Gerald (center) with Tom Roberts (R) and me (L);
Apia, Samoa, 2010 on return from Nikumaroro
So here's the first one.
Dear Noah and Jake,
Thanks so much for letting me go on the TIGHAR Niku VI
Expedition. It was a lot of fun, and I
want to tell you all about it.
As you know, I flew all the way to Samoa on a big jet
airplane, in the box that you and Mom packed me in. It was very comfortable, even though you did
have to take my legs off. I waited
around in a warehouse in Apia, a city in Samoa, for awhile and then went on a
truck to the harbor. Grandpa Tom
unpacked me; we were happy to see each other.
Grandpa Tom put my legs back on and took me aboard the
expedition ship, the Nai’a. “Nai’a” means “dolphin” in the language of
Fiji, the island country where the ship is usually docked. But she’s not docked very often; mostly she
sails around taking divers to see Fiji’s beautiful coral reefs and fish. And she takes the TIGHAR teams up to the
Phoenix Islands every few years to look for Amelia Earhart. Mom or Dad can tell you all about Amelia, and
why TIGHAR’s looking for her.
My job on the expedition was a pretty easy one. All I had to do was sit in the ship’s salon
and let people look at my bones. You
see, back in 1940 – that’s so long ago that even Grandpa Tom hadn’t been born
yet – people on Nikumaroro Island found some human bones just like mine, but
they found only thirteen of them, and as you know, I (and you, and most other
people) have hundreds of bones. Grandpa
Tom and the other TIGHAR people think that the bones may have been Amelia’s,
and they want to find the rest of them.
The trouble is, the site where they think the bones were found – they
call it the Seven Site – is a sort of ridge (like Cutler Ridge, but not as big,
and without any houses; come to think of it, it’s not much like Cutler Ridge at
all). Anyhow, it’s a kind of ridge made
up of broken pieces of coral. As Dad and
Mom can tell you, corals are little sea animals that grow in all kinds of
shapes, and leave their skeletons when they die (just like people do). Their skeletons are in all kinds of shapes,
too, and when gazillions of them have died, their skeletons form islands like
Nikumaroro. So the Seven Site is made up
of all these broken up coral skeletons, and it’s really hard to tell the
difference between a piece of coral and a human bone. So Grandpa Tom wanted all the TIGHAR people
to look closely at my bones, so they’d know what they were looking for at the
Seven Site.
When everything was loaded aboard Nai’a, we sailed for Nikumaroro.
It’s about six hundred miles between Samoa and Nikumaroro – which
everybody calls “Niku” – across open ocean.
On the first day it was really rough, and the ship rolled waay over to
port (that’s left) and starboard (that’s right), back and forth and back and
forth. But I didn’t get seasick because,
of course, I don’t have a stomach.
Leaving Samoa
The second day the ocean was smoother, and everybody started
getting things organized to go to work when we got to the island. Grandpa Tom put together screens for sifting
dirt, which was actually pretty silly because there’s almost no dirt at the
Seven Site. His friends John, Walt and
Jesse assembled the ROV and AUV – these are machines that go deep underwater
and take pictures. Other people
sharpened their bush knives and trowels and made sure their cameras were
working. My
new friend Tom Roberts got his total station running, so he could map where
things were found. Ric, the Boss TIGHAR who's in charge of everything, did all kinds of things and talked with everyone and occasionally played his accordian.
We finally got to Nikumaroro, which is a beautiful little
island without any people on it at all – except the TIGHAR people when they’re
there. Every morning after breakfast
most of them would get in a rubber boat called a Naiad and go ashore. John, Walt and Jesse would work with the ROV
and AUV to explore underwater in the lagoon and on the reef, while everyone
else got in another Naiad in the lagoon and rode down to the Seven Site, which
is clear down at the other end of the island.
There Grandpa Tom and his friends laid out areas to excavate, and they
dug and dug looking for bones and stuff that Amelia might have left.
I stayed aboard the Nai’a,
which spent most of its time tied to the wreck of a big steamship that
crashed on the island many, many years ago; about all that’s left of it now are
the engine, some tanks, and the shaft that the propeller was attached to. I just sat in my corner of the salon and
watched Suliana and Richie, and the others who take care of things. They cooked, cleaned things up, and made sure
everything was in place for the TIGHARs to eat and sleep and take showers. I also watched the sailors, who kept the
ship working, fished, told jokes, played the guitar and sang, and sometimes drank
kava. Mom and Dad can tell you about
kava. It actually got pretty
boring. Every afternoon the TIGHARs
would come back all hot and sweaty and dirty, and over dinner they’d talk about
what they’d done that day on the island.
I got pretty interested in the island, but nobody offered to take me
ashore. So I decided to go by myself, if
I could figure out a way.
At night after everyone went to sleep – and they went to
sleep early, because they were so tired, except for a few people who sat up in
the bow and watched the stars (They called it “Star Theater”) – I started
getting up out of my corner and exploring the ship. I went up to the bridge and down to the
engine room, up to the bow and back to the stern, very quietly so nobody
noticed me.
Back on the stern there was a platform for getting in and
out of boats. I liked to go back there
because I could be close to the water and talk with whoever came swimming
by. I got to be friends with a lot of
dolphins and sea turtles, and talked with a couple of sharks, too, though the
dolphins said not to trust the sharks, they were tricky and might try to bite
me. Anyway, one night a big green sea
turtle named Frederick offered to take me ashore, so I climbed on his back and held
on tight to his shell while he swam over to the island. I got all wet when he dived down into the
deep water, but of course I don’t have to breathe so I didn’t drown. Frederick swam right into the lagoon, and let
me get off at the nice long sandy beach where the TIGHARs kept their lagoon boat. They call the place Club Fred. I was really happy to see AUV sitting there,
and he was glad to see me. He said he
was charging his batteries; he was all hooked up to solar panels like they use
on spaceships, but of course it was night so he wasn’t really charging right
then. He said he was fully charged and
would take me anywhere I wanted to go around the lagoon.
Club Fred
Very close to AUV’s camp, two big birds were sitting on an
egg. Actually they weren’t doing so at
the same time; they took turns. They
were a mommy and daddy – or would be when their egg hatched. They were brown-footed boobies, named Honk
and Honkette. They had one egg that just
sat there on the ground being an egg, and one of them sat on it all the time
while the other one went out and caught fish to eat. They were very proud of their egg. They let me see it, but not touch it, and
they squawked really loud and flapped their wings if I got too close. I couldn’t blame them; it was their baby,
after all.
So from then on, every night as soon as the TIGHARs went to
sleep, I’d tiptoe back to the stern platform and Frederick would take me into
the lagoon. Then I’d talk with Honk or
Honkette, whichever one was on duty, and then climb aboard AUV and we’d go
around looking at stuff and having adventures.
To be continued
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