August 2023 Ascension Monthly Highlights

August has been another busy month on Ascension. We’ve fallen into more of a schedule at work, with mostly Mondays being with the Park Warden team, Tuesday’s CRACAB, Wednesday’s with plant team doing shade house work or Park Warden, Thursday’s Mexican Thorn and Friday Coastal Reserve work. August also saw us take over the Ascension MPA social media channels whilst Lorna was on Leave, so any posts on the Ascension MPA Twitter, Facebook and Instagram from the end of July and all of August until the 4th September have been by Anna and I. At the beginning of August, we also discovered that on Monday’s and Wednesdays the Tennis courts on the US base are open to anyone to play, so we’ve started playing twice a week and it’s been really fun, especially as we haven’t been playing any volleyball lately as American Emily is also away on leave (we aren’t allowed on the courts without her). I also went to see the Little Mermaid at the cinema with Abi this month and have spent time hammocking on the beaches! Here are some more highlights of my past month on Ascension:

At the beginning of August (5th) Anna began teaching Abi and I to crochet a turtle. We started them at English Bay in the sunshine and it took me a while to get the hang of if it, but slowly throughout the month I crocheted little by little and managed to finish my turtle on the 19th August! I named mine Wonky because he’s not perfect but I’m very proud of him seeing as he is my first ever crochet project! It made Anna and I laugh because he was so much larger than the first one, she had made even though we used the same sized hook and I also seemed to crochet much tighter so we’re not sure how he ended up so big! But he is nicknamed Wonky the Chonky.

On the 10th August we had a work team day for Dr Adam Sharp’s (Invertebrate Project Officer) Leaving day. It was also the day we were going to do Anna’s birthday cake celebration at work which I had baked the evening before (orchestrated by getting Carson to distract Anna for the evening, convincing her not to bake a banana bread because I needed the last eggs and hiding ingredients in my room for a week, and I also baked at Hayes House to hide the baking smells) I made a sponge cake with peanut butter buttercream filling and chocolate frosting on top and asked Emily to make Anna’s card (a tea-stained drawing of two masked boobies). I nearly got away with it being a complete surprise but Anna suspected something was up when she couldn’t find sugar in the morning as I had left ingredients at Hayes so she wouldn’t see me carrying them back home. Unfortunately Anna wasn’t feeling 100% that day but I hope she still enjoyed the cake and card. For the team day we were all helping carry posts and fencing materials to the Hummock point Euphorbia restoration site which took us most of the morning. It was tiring but much nicer that everyone was helping so that it went a lot faster than if just a few of us were doing it on our own.

On the 12th August the RAF were hosting the Jon Ward Hereford 5K around the UK and here on Ascension it was hosted on the US base so members of the RAF etc. could join in from wherever they were and submit their times on Strava. The run was open to anyone on Ascension and at 22:00 the evening before after an evening at the VC Chrisna, Anna and I decided very last minute that we were going to join in. So, at 7:15am the next morning Chrisna picked me up and we headed to the airport cage to sign up. It was a very spontaneous morning but Chrisna, Anna and I walked the runway together and Anna even did a cartwheel midway through, the views were pretty constant and maybe not the most exciting 5K walk on the island, but it’s a cool thing to say we’ve done and one to tick off the Ascension bucket list for sure!

Then that afternoon Abi and I went and saw Little Mermaid at the Cinema and had our own private screening as we were the only ones that showed for the screening which was quite cool.

The day after the runway walk was Anna’s 23rd Birthday. For her birthday celebrations we had planned a hammocking weekend at Northeast Bay. Carson, Abi, Anna and I headed to Northeast Bay at around 11am. When we arrived, there were a family still packing up their things, so we decided to play some ball games on the beach and also created sand portraits of ourselves of which Anna crowned mine the winner for my freckle details.

Once the beach hut was clear we set up our hammocks and then headed off on the Porpoise Point Letterbox hike which starts across North East Beach and heads off across lava flows. It was a lovely afternoon walk with some hidden beaches and coves and lots of interesting lava flow formations enroute. We took our time exploring and enjoying the scenery and ate our lunch on one of the smaller beaches on the way to the letterbox. When we got to the last larger beach Abi waited on the beach as she had already done the letterbox walk before and didn’t want to navigate her way over the more ‘ankle breaking lava flow’ so we left her at the beach and Anna, Carson and I ventured on over the lava flow to find the letterbox at a large cairn in the distance.

We then headed back, reunited with Abi and traced our footsteps back along the coastline, stopping for some rockpooling on the way. When we eventually reached the beach hut again later in the afternoon it was around 16:30 and Sunitha and Emily had joined and were waiting at the beach hut for us. Over the course of the evening, we did some sunset crocheting and enjoyed the views of the ocean.

Carson, Sunitha and Emily headed off in the later evening as they had work the next day, Anna, Abi and I had the Monday off so we could sleep overnight at the beach hut. We settled for the night and enjoyed listening to the waves as we went to sleep. Then in the morning I woke up early to watch the sunrise from my hammock. The three of us then headed across to the Ariane site/Hummock point for a morning hike of Boatswain bird view letterbox walk. I enjoyed this hike in the opposite direction giving new views of this side of the island, the pathway pretty easy to follow but the last part was pretty hairy scaling some of the loose red dirt shingly dirt. When we reached the top, we had nice views of Boatswain bird but it was very windy!

To walk back to the car, we had to retrace our steps again and I spent most of the time on the downward hills on my bum sliding down the loose ground until I was on flatter ground again! On the 15th August, Anna and I had a letterbox day with Sophie and Laura. Anna and Sophie were carrying out the Frigate colony productivity monitoring whilst Laura and I were doing the last two frigate satellite tags and tagging some masked boobies as well. The Marty Wade track is still not fixed so it was a long day meeting at the office 6:30 for an early hike to the peninsula. When we got to the plateau we split off into our pairs and Laura and I managed to tag the two frigates pretty quickly which was really cool to see.

Laura went into the colony to catch a frigate and then brought it over where I had prepared the data sheet and feather envelope, she then got me to hold the frigate whilst she attached the satellite tag (which have solar panels on them) and took a feather sample for stable isotope analysis. We also weighed the bird, took measurements of the beak and photos of the wing condition. Once we had deployed those tags we then moved onto masked boobies and again Laura caught the birds whilst I prepared the data sheets and then got me to hold them whilst she tagged them (and for the masked boobies put coloured rings on their legs for identification). The tags for the boobies were larger than the frigate tags and they looked very different as the masked boobies are diving birds which means the tags are different than those for the frigates who are smaller and are not diving birds. However, we kept running into a problem with the female birds being in the process of moulting their tail feathers which meant we couldn’t put the satellite tags on them as they would be moulted off in a couple of weeks. This was an interesting discovery as the males did not seem to be in moult and Laura was excited that this might be a new discovery for masked boobies, however our sample size of 6 birds isn’t conclusive evidence yet. Over the course of the day, I got covered in masked booby poop! After work on the letterbox day Anna and I Joined Simon in the eDNA laboratory to help him and learn how he analyses settlement plates which are put out in three places around the coastline for a couple of months at a time. Three plates screwed together are separated (top, middle and bottom) and we took images of each plate and anything that Simon was unsure on the identity of was put in ethanol, then the remaining life on the plates was then scraped into another epindorf tube for eDNA analysis.

On the 23rd August It was my turn to help out with the summer holiday activity Explorers Day which Conservation runs throughout the summer holidays. One day a week (Wednesday) conservation run half day activity days for the local kids throughout August from Marine day, sea bird and invasives day, park warden day and plant team day. I was assisting the endemic plant team day. The original plan was to do a scavenger hunt along one of the mountain paths in the morning, however it was raining so we got the kids to watch a David Attenborough plant documentary first thing. Emily spoke to the kids about what plants are and why they’re important and how they can be food for us, then we took them to Garden Cottage to peel and chop up some vegetables which were going to be made into the St Helena dish Plo for their lunch. Whilst Jo and Diego (with assistance from some of the mums) made the Plo, Sunitha, Jonny, Emily and I took the kids in their three groups to the area behind the Green Mountain shade houses which is to become the Explorers Garden and we planted some native plants out with them. After we had planted out all the plants, we then went back into Red Lion for a Quiz based on the past sessions the kids had attended and also some questions Emily had written whilst the documentary had been playing.

Once the quiz had ended, we then took the kids back over to Garden cottage for their lunch when the Plo was ready. As this was the last Explorers session of this summer, Emily and Deigo gave out prizes and certificates at the end of the day. On the 19th August Saints hosted a glow party for Hannah Leo’s birthday party, Anna and I were on Sea rescue call so had our radios with us but we had good fun dancing!

On the 31st August I was with the Marine team out on the boat for a day of shark tagging. I was a little nervous I was going to have another horrendously seasick day as the waves were very rough, but Dan took us round the Boatswain bird island, and we tucked on the inside where the water was much calmer and more sheltered. We caught five sharks! (All pretty small, cute ones around 1m in length) and I even caught one of them on my line! On the first shark I was in charge of the head end and then for the rest of the sharks Marcos took the head end and I got to hold the pectoral fins and help take measurements whilst Dan took the samples and tagged the shark, then for the last shark he let me have a go at taking the measurements, measuring claspers and even taking the blood and PIT tagging and visual tagging the shark! To top it off I also saw 5 red footed boobies which nest on the island but not on Ascension’s mainland and I had yet to see one here, it was the best day ever! In August we completed quite a few letterbox walks. These included Porpoise point and Boatswain bird island for Anna’s birthday and letterbox on my letterbox day. On the 6th August Carson, Anna and I completed the Cricket Valley Letterbox walk. It was a lovely walk at the base of Weatherpost. We first walked around the edge of the valley where we encountered an inquisitive land crab which Anna fed a flower too and it tried to hide under her, the path then bends round to an area of Eucalyptus trees towards the middle of the valley where the letterbox is situated. After stamping our books, we then explored a little more, climbed some trees and built dens before putting up our hammocks in the Eucalyptus and chilling for the afternoon.

On the 18th August Emily, Anna and I went to do the Wolves Bluff Letterbox walk after work. The book warned us it could be hard to find the letterbox, but we didn’t have too much trouble finding our way. On the way up I noticed a red box looking thing in the mouth of the rock that supposedly looks like a wolf head (giving the walk its name – I think it looked more like a pig when up close), thinking this was the letterbox. However, we found the letterbox in a cairn and then were intrigued as to what was inside the wolf mouth, so we ventured over to quench our curiosity. When we got there, I realised we’d have to climb round the front to get the box, so I carefully climbed round and pulled the box out but, in the process, a huge gust of wind blew my cap off my head and it flew onto the top of a Mexican thorn tree down in a gully below! It was very sad, but I said goodbye to my hat. Emily captured the moments just before which is quite funny. We did discover that the contents of the box was the elusive 43rd Letterbox, which is what you move to a new place when you have completed all 42 walks!

The applications for the next conservation interns also went live this month! Applications ending Next week! https://www.instagram.com/ascension_mpa/ https://www.facebook.com/AscensionMPA/ https://twitter.com/AscensionMPA