Turtle Trax

5690 nests again: an experience re-born

Since 2000, 5690 has nested every even-numbered year. That’s as frequent as sea turtles ever get, and it’s not unusual for some of them to go three or even four years between nesting seasons. I don’t think 5690 will ever wait more than the bare minimum, however, because she lives only a few kilometres north of her nesting beach. Not for her the gruelling 800 kilometre swim to the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, oh no. She’d rather run us ragged every second year watching for her to nest, and then keeping an eye on the nests to see when they hatch. I’m sure she does this on purpose.

So it was that we felt lucky this week when we got a call on Monday morning from Skippy Hau, Hawaii State Biologist, that 5690 had been seen ashore the previous night. This was a day earlier than we thought we had to start watching, so I rushed to the beach and checked out the dig. I was worried that we might have missed her, but it looked to me that she’d given up and gone back without dropping eggs. Close one. We couldn’t be certain, of course, so Monday night Ursula and I prepared for an all-nighter and headed to Kamehameha Iki Park.

We needn’t have worried. When we got there 5690 had already crawled up the beach, wandered around a bit, and made a couple of false starts. (We later reconstructed this from her tracks.) We arrived just as she settled in for some serious digging. Her previous nests this summer have all been in more precarious locations, closer to the water, where waves have often swept over them. She chose to make this one well back from the waterline.

Our luck continued to improve when the Yoshino family showed up. Lindhow (Mom), Lana (11), and Max (9) had met us before in 2006 at the excavation of one of 5690’s nests. (At least, that’s how I remember it but my memory is long past its best-before date.) What I do recall clearly is that both kids were impressively bright and keenly interested in sea turtles. At any rate, Lindhow had brought them along to see if there was any sign of hatchlings from 5690’s earlier nests. They were delighted to discover that Momma 5690 herself was in attendance, digging industriously.

Watching 5690 make a nest is a long and sometimes boring process, but having the Yoshinos there transformed the experience. For one thing, both kids already knew a lot about sea turtles and nesting, but they still had endless questions. Intelligent, thoughtful questions. The kind that make the time go by. Ursula and I appreciated that.

For another, watching the Yoshinos was like re-living our first nesting experience. The joy and excitement was contagious. They were having a ball and thanks to them, so were we. Best of all was the moment after 5690 entered her egg-laying trance and the Yoshinos got to creep quietly up behind her and peer down into the egg chamber. The Yoshinos are perfectly aware that once a sea turtle starts laying her eggs almost nothing can disturb her, but you’d never know that by their respect and quiet behaviour… and oh, the aloha! You could feel it in the air. It was perfect.

Once 5690 was deep in her egg-laying trance, it was possible for the Yoshinos to get a look at her eggs. Click photo to enlarge

From the time 5690 drops her last eggs until she finishes covering up is usually about two hours. It’s long, and truthfully, the most unexciting part of the whole thing. The Yoshinos could easily have been forgiven if they’d left right after seeing the eggs, but I don’t think you could have dragged them away with a two-ton pickup. Fortunately for all concerned, she’d started early (for her) and almost exactly at 1 AM, 5690 wearily dragged herself back into the water.

It wasn’t quite over. The place where 5690 had nested is exactly where people like to lie or sit during the day, since it is shaded for a good part of the time. Surfers start arriving right after sunrise, so we had to drive in posts and put up CAUTION tape before we went home. The Yoshinos eagerly helped until the whole job was done, then gave us warm hugs before heading off to bed. I’m not sure what time Max and Lana got to sleep, but I’m betting it took a while before the excitement of the evening wore off. Mahalo nui loa to them for an evening not to be forgotten.

Luck of the George

So far our luck was quite good. Somewhere I think there’s a huge balance scale, however, and when our luck is good someone else’s goes bad. This is where I introduce our great friend and mentor, George Balazs. He’s the Leader of Marine Turtle Research for Hawaii and he visits us once or twice each summer in the course of carrying out other work-related duties on Maui. George had been hoping that 5690 would wait one more night so that he could see her again, but our good luck with the Yoshinos and the short night (relatively) was his bad luck. Not so bad, you might be thinking. Just wait.

George was due to arrive on a late afternoon flight so that he could give a presentation to a group of stranding volunteers, the people who take care of turtles when they wind up ashore and in difficulty. When he got to Honolulu Airport, however, his flight had been cancelled. He hastily made arrangements for the next flight, which would get him to Kahului behind schedule, but while he made that flight, his luggage (with the handouts he’d prepared) didn’t.

George’s volunteers had waited patiently for him (who wouldn’t be willing to wait a while to hear George talk about turtles?) and the presentation went well even without the materials. As he was leaving, George called us to say he was on his way.

An hour passed. That’s usually long enough to make the trip from Kihei to Honokowai, but not this night. The phone rang, and it was George–stopped dead on the highway about halfway here, thanks to night-time construction. So clearly, George had a streak going.

When George finally arrived, we had a wonderful time for what was left of the evening and a fair chunk of the early morning, getting to bed far too late. Up too early as well, but a day with George is always full and never dull. Things to do, places to go! First, we took George’s rental car across the island to recover the lost luggage. That done, we looked around a reported green turtle nesting sites at Waiehu, then drove over to take a look at Waihee (no nests reported this year), both of which are fairly isolated stretches of beach. Why do I mention that point, you ask?

George couldn’t resist taking a photo of the road sign that points to both nesting beach sites we were on our way to visit. Click photo to enlarge

Well, next it was on to lunch at Wendy’s, Kahului–where George glanced out the window and said, “Hm. Does that tire look flat to you?” Yup, the little black cloud was still following George around. Flat as a pancake, at least on the bottom.

Our Good Luck week must have partially offset George’s Bad Luck week, because we could have gone flat at one of the nesting site spots, which would have been inconvenient to say the least. Fortunately, the service truck was stationed fairly close by and a friendly, efficient tow truck driver had us back on the road without too much delay. George had work to do at Maui Ocean Center (always a treat to visit, you should go).

Maui Ocean Center has a turtle tank, which usually contains around half a dozen small honu hatched at Sea Life Park on Oahu. When George visits, they’re weighed, examined, and given PIT tags in preparation for eventual release into the wild. George worked on a table right next to the turtle tank, giving patrons a great opportunity to see the turtles up close and observe turtle science in progress. George’s little black cloud must have been elsewhere for a while, because everything went smoothly and quickly.

Visitors to Maui Ocean Center get a rare treat: honu up close and out of the water, as well as a chance to see how sea turtle biology is done. Click photo to enlarge

Our good luck trumps George’s little black cloud!

One of the nice aspects of our Maui Ocean Center visit was that they expressed an interest in having us conduct a book-signing there–but of course, this meant we’d need books to sign. The last week of August (also our last week on Maui) will be Sea Turtle Week at the Center and a book-signing during this celebration of honu would be wonderful. As far as we knew, the schedule still had bulk shipments of the book at the end of Septmeber at the earliest, but I agreed to contact our publisher, University of Hawaii Press, to see what chance there was that we could squeeze out at least one advance copy. Failing a full book-signing, they were willing to consider a presentation where we could at least generate a little publicity for the book.

The next morning (Friday) I sent email to our editor asking about the possibility. We were floored by the quick reply: an advance copy had been put in the mail that morning! Take that, George’s little black cloud! We–including George of course–were ecstatic. We had thought that we wouldn’t see an advance copy until we were back in Mississauga. To receive it here on Maui was a really special bonus.

We went about the rest of the day running around with George as usual, visiting 5690’s nests and a few other sites where we knew honu go to forage and in a couple of cases, sometimes haul out to bask. We were on a real high, the only down side being that George would be leaving in mid-afternoon. When we returned to the condo to prepare for his departure, we didn’t really expect to find the book waiting, but I checked the mailbox anyway.

Now I know people like to dump on the US Postal system, but folks, they outdid themselves on Friday. The book, posted Friday morning on Oahu, was in our mailbox at 2 PM Friday afternoon! Beat that, UPS and FedEx!

The US Postal Service comes through! Click photo to enlarge

Those of you familiar with the CMYK colour space (the one used for offset colour printing) is not kind to blues. It’s the hardest colour to print correctly. This fact had me extremely nervous about the colour images I’d provided. After all, I’d never done this before. To make matters worse, after I’d finished and everything was off to the printer, I happened to read Dan Margulis (world renowned colour printing expert) on the topic of printing blues, and frankly, it made my stomach churn. Had I done it right?

I need not have worried. Folks, even if I do say so myself, the book is stunning. The printers did a fabulous job. You should get your copy and see for yourself (hint, hint). We couldn’t be happier with the final result. Best of all, George–who has been a major part of this book since the beginning–was here when it arrived, and was at least as thrilled as we were. It just doesn’t get any better.

The authors and George Balazs with the advance copy of our book–at long last. Click photo to enlarge

So we’ve been over the moon ever since. We haven’t managed to dive or get out on the kayak for a long time, but none of that bothers us right now. The Book of Honu is finally a reality. Not just printed and ready to sell–it’s beautiful.

Oh, and that little black cloud?

Waiting for George at the airport. About two hours after his flight was supposed to have left, we got a phone call from George. His plane was still sitting on the tarmac, delayed by “paperwork.” He eventually did get home, several hours late. For George, this Maui trip had been a mixed bag, but all of the misfortunes were offset by arrival of the book. All in all, it was a Good Week. Aloha!

5 months is way shorter than 10!

It’s Maui out again! Visiting in January/February really helped a lot, especially considering that the past winter was more unpleasant than usual. I don’t know how we’ll handle next winter, since we’ll be enduring or normal 10 month hiatus. On the other hand, I really don’t want to dwell on that downer until absolutely necessary. On to happier topics…

The Book of Honu

When last we left you, our book was still in layout. Not long after we got back to Mississauga, we got a PDF for proofreading purposes. We’d been anxious to get this because up till then we had no idea what the book would look like. Once we opened it, however, we saw that our anxiety was misplaced. I know we’re biased, but the book is simply stunning. The UHP book designer, April Leidig-Higgins, did an amazing job. The graphic accents and overall layout are beautiful.

I’m a font geek and I was concerned that we might wind up with some mundane or ugly font (can you say Times-Roman? ) but I need not have worried. The text is set in Minion Pro, which I love. Okay, I know most of the readers will never care, but it was important to me. It’s difficult for me to express how happy I was with the choice.

Two days before we left Mississauga for Maui, we received a copy of the fall catalog for the University of Hawaii Press. We were ecstatic to see that UHP used the cover image from our book for the catalog’s front cover! The Book of Honu is listed prominently on page 1, which is as good as it gets. We couldn’t have asked for more.

I know we’ve been talking about this forever, but it’s nearly here at last. This is how the cover looks. Attractive, is it not? Click photo to enlarge

Anyway, until you have a copy in your hands you won’t know what I’m talking about. The schedule calls for advance copies to arrive in September, with bulk shipments starting in October. I’m not sure what UHP distribution is like outside of the Islands, but I do know that you can already put in your order at all the major online booksellers. (Blatant plug: please do!)

Drop shadows? We hates them…

Just in case you’ve been paying attention and wondered how the Battle of Shadow’s Deep is going, well, it isn’t. This post is using a bastardized combination of tables and CSS for drop shadows, and I don’t think it works at all in Internet Explorer 6. As far as I can tell, in IE6 you don’t get anything. (Thanks, Microsoft!) At least everything looks right in Opera (still the champ), Firefox, and *ptui!* IE7. I know there are still a lot of IE6 users out there, but the effort to tame that piece of {expletive deleted} is just not worth it.

First dives

We’ve made four dives so far, with mixed results. The visibility is poor even though (until today) the water’s been pretty calm. We’re not sure where the silt is coming from but we know it’s out there.

The trend towards an underwater desert continues. There’s less and less algae of any kind. Inshore, it’s now common to see honu foraging in the early afternoon. Before this year, they stayed mostly along the makai side of the ridge of petrified beach sand that we call the Sea Wall. Now we’re seeing as many as a dozen coming right up to the waterline in the evenings.

Out on Reef 2, we’re seeing perhaps half as many honu as we used to see a couple of years ago. That’s 12-15 turtles, which is still a goodly number but we can’t help but feel a little disturbed. A lot of our regulars haven’t been seen yet, but it’s still early.

The Turtle House revisited

Every year we make at least one dive to the Turtle House, but to be honest it’s a visit we don’t look forward to anymore. It’s just sad and depressing to verify yet again that the place where it all started has long been deserted by the honu. This summer we decided to get it over with early. As expected, there were no turtles at the Turtle House, and no evidence that they’ve been using the place.

Our plastic-encased copy of Osha Gray Davidson’s great book, Fire in the Turtle House, is still in place at the Turtle House. Click photo to enlarge

Wana

The Rock, however, was a slightly (but only slightly) different story. As we approached, we could see one honu snuggled under a ledge. She didn’t bother to open her eyes as we approached, so we felt that it must be a turtle we know, and indeed it was: Wana!

First sighting of Wana for 2008–in an unexpected place: tucked under The Rock. Click photo to enlarge

The big experiment

Somehow, Ursula got it into her head that she could “talk underwater.”

This was partly inspired by the success of our experiment with recording whalesong during our winter visit. I thought she was nuts [Ursula: WHOA! That's "creative, non-linear thinker" to you, there guy], but hey, she’s my wife so I have to cut her a little slack.

How did that work out? Well, you be the judge:

Trust me, you weren’t as surprised as I was.

5690

It’s an even-numbered year, so 5690 is doing her thing again. Before we arrived, we got word that 5690 had been active. Because she is well known and nests on a heavily-used beach in Lahaina, it was inevitable that she would attract more attention than ever. Unfortunately, this has resulted in problems for her. We’ve been told that her attempts to nest have been interrupted by enthusiastic but inconsiderate observers, with the result that at least on one occasion she gave up and headed back into the water.

For us, this means another exhausting summer. We’ll attend the beach every night she’s due up to nest. We don’t have any special authority over her or the beach, but we can be there to try to explain to anyone else who notices her what she is doing and why she shouldn’t be disturbed. In our experience, people are quite happy to leave her in peace once it’s been explained what she’s doing and how to behave around her. We’ll report here how it all works out. Meanwhile, her nest #1 is due to hatch any day now, and we have to go and check for evidence of emergence. Aloha!

First, the excuses…

So much for good intentions.

You might have noticed that things came to an abrupt halt. (Perhaps both of you did.) Right at the end of November, our car died. Literally. It happened right in front of the place where we always took it for repairs. It had been there so often in the prior month or so that I think it just decided it wanted to stay there. So it did.

Anyway, replacing the car became a full time occupation for most of December. On top of that, other priorities arose and the result was no time for Trax updates. Howzit’s visit to Mississauga also went into stasis, a state from which it has yet to emerge. I’ve been promised that it will happen, so please be patient.

Book news

University of Hawaii Press has provided us with a book production timeline. If all goes well, the book should be in stores sometime in September. Right now it’s in the layout stage. We expect to get galley proofs for review in March. We can’t wait, because it will be the first time we actually get some idea of what it will look like in print. Once we’ve seen it, I’ll post our reactions here.

Maui in winter

Yes, we were on Maui for four weeks. I had intended to post weekly updates, honest I did. Events conspired against me, however.

One of us (I won’t say who but her initials are Ursula) decided that it would be a Good Idea to take only one laptop. Well, after all was said and done, the results were mixed. Since our computer usage had to be serialized, something had to give–well actually, several things, and posting weekly updates was one of them.

Maui in wintertime is… odd. We weren’t used to the sun setting behind Lanai. The angle was all wrong and kept us a bit disoriented the whole time we were there.

Our first Maui sunset for 2008 looked alien to us. That’s Lanai, but we couldn’t help feeling that it should be Molokai. Click photo to enlarge

Maui’s mountains in summer are red and brown. In winter, they are a lush green with a little red showing. Same with Lania and Molokai. Beautiful but strange to us. We’d always wondered if the dry brown grasses of summer ever turned green. Well, they do, and it’s wonderful to see, but it doesn’t last long. They were green when we arrived but by the end of January, when we were about to leave, everything had begun to turn yellow and was starting to go dormant for the summer. It reminded me of the brief but spectacular wildflower bloom you see for about three weeks in late June and early July in northern Newfoundland and Labrador. Oddly, the north’s bloom is far more colourful than Hawaii’s winter greening, but then for the rest of the year the positions are reversed: Hawaii is spectacularly colourful and northern Newfoundland and Labrador is, well, kind of drab.

It was also cooler than we’re used to on Maui. Mind you, we weren’t bundled up in sweaters and jackets like the locals, but we did notice that it wasn’t as warm as it is in the summer. Especially the pool. That sucker isn’t heated. In the summer, it gets a lot of sun and is usually pleasantly warm. In the winter, the sun doesn’t shine on it much and while the water temperature would be just fine on a summer’s day in Mississauga, it’s not exactly what you’d like on Maui at any time. Maui is supposed to be warm.

We were told that this winter was unusually cool and rainy. Well, it certainly was rainy compared to what we’re used to. It didn’t really make that much difference to us. Maui rain isn’t like Mississauga rain. You can stay out in it. It’s lighter most of the time, and warmer always. The downside is that it washes mud into the ocean. Mud makes for lousy visibility when diving.

Not that there would have been that much diving. The winter waves (which, like the sun, come from the wrong angle) are bigger than their summer cousins. Great for surfers, hell for divers. Our whole concept of what is a large wave at Honokowai had to be adjusted. Big waves don’t just prevent us from diving while they wave, they also stir up the water so that it takes a couple of days after they stop before the visibility clears. We are not fans of big waves.

On the positive side, the winter conditions did expand our comfort level in the kayak. We negotiated wave conditions that we would never have considered before. This happens when you leave shore when the waves aren’t too big, and while you’re out there, the swell comes in and walla! You get to learn how to surf your kayak!

Whales!

The whole purpose for visiting Maui in winter was to see the whales. For me, even more compelling was to hear them. I wanted to be underwater and hear the whales sing. Without that, the whole trip would have been disappointing.

We did manage to get in four dives in four weeks. On each of those dives, we heard whalesong. Sometimes faint, sometimes strong, it was always there. The experience is impossible to describe, except to say that it was beautiful and exceeded anything I had expected. I’ve often heard recordings of humpback whales singing, but to hear genuine live whalesongs myself was something I will never forget.

Of course we saw whales as well. The second time we went out on the kayak, we spotted frothing in the water indicating a whale might be headed in our direction. By the time I got out the camera and turned it on, they were nearly on top of us. A mother and calf swam past us at a distance of no more than 20 meters, with the calf breaching about halfway out of the water once before they zipped away. The whole thing was over in seconds. I didn’t manage to get anything worthwhile with the camera, but we didn’t care. We’d come to Maui to see the whales, and seen them we had.

I think Mom must have put out the word that we’d had our close encounter though, because despite spending hours and hours on the water for the rest of our stay, no whale ever came close again. We did see whales breaching right next to others in kayaks and canoes. Not us. We frequently saw huge splashes and spouting whales–way off on the horizon. Not near us. Didn’t matter, we were having fun anyway.

We got the most fun satisfying our curiosity. We wanted to record whales singing. We weren’t sure we could, especially since we could not see any whales in the immediate vicinity. Here’s our first attempt, courtesy of YouTube:

We were thrilled by what we got. That video shows you what we did but it doesn’t really do justice to our recording. This next video gives you a better idea. I made it as a large pod of dolphins swam right past the kayak, some of them quite close, but I knew the camera would have trouble picking them up. You can barely see them in the original video, but that’s what Ursula is pointing at, dolphins. Now that it’s been YouTubed, well… Anyway, we were hoping to capture some dolphin chatter from that swim-by, but no matter how hard we listened, we couldn’t hear anything like the noises we expected. Lots of loud whales, though.

Then we wondered if whales sang at night. We could have easily gotten the answer from the Googles, but we had more fun using the empirical method. (Spoiler alert: they were even louder!)

You might be wondering what’s going on after the 1:14 mark. Ursula is holding a NiteIze signal wand. These are waterproof (rated to 300m depth) and highly visible. They’re great safety lights for night kayaking. You can also use them to make bizarre video. (Well, we needed some visuals for the whalesong…)

The honu…

Of course we didn’t neglect the honu. We spent several hours floating above Reef 2. We were gratified to see numerous turtles coming up to breathe. In January, all of the honu should be at home since nesting migrations are still a few months away. We were eager to get a dive in to see who was there.

When the waves finally settled down and we got out to the reef, we did find a lot of turtles. We had exepected this, based on the numbers we’d seen surfacing for air.

What we didn’t expect was that many of the Reef 2 regulars weren’t around. For example Ho’oulu, who was there last summer, wasn’t there for any of our four visits. We thought we’d see some of the tagged turtles, but only Tiamat was around. We recognized a few others, but a lot of the honu we’d hoped to see just weren’t there.

Your intrepid reporter photographs Raphael, one of the few regulars we saw. Click photo to enlarge

We’re not sure why we didn’t see more familiar faces. It might simply be that we just weren’t out there enough. It would be pretty easy to miss somebody given the limited time we had to look around. We’d like to believe that this is the explanation rather than, say, finding that the regulars have abandoned Reef 2. Remember, we didn’t see a lot of our regulars last summer either.

If they’ve really moved elsewhere, this would be a first for us. In our experience, whenever the honu have abandoned a site they all move elsewhere. This time, Reef 2 still has lots of honu–just not the ones who used to hang out there. Is this a permanent change? We’ll have to wait until next August, and even then there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to tell what’s going on. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope to see more of our familiar cast when next we dive.

Changes

I’ve updated the description for the Show Turtles Aloha campaign at Laniakea to reflect the new foundation that is now running the programme, the Malama Na Honu Foundation.

I’ve also updated the guidleines for reporting sick or injured turtles.

Finally, I added an introduction to Why Howzit Is Dying to put it in context with the latest findings. That essay was written in 1995 and a lot has changed. In particular, I was worried that it left the wrong impression, namely that the honu were in danger of being wiped out by tumors. That’s not the case, although there are still reasons for serious concern.

Sorry, no new Howzit yet. You’ll have to take that up with the Mississauga Muse.

I promise it won’t be so long until the next post. Aloha!

Nothing to do with US Turkey Day

Despite the fact that many visitors somehow end up thinking that we live in Hawaii, we’re actually Canadians living in the self-proclaimed Best City in Canada. No doubt Mississauga was the first place that sprang to mind. No? Perhaps someone should tell Hazel that the Kool-aid has run out.

This is the long way round to telling you that I’m not using the American Thanksgiving long weekend as an excuse. Not using the Grey Cup weekend either. Nope, this delay was the direct result of time shrinkage.

I know, I know, never use hot water. I just forgot, okay? Next thing I knew the Thursdays (my favourites) had all but disappeared and the Sundays ran into the Mondays causing an awful ruckus let me tell you.

Anyway, that’s all sorted out now. Sorry for any inconvenience. Tuesdays will never be the same though.

New FP Bibliography

It’s been quite a while since we received a new fibropapilloma bibliography. For a long time that bibliography grew by leaps and bounds, and we got frequent updates. These days there are fewer changes, which might be a Good Thing. Maybe. While fibropapilloma in Hawaii has been determined not to be a threat to the continuance of the population, there’s still a lot of it around.

I’d like to believe that the incidence of FP is on the decline everywhere, but in preparing the bibliography update I noticed that one paper describes an increase in the “hot zone” (where FP is found) in Florida. That’s not good, especially given the seeming reduction in research. Perhaps there are a lot of projects that haven’t reached the reporting stage yet, but I suspect not.

We know that in Hawaii–and we have no reason to think this doesn’t apply elsewhere–FP in an area flares up over a period of 5-10 years, but then the incidence drops as the most vulnerable turtles die off and the stronger turtles recover. After 3-4 years of decline you reach a point where few turtles have visible signs of the disease, although many of them have had it. As far as I know, no one tracks FP closely enough to determine the stage any particular area has reached (except for us at Honokowai, of course). Do fewer articles indicate that the disease is on the wane everywhere, or has research simply ground to a halt? I wish I knew.

Twice the Howzit

I’m not the only one who’s been lagging. Our friendly neighbourhood Evil Empire Fighter has been preoccupied as well. This put the brakes on Howzit’s adventures but I see he’s back up to full speed in this week’s Toon, Observe The Loss. Warp 2 in fact: six panels instead of three!

This Toon is dedicated to the memory of Milo Radulovich, a man who stood up to government tyranny and with the help of Edward R. Murrow, managed to win. For a great version of that story, don’t miss Good Night and Good Luck, the movie by George Clooney.

The world could always use another Edward R. Murrow, but really, what we need most is a bunch more Milo Radulovichs. Good night Milo, and good luck.

A new way to view the Toon Archives

The big news this week is that I’ve put together a set of slideshows for each chapter of the Toon archives. I’ve retained the old list of links to individual entries as well. I’d like to have a way to dive into the slideshow from each individual Toon, but that takes more work than I’m willing to put in right now. Check out the shows at the Trax Toon Archives.

Then there’s the not-Archives…

Howzit’s welcoming committee treats him nicely, but there’s a subtle undercurrent of caution. Oh wait, now that I mentioned it I guess it’s not so subtle. Anyway, this week The Force Is With Howzit.

The Book

Some of you might recall that we were writing a book. I think we first mentioned it back in 2002. I’m sure anyone following along thought that it would never really happen. I know I did.

Well, what with the first publisher we approached generally screwing us around and the changes requested by our second publisher (University of Hawaii Press, who have been nothing but exemplary) we’ve actually written three drastically different manuscripts. The latest news, however, is that the third time’s the charm.

Just as I was preparing to post this, I got email from the copyeditor assigned to our book. He sent us his corrections for review, and to my great delight, the changes are few and minor. I’m finally accepting that this process is drawing to a close, and it will really end with an actual printed book!

Someone once said that writing a book was a lot like giving birth. That could well be true, although one of those two things I’ve never done so I can’t say for sure. One thing I do know: if the gestation period for babies were as long as it was for this book, there’d be a lot fewer pregnancies.

The futility that calls itself CSS

The struggle continues. As I mentioned last week, I managed to get a drop-shadow technique to work everwhere except within this blog. I spent the week slowly dissecting the guts of the pages WordPress spews out, finally determining that WordPress inexpicably was throwing in paragraph and linebreaks that thoroughly messed up a lot of stuff, not just drop-shadows. Once I defeated this odd behaviour, things were back on track–sort of. There’s still one small discrepancy I’m trying to track down. Keep watching.

By the way, despite this maddening problem I would still recommend WordPress to anyone contemplating a blog. For the most part, it’s really well designed and implemented. The best part is that when you do encounter difficulties, the support forum can usually sort you out and you can fix things yourself. I don’t think there’s anything better out there.

Meanwhile, back in Mississauga…

This week our poet hero arrives in Canada at last. He soon makes the acquaintance of his first Canadian icon, but apparently not soon enough for his taste. Maybe that explains why Howzit Horses Around.

Biographies & video

I’ve spruced up the biographies for Howzit and Nui on our Who’s Who at Honokowai page. The changes are mostly small and cosmetic, but there is new material: video of both these turtles. I’ve posted short clips showing what they looked like when we first met them.

Howzit is a special turtle to me. I don’t know if Howzit was really male, but Ursula and I always thought of Howzit as a he. He was probably the turtle with the most personality back then: small, cute, and precocious. Howzit seemed to think he was in charge, and he didn’t hesitate to let all the other turtles know it. He was easy to fall in love with, and I did. When it was clear that his tumors were getting the better of him, it broke my heart. I will never forget saying aloha to him for the last time in 1995 because I knew I would never see him again.

Twelve years later the tumors are almost a thing of the past at Honokowai–almost. Even today, however, the little turtles like Howzit still get severe tumors and still “disappear.” We don’t name juveniles anymore because of this. It just got too hard to become attached to them and then watch as they got sick, deteriorated, and then vanish. In some ways, they are all Howzits to me.

Here’s looking at you

Howzit shows that’s he’s no slouch when it comes to surveillance. The title for this week’s Toon is They Need Super Vision. No kidding.

The battle rages on…

I thought I’d scored a breakthrough with CSS this week. I got Stu Nicholl’s drop shadow trick to work on my local machine, but when I tried posting an example here in the blog it all went blooey. I’ve been fighting with it all afternooon. Score: CSS 63 gazillion me nothing. Maybe next week.

I’m so disgusted I’ve got nothing else to say.

Updated adventures: one

This week’s Toon is called Tell Her The Camera’s On The Bum. I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Howzit is by no means impoverished and he does have a place to stay. Sure, he’s travelling on Mississauga’s dime, but George made sure he had enough money to pay his own way home and stay in a good hotel while he’s away. Just in case.

Updated web pages: none

Not that I haven’t tried. I’m really struggling with making CSS do what I’ve done rather easily with tables. Wait, that’s not right, I’ll revise that.

I accept that CSS can’t do what I did by violating the taboo against using tables for layout. I’m willing to acknowledge my weakness, reject the heresy, and swear not to do it again. Really. As soon as I find any CSS that can, say, reliably apply a drop-shadow to an image in all browsers.

Well, I can’t. I got really close, though. I thought I’d found The Grail this week. A CSS guru (Stu Nicholls) has a demo page that illustrates a nice drop-shadow. That page looks right in all four of my test browsers. When I saw that, my heart almost stopped. Could it be…?

No it couldn’t. It’s probably my ignorance of some subtlety of CSS, no doubt, but no matter what I’ve tried I can’t make Stu’s trick work. Not in any of the browsers. None, Jerry. Nar one of ‘em.

Curses. Many curses. Much gesticulating at the monitor with upraised digit. Loud condemnations of the CSS gods, thundering oaths of painful and prolonged vengeance, frightening fury unleashed and hurled against those who would deprive me of the simple, perverse pleasure of a little table or two… those bastards.

To no avail. Stu’s CSS still won’t work, even though I’ve picked apart the source for his page and virtually duplicated it–the part that he says creates the drop-shadow, that is. There’s a lot of other stuff going on with the source for Stu’s page there and I have no idea if any of it matters. Probably not, probably it’s something really miniscule that I missed and will MAKE ME FURIOUS but that’s okay. I’ll get it to work, or find something else. It’s just that a drop-shadow for images is the look I want, so it’s tough to make any real progress until I find a method that I can live with.

New videos: none

This project is also a bit off track, but for a different reason. Okay all you mothers of litle videographers out there, gather round. Pass this advice to your children: when using Adobe Premiere to capture video, never never never never ever use Scene Detect.

Scene Detect captures a separate clip every time it detects that you started and stopped the camera. This sounds great, and it is–until you make the mistake I made. I renamed some clips and then sorted by name. Don’t do that.

Since then I have not managed to get them back in capture order. Now, perhaps someone out there can explain Premiere’s clip naming algorithm to me. I’m not exactly inexperienced at this sort of thing and I can’t figure out what the hell it did to my clips. It’s logical up to a point, and then… blooey.

This problem resembles the CSS drop-shadow problem in that they are both the sort of thing that drives me crazy, but I can’t stop myself from trying to fix them. Frankly, I’ve put in so much time on the clip order that I realized I would be better off just giving up and recapturing the tape WITHOUT THE DAMNED SCENE DETECT (sorry, but I feel so much better now…) but then I’d never know how Premiere names clips. *Sigh*. I haven’t quite reached that stage with the CSS drop-shadows, but there’s a whole new week ahead.

Early Aikane

I’ve got new video for you on Aikane’s biography page. I extracted about six minutes of Aikane from compilation tape 1, which covers the summer of 1991 and the early part of the summer of 1992. That includes what turned out to be our first documented sighting of Aikane in 1991. It also illustrates how small Aikane was when we first met him (her?).

In those early days, Aikane was important to us not just because s/he was friendly, but also because every other turtle we saw regularly at Honokowai either had or was getting tumors. This wasn’t the only reason that Aikane was the Honokowai honu we photographed and videotaped the most. Even with the poor quality of our video from that period (not helped by size reduction for the web) you can easily see how attractive Aikane was.

What’s a compilation tape?

In 1997, when we first acquired a digital tape deck, Ursula reviewed all of our Regular-8 and Hi-8 video. She created six compilation tapes with short clips form the original media, documenting what was good and/or interesting and where we could find it. It’s a fascinating and invaluable resource, even if a lot of the material is usable only for historical purposes.

Our video from that time suffers not just from age. The format we started with (Regular-8) wasn’t great to begin with. Worst of all, we hadn’t yet learned about white balance and we didn’t even have an orange filter, so the colour is just awful. Warts and all, however, I find myself fascinated by what is on those tapes. They really drive home the changes that have occurred underwater at Honokowai over the past 15-16 years.

Meanwhile…

In this week’s Toon, The CorpSec Err Force is on the move, but under the watchful eye of Kariya Nation. Over at that other blog, you can meet Kariya Nation’s inside operative, The Mole. Check him out.

Boy am I dumb

This week’s Toon is called Culvert Operation, which is feeble I admit, but at least it’s a pun. My head hurt thinking that up, so give me a break here.

When we started the Toons the titles weren’t punny. Then I somehow came up with the stupid concept of making each title a pun. Ursula delegated that job to me. Do you think I might regret that idea, oh I don’t know, every week maybe? That’s actually underestimating it.

I know what you’re thinking. No, I can’t give it up, and yes, I’ve admitted I have a problem. I’m weak, what can I say. So it is that I will probably continue to inflict awful puns upon my family and friends (those who haven’t fled screaming) and yes, you too dear reader. I only write this to ask your forgiveness, but I digress.

This Toon begins a new era: the dawn of Kariya Nation. We hope it’s interesting and amusing on its own, but if you really want to appreciate it, start following Mississauga Musings. Little does Howzit know that his cousin Nando is not what he seems…

Other revisions: none

There aren’t any external changes this week. Most of my Trax revison time was devoted to fighting with CSS. Frankly, I’ve started to doubt the value of the conversion to full CSS. It doesn’t seem capable of the style I want, so that means choosing a different look. I really was hoping to avoid that. I’m beginning to get the old one-step-forward-two-steps-back feeling. It hasn’t quite gotten that far yet–I’m still at the running-hard-to-stay-in-place stage–but I’m sooo close. Wish me luck.