22. C.I. Day 3: Let's play a game...Leaf or Crab?

 Wow. I thought we had seen a lot of crabs yesterday, but today took it to a whole new level.

6:30-7:45: Head to Jetty. Watch Red Titan cargo ship be guided to dock to receive phosphate from the mines. Chris snorkeled.

7:45-8:30: Breakfast and lattes at Smash Espresso Bar. Return snorkel equipment to Vistor's Center.

8:30-9:00: Prepare for tour

9:00-14:00: Nature tour with Chris Carr from Indian Ocean Experiences. (Crabs, blowholes, boobies, pigeons, history, culture).

14:00-15:00: Rest & reprovision for the afternoon

15:00-15:45: Watch bird feeding with Christmas Island National Parks staff at rehab center

15:45-18:30: Self-tour on both east and west coasts. Involuntarily play the "Leaf or Crab" game, followed by "Coconut Crab Cricket".

18:30-20:00: Dinner at Lucky Ho chinese restaurant

      We rented snorkeling equiptment on Saturday that we did not use because of the weather. Since we were up early on Monday, had time before our tour, and there was some light peeking occasionally through the clouds, we went to the jetty so I could snorkel around the reef while she took pictures and enjoyed a quiet morning.

Putting on fins under the watchful eye of a Common Noddy

View of reef from street

View of the reef from a lookout point on the NW coast

       We next moved to the Poon Taan district, one of the island's four settled areas, by 7:45 am to get coffee at the Smash Espresso Café. We were the only customers not wearing yellow or orange fluorescent shirts and work boots. Smash Espresso apparently serves as the morning gathering point for the large number of workers employed by the mining company or the city works department.

Smash Espresso Cafe

Eggs on toast and chai lattes

        We had been saving up a lot of questions about wildlife, cultural life, and island history for our nature tour this morning. The guide picked us and an Australian woman up near our hotel and we all headed back to the crab bridge that mom and I visitied on Saturday. After rain on both Saturday and Sunday, the number of crabs coming out of their sandy burrows in the forest was unreal. We had seen them on Sunday along the roadsides, but by Monday they had gotten so numerous that the National Park Service was closing roads in order to protect the busiest thoroughfares. Considering that crabs don’t start migrating until they are 4 years old, the big males leading the start of migration may 15 years or older. This possibility made it even more heart-breaking to see increasing numbers of orange splats in the road as the day progressed. To be fair, within 2 hours of their demise, the only evidence of the dead crab was a moist spot in the asphalt. The rest were eaten by other crabs and continued the cycle of life. 

Compare the numbers here with Saturday morning

Working their way towards a break in the barrier

Close-up

Chris, our guide, showing off the underside of a robber crab

Road closures due to crab migration

       It is hard to describe the otherworldly of seeing so many of these crabs in all parts of the island and hearing the scraping and sliding of shell on shell as they crawled over each other along the roadside barriers to get to the next road opening. Near the crab bridge there was an old rail engine slowly being swallowed by ferns and other forest growth. We weren’t playing at the time, but found the “hidden” geocache on the train just the same. 

Abandoned train on Murray Road

      We next drove to the Margaret Knoll lookout on the eastern cliffs. From that vantage point, we could see remains of a previous mine site that had been abandoned when all the phosphate from between the limestone pinnacles had been removed. We also saw a brown booby sitting in its treetop nest. Christmas Island hosts 7,000 nesting pairs of brown boobies each year. It was also a good viewpoint for the “Golden Bosun”, or the endemic white-tailed tropicbird. They fly so high that we could not get a photo worth showing.

      We had two other locations on our tour, both on the island’s south coast. The Boulder Track was a forest trail fringed by hundreds of crabs creeping through the leaf litter and home to the “strangler fig,” parasitic banyan tree that over time had killed its host and rose from the forest in intertwining ribbons of roots. Then, we visited The Blowholes and enjoyed tea and biscuits (i.e., cookies). Every 30 seconds a large enough swell would get pushed through holes in the porous limestone, causing a geyser of seawater to shoot upwards with a roar. 

Crabs along the Boulder Track

Watching where we step

Crab burrows

Pre-made crab burrows

Buttress roots of a giant strangler fig

Action shot at the Blowholes

Blowholes at rest

          We ended the tour at 2:00 pm, had a snack in the room, and then left to watch the 3:00 pm bird feeding at the National Park seabird rehabilitation facility. The center opened many years ago after a devastating cyclone in which a lot of the tree-nesting birds had fallen from the nests and needed care and it has continued through the years. There are a few cages on the property for birds that need to be quarantined, but largely the birds are free to leave whenever they feel up to it. There is minimal intervention with the birds, even those that are brought in covered in seeds from the Pisonia (Bird Killer) tree. They get fed frozen fish with vitamin pills once a day and have time to clean themselves off, but aren't banded or tracked. I wasn't clear if there was a veterinarian involved in their care. One bird, a 34-year-old Christmas Island frigate bird held a special position of honor at the sanctuary. She was rehabilitated years ago, but kept coming back to visit occasionally. The staff held a birthday party for her this spring that coincidentally she decided to show up for!

Brown booby waiting at the gate for dinner

Bird feeding time

Erica, the veteran sanctuary frigatebird, expressing her displeasure at being crowded

Juvenile frigate getting excited for lunch

        Next to the wildlife sanctuary we saw a phosphate conveyer belt in action. According to our guide, there are 5 km of conveyers across the island that moves crushed phosphate from the mining areas to the port where it is loaded into cargo ships several times a week. The amount of bare land for mining is a stark contrast to 67% of the land that has been preserved for the national park and is jarring to see. However, Christmas Island as a settlement would not exist but for the mines. Operations are closely watched by government regulators with regards to air quality and remediation of previously mined land, no new mining areas are allowed, and the company provides important jobs and significant support to local organizations. I didn’t talk to any park rangers about the mines, but our guide was very positive about the positive contributions of the mine to flora, fauna, and humans on the island.

Phosphate

Conveyer system to transport phosphate to port

"Red Titan" cargo ship being filled up with phosphate
LEAF OR CRAB?

            We left the wildlife sanctuary and returned to the west side of the island to see Martin’s Point lookout and to see an Abbott’s booby in its nest. After that, we returned to the Margaret Knoll Lookout to see flying foxes/fruit bats coming out for their evening activities. It was at this point in the trip that driving turned into the very stressful game of “Leaf or Crab.” On the paved roads, the crabs were easy to spot but not always easy to avoid. Since I was the designated driver and got very upset hearing the accidental crunch of a crab under a tire, I sent mom out of the car to clear a path I could drive through. In other stretches of road, particularly unpaved areas through the national park, it was hard to distinguish crabs from leaves until the last minute. Mom hung onto the door handle for support as I swerved right and left the road, trying to avoid the crabs. Robber crabs were coming into the road as night fell, and those could not be avoided or driven over. Mom and I were hopping in and out of the truck with sticks trying to get them to move to the roadside.

Abbott's Booby

Road clearning by a professional

Road clearing by mom

Leaf or Crab? (answers on the right)

         There are only two restaurants open for dinner on Monday nights and I wasn’t interested in the tavern selling only fish and chips. We went to Lucky Ho’s Chinese restaurant, and I had TWO hard ciders to try and decompress from driving stress. On our way out of the restaurant, we spotted a pair of tourists at another table that we kept seeing at various points across the island. We stopped at the table to joke with them about this and learned that they were a father/son pair (ages 83/54) spending the first part of their vacation on Christmas Island and then going to Cocos Island on the same flight that we were returning to Perth on. It was fun to chat with them, and then later to see them at our guesthouse’s pool, the Tai Jin Museum, and the Visitor Center. It is indeed a small island.

Lucky Ho's Chinese restaurant (photo from TripAdvisor)

Sunset from the restaurant