course. And then your description of Palmyra Atoll is just you bring it alive. I've never heard anyone make rats sound endearing. Oh, they are. But you made me want to hang out with them. Well, there aren't any anymore. One of the great things is my first mate that I sail there with, a good friend, dear friend still, Alex finished his PhD and went back and did a rat eradication. It was in charge of that. And it's rat-free now, five years. Fabulous. And the importance of that was? It's changed the ecosystem entirely because they were eating the seeds of native plants, and they were eating native crabs. And so, yeah, it just changed everything. And his research actually started with the ants that were killing the Pythonia trees. Well, that was another person's research. That was a difference story. But Alex was there looking at what kind of plants would grow if their rats weren't eating the seeds. And so he was looking at what the rats were doing. And then he got rid of all the rats, which is a hard thing for a biologist, because they're animals. And you have to kill 30,000 animals. That's a pretty sobering moment. But it really has saved the atoll, I think, a lot of species on the atoll. Well, as endearing as you made them sound, it would make me more comfortable to come to Palmyra. Well, they weren't aggressive. They were actually, like all animals, if you aren't chasing them and trying to kill them and trying to spear them and trap them, they lose their fear. And so that was one of the reasons we found them endearing. So what is so special about the Pythonia trees? The Pythonia trees is a species of tree that only grows on Pacific Island atolls. And there aren't very many left because they are, well, people have lived on the atolls and they have introduced alien species and they've built things. You know, Palmyra was a military base during World War II. And so the ones that are left are awesome. They're beautiful. And there's one in Australia, an island of full Pythonia forests on an atoll in the Great Barrier Reef National Park. And I just saw that and it was just an amazing thing. And one interesting thing about the Pythonia trees is they have sticky fruit, very sticky fruit. And the little black knotties, which is a seabird that we have here and in Australia, nest in it. And when the chicks fall out of their nest, which is natural selection, it's they do, they get caught up in the sticky, they get out of the nest, they're getting ready to fledge, they get caught in the sticky fruit and fall to ground and die and fertilize the tree. So it's this amazing, kind of hard to watch system of natural system of the tree getting itself fertilized. And so there's signs in the Australia of Pythonia forests that said, please don't try to rescue the baby knotties because this is part of the natural system and that forest is beautiful. It's got a huge canopy. So it's like you're in a tree cave. So it really is providing a full ecosystem for bird life but also I imagine insects and other things. So when they were dying, they were falling down rapidly, right? Right. That would, I would imagine that would also upset the erosive protection of the islands, right? If the Pisonia trees died. Right, because the soil under them is spongy, yeah. Because they have a really huge canopy. So it's important that they remain to hold those atolls intact in every which way. And in Palmyra they thought the trees were falling down because of the, they were just tipping over. And they thought it was because of ants farming scale, which is an alien species there. And so it turned out that just by nature, they took, they healed themselves. Oh interesting. The Pisonia trees stopped falling down. No one really did anything. You know, there were some studies of what we should do or maybe could do. And so there's a lot of theories of what was happening. Oh, does any of it involve the rats? No. Oh, interesting. No, no. Because they started getting better before the rats were eradicated. But you know, the water table, there's several theories of what happened to make them. And my husband who's a physician says, well, people and organisms get immunity, natural immunity from things. And maybe they just, the trees finally got immunity from the scale. Oh, interesting. So it was interesting. You didn't have immunity to the elements. And I know that you have a slide here of working on your vote. And I'm so impressed by the fact that you did this in your middle age, if I may say. Right, right. I was 56. 56, and boy, if I could do that next year, I'd be really proud of myself. Well, it wasn't something I thought I would ever do, but once I was there, I didn't have any choice. And I think sometimes that's the best way to do things. People ask me how to learn to sail, especially women. And I say, just buy a sailboat. And that's you up in the top of the mountain. That's me at the top fixing. Fixing the boat, and which you had already refurbished on your own to in Honolulu and sailed across with one mate. Right. And it's just so impressive. So a lot of us women in our middle age are gonna take heart and let's see how many of us are launching from Honolulu Harbor next year. That's right. It doesn't just have to be sailing. I think sometimes just getting out on your own and doing something that you don't think you can do is really surprises all of us, because I surprised myself. So I'm not a natural born sailor by any means. And in addition to being a volunteer and working on these research projects, you also wrote your column while you were there. I wrote my column and sent it in by satellite phone. And so I got to write about different things that I was seeing at sea. And also I just got back from the Great Barrier Reef sailing there. And so that was an amazing experience. Well, some of the species that you saw at Palmyra that were particularly fascinated me, you wrote about the coconut crab. Right. Yeah. That coconut crab. Tell us about it. Well, they're huge. You can see the scale from this one because he's carrying a coconut and they are crazy about coconuts. They can't climb trees to get them but they don't need to because coconuts fall. And so they just, they have one big claw, he's holding the claw there for cutting. And that's a full grown coconut. Yeah. Wow. That's the inside of a whole, yeah, the coconut. And so they tear with one claw and cut with the other tear cut. So the green coconut takes them about 24 hours to get down to the meat. Which is about how long it would take meat to cut. I know. I'm amazed. We have tools too. Right. Yeah, they're amazing. And they're not aggressive at all. But I imagine they could take your finger off. They do, they can, yeah. So, yeah, but so, I was a little, I was too afraid of them to pick them up because you have to pick them up from the back with one hand. And I wasn't sure I could hold them. I was strong enough to hold them. So when we were doing some tagging with them and measuring the men, usually pick them up and then the women did the tagging. But yeah, they're big. And they almost went extinct because they're good eating? Because they're good eating. And Palmyra I think is one of the few, there's a couple other islands in the world where they're protected, but in other places than Tahiti society islands. People still eat them. And I've been there and they're eating little tiny ones, which is. So they're not getting the chance to reproduce. And they live up to how many years? They think they might live up to 100 years. Wow. That's incredible. But they mature slowly. And so if you eat the small ones like any species that before they're reproducing they're going to go extinct. So they can't reproduce until how many years? I don't know that anyone knows how many years, but it's slow, they're slow maturing. Well, you brought up the trip to Australia and you just came back. And tell us what you found there because the Great Barrier Reef is something we all want to go see. But we've heard a lot about the dying of the reef. What was your experience? My experience, my personal experience, I was it from the southern part of the reef to the central. I didn't go up toward Cairns, which is one of the northern parts of the reef outside there. And I saw no bleaching. And so I was on snorkeling and sailing around the islands, inside the reef. And a couple of times you have to wait for the weather to be really good, to be able to actually get out to the outer reef. And the couple of times I was out there it was just awesome, beautiful. The coral there is just hard to, it's just hard to keep looking at because every time I try to take a picture of every different kind, I think there's 300 some species of coral, is a soft coral. And so you just be snorkeling around and you just see these soft corals wiggling out from the hard corals. And there's a big competition there for space because there's so many species trying to live in this one area. And this one is? This is another hard coral, this is a hard coral that looked like little flowers when you, you can see the tips are flowers. And there's a really beautiful close up. That one is budding, so it's making more corals and that's how this species reproduces. They do shed eggs and sperm once a year, but they also bud like this. And so you could get really up close to them and watch them, the different kinds of corals, how they react with each other. And there's fighting, not that we can see, but between the larvae of this species, when they get down, they sort of, you can see videos of them, the little polyps fighting each other for the space. Well, those are fantastic. And I think we're gonna have to have you come back just to talk about the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, we're out of time, but thank you so much for coming. And I really encourage our audience to read Call Me Captain. It's a great read and we'll be back next Tuesday with Sustainable Hawaii. Thank you for joining us.