Intern Account: Malia:
"My second visit to my least favorite island was multitudes more enjoyable than my first. It was more enjoyable most likely because I came well prepared with long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, sunscreen, and water or because I had already survived the worst during my first visit. For this field day, a reporter from Hana Hou magazine ventured out with us to Mokoli'i to watch our work with the offshore islets. This trip consisted of an arthropod survey of which Kim was in charge, and an ant survey, of which I was in charge. We chose a transect through the islet and surveyed the ants and arthropods every 10 meters. I used spam, honey, and peanut butter to measure the multitude of ants per 10 meters 7 times, while Kim used a sweep net and aspirator to collect arthropods along the transect. My battle with the evil Lantana bushes began in the last thirty meters of the trip since I was had the tape measure and needed to be the first to break through the thick bushes. We left the ant surveys out for one hour, and after the hour, I needed to snatch the bag and close it before the Yellow Crazy Ants (which are extremely quick) left the bag. The trip ended with both Kim, Heather, Jaap, and I collecting arthropods from 'ilima plants. Upon leaving the islet, I was overjoyed that my legs did not burn as I entered the ocean."

Intern Account: Kim:
"Heather, Jaap, Malia, a reporter from Hana Hou Magazine, and I made our way out to Mokoli'i Islet which is also known as Chinaman's Hat. The tide was low enough for us to walk about 20 meters over to the islet from the boat. When we first reached the beach, the ant infestation was very evident; ants were crawling on the damp beach sand and also on the wet rocks. This seemed like a very unusual habitat for these ants to be attracted to. After all of us reached the beach, we made our way to the path to the left of the area we landed on. Our biggest concern of walking around the islet to the other side was the bush-looking plant possessing thorns that tear at your legs and arms. It was a good thing we came wearing thick, long pants. When we reached the other side of the islet, we started to run transects. My task was to collect any bugs present along every ten meters of this transect. I used the net and Heather collected the bugs by hand, looking under rocks and in crevices. Malia measured every ten meters, trying to stay in line with the cave we set as our ending point up towards the top of Mokoli'i. Meanwhile, Jaap would record the vegetation along each set of ten meters. I found it extremely difficult to collect arthropods with the net because once I came to the plant with the thorns; the net would get caught in it and I all the arthropods had time to escape. The farther we traveled up the islet, the denser the vegetation. The difficulty of walking through the vegetation ultimately prevented me from really catching an accurate record of the arthropods in the area. My next task was to collect any kinds of arthropods I could on a specific host plant. At the end of the day, we had a Ziploc bag full of vials from the arthropods we collected. We also became very aware of the ant infestation on the island."