i 
February 20, 1965 
Dear Maryanna, 
Tomorrow morning at 0900 we'll be tied up at the pier in glorious Pago 
Pago again. We can all hardly wait] 
The trip has been going along pretty well except for one thing - the surf. 
We have been badly creamed on every island except Enderbury so far. Everytime 
I get in the raft I get wiped out. The worst of these was at Baker when we 
really got plowed under by a 9 or so foot wave just as it broke. The raft full 
of gear stood straight up in the air and then came down on top of 7 of us 
poor, hapless, madly scrambling souls. It was as complete a wipeout as we've 
ever had anywhere. We then spent the next twenty minutes running frantically 
up and down the beach grabbing items of gear as they floated by. Several items, 
including the Polaroid camera, were bequeathed to the sea that morning. 
The surf on Baker was so bad we had to haul raft and gear # mile across 
the island to the south shore in order to leave the island. Even then, we 
got creamed going out. After getting clobbered on three straight islands we 
took one very long, uncomfortably close look at the surf booming into Hull 
island and decided to make that trip some other day. Huge waves were sweeping 
across the channel through which the landings are usually made so landing there 
was impossible. We then chugged up and down the shore looking for an easy 
landing but, with waves of the monster variety (15 footers) plowing onto the 
reef, there wasn't one. The ship watched our hesitant progress up and down the 
shore for a while and then ran up the "recall" flag (which was appropriately 
colored yellow.) 
Later that day we landed on the lee side of Hull near the old village and 
were half seriously thinking about portaging raft and equipment across the island 
and then chugging down to the bird colony through the lagoon. This ended rather 
abruptly when the raft we were using blew up. With this we gave Hull up as a 
lost cause and chugged on to Birnie Island.. 
Because of th& very bad surf conditions both boats and motors have taken 
more of a pounding them is normal for 1 % or more of these trips. Everything 
had been pretty well demolished and we can only hope that they will hold together 
until we get passed Jarvis. The ship has already promised to use the whaleboat 
at both Christmas and Palmyra so we only need the rafts for four more islands. 
Since they have recieved such a bad pounding I doubt very much if the rafts 
will be serviceable by the end of this trip. The one that blew up is not good 
for anything but very short trips because the patch that was put over the three 
foot hole can't be put on tight enough to completely stop the air leak. The 
other raft, since it will be used all of the rest of the time, and has already 
been battered about won't be in much better shape at the end. This is the worst 
surf I've seen in four trips. 
On Howland Island, we captured another one of Munro's ancient Sooty Terns: 
Biol Sarvey 38 - 312056. This bird was captured because Larry went completely 
wild one night and banded the grand total of 3507 birds for a new project record. 
I doubt very seriously if any one else will come closd to this total. His 
announced goal is 100,000 birds before he quits the project and at his present 
rate he'll make it. 
The banding total for the first half, in spite of the washout on Hull Island 
and a full moon on Enderbury Island (through the entire night), stands at 
26 , 997 . Lots of surprises such as Wedge-tailed Shearwaters and Audubon's 
Shearwaters on Birnie, Audubon's on Enderbury and Wedge-tails on Canton (a whole 
colony of them# ) 
