Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
October 6, 1997
When I discovered the seabird orphanage, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. There, lined up on a low plumeria branch, sat several white tern chicks looking as cute as any creatures possibly can.
While I stood cooing, two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service volunteers approached with a jar of tiny silver fish. “Want to feed them?” one asked. I couldn’t get my fingers in that jar fast enough.
While feeding the baby birds their fish, a ruckus began at my feet. I looked down. An adorable brown noddy chick had waddled over and, between insistent peeps, was gently nudging my bare toes. “That’s Chunky,” a worker told me. “He never can wait his turn.”
I gave Chunky a fish and knew for sure this was heaven.
The place is also called Midway, an atoll 1,200 miles northwest of Honolulu. After spending five days there last week, I’m convinced the grand experiment people are conducting at Midway is alive and thriving. The experiment I mean is not one of the many wildlife studies so common in this area. Rather, it’s a test of a new type of partnership: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has teamed up with private business to run an ecotourism venture in a national wildlife refuge.
Now, this may not sound like the most exciting idea you’ve ever heard in your life, but believe me, a visit to this atoll will turn even the most jaded skeptic into a true believer.
From the moment of arrival, you feel you’ve been transported to a Pacific island fairyland.
Since the Midway plane arrives in the evening, your first sight of the main island is the small cluster of twinkling lights. These lights in the middle of a vast, dark ocean make the place look charming and inviting. And it is.
Friendly people greet visitors enthusiastically from the middle of a beautifully preserved American town of the 1940s, complete with Huffy bicycles, white picket fences and World War II military buildings.
As if that isn’t unreal enough, hundreds of thousands of unafraid seabirds swoop, strut, sit and croon everywhere in this quaint little town. The effect is like being in a Jimmy Stewart movie scripted by Dr. Seuss.
Soon after my arrival, a bird flew inches from my face, causing me to duck. “The bats of Midway,” a Fish and Wildlife worker laughs. It’s a joke. For besides their nighttime flights, there’s nothing even remotely batlike about these delightful seabirds called Bonin petrels.
A recent boom in Bonins here is a major comeback for this species, made possible by the eradication of rats.
And that’s just one of the beneficial projects under way at Midway since it became a tourist destination.
While I was there, an Elderhostel group helped marine biologists monitor activities of the atoll’s 200 spinner dolphins.
Other visitors helped researchers with seabird and Hawaiian monk seal work.
Of course, you don’t have to work if you don’t want to.
Some visitors simply soak up the slow pace of the picturesque place as they enjoy its history and watch its wildlife.
Some of my finest moments came while scuba diving and snorkeling Midway’s reef. It may have been the best I have ever experienced in the Hawaiian chain.
As a nature writer, I have a privileged existence in the wildlife world. I go places off limits to others and get my hands on creatures most people see only in pictures.
But, oh, how often I have wished others could experience such moving, personal encounters with Hawaii’s native animals.
And now they can. For many of us, opening Midway to the public is a dream come true.
For information about visiting Midway, call 1-888-574-9000 or 1-800-326-7491.