(BBC) 
p. 19 
Jr 
KrIdler Comments 
was spent checking on the Laysan Finch trying to come up with a reasonable 
population estimate on the Teal. The squalling of the Sooty Terns day and 
night as well as the moaning of the shearwaters made sleep rather dif¬ 
ficult. We had no radio communication; we were able to contact the ship the 
first night when it was about 65 miles from us on the way to Midway and then 
lost communications, so were quite fortunate that we had no bad accidents or 
the like. John Srcock got bitten on the foot by a yearling seal. It just 
barely broke the skin., luckily he had on a pretty good pair of leather shoes 
so the bite wasn’t too serious although his foot bothered him for three or 
four days and was rather stiff. We were rather disappointed with the two 
fellows we had with us, these two PHD. candidates, one a botanist and one 
an ornithologist, and rather surprised in the lack of interest the ornitho¬ 
logist showed in the bird life there. Of course this made wrestling seals 
rather difficult, they were rather reluctant to jump on the seals with us, 
I think they were somewhat frightened by them. Several times it wound up 
with John and I trying to wrestle the things and almost getting bitten in 
the process, while these two stood off and watched rather apprehensive about 
jumping in there with us. 
I hope to get' around to writing up the notes here sometime this month 
after we get our budget estimates in. I now have an assistant, pretty good 
boy. He was a project leader at Lake Andes but its going to-take a little 
time for him to get used to working on this area and becoming oriented and 
conversant with our multiplicity of duties here, especially enforcement 
angle. I’ll try and get these notes cleaned up tomorrow and get the tapes 
and recorder back to Bob Pyle so he can send them on to you. I know you 
have been waiting for them and its been bugging me that I couldn’t get 
them to you sooner, but it seems to be one damn thing after another, turn¬ 
ing over here , you have to drop what your doing and rush off to take 
care of the new crises. This is where the man in operations envies the 
research man. 
I also tried to get in my leave time the tail end of this month but 
looks as if I am going to sacrifice five or six days of It and then lose 
it. 
Give my regards to Binion if-hes back there and tell him I’m sorry I 
didn’t get a chance to talk to him more over the phone, but I had a meet¬ 
ing in my office there. 
