Science Update | November 2, 2014

Aloha everyone! This is Miki Tomita, one of the science and education specialists onboard Hikianalia. We are currently on our way from Tongatapu to Aotearoa (New Zealand). We’ve had some really exciting finds on our entire leg that started in Pago Pago, American Samoa and continues through to Waitangi, Aotearoa. We’ve caught a couple of fish and done fish dissections adn to keep some samples to do fish identifications. The pay couple days have been very exciting as we are sailing over the Kermadec Trench where there is a lot of underwater volcanic activity. Some of the things we’ve noticed is that some of the pumice floats, which are these huge floating colonies of animals and marine life that are on these pumice stones floating through the ocean. It has been really cool! We took a bunch of pictures, and we looked at some of the plankton and other microscopic organisms and took pictures of them. Some of the other things we’ve seen are whales and dolphins. We even saw one turtle outside of Tonga swimming by itself. We’ve seen some aku jumping around. Just recently we saw a bird, so we must be on the right course. So that’s our science update. There are some blogs coming that are written by some of our other science specialists that have more detail so please visit Hokulea.com. Aloha!