The Safina Center Podcast Episode 2: Hob Osterlund
On this episode of the Safina Center Podcast, host Louis Pagillo speaks with Safina Center Conservationist-in-Residence Hob Osterlund about her work with Laysan albatross in Hawaii, conservation communication, and taking action in local communities.
Hob Osterlund is the founder of the Kaua'i Albatross Network and the author of Holy Mōlī: Albatross and Other Ancestors (Oregon State University Press), now in its fourth printing. Hob produced the Telly-award winning documentary Kalama's Journey, a story about an albatross chick adopted by two moms, and about the crucial role she could play for her species as sea levels rise. Through public presentations, social media and bird guiding, Hob tirelessly inspires people to care about the magnificent mōlī of Hawaii.
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Louis Pagillo: Hello everyone, my name is Louis Pagillo, and you’re listening to the Safina Center Podcast! Joining us today from Kaua'i, Hawai`i is Safina Center Conservationist-in-Residence Hob Osterlund.
Hob is a photographer, conservationist, and author of the books Holy Mōlī: Albatross and Other Ancestors and Birds of Kilauea Point. She’s also the founder of the Kaua'i Albatross Network, where she helps manage albatross populations on private land, educates the public about conservation, and maintains data on the many Laysan albatross that nest on Kaua'i.
In 2018, She produced the Telly-award winning documentary Kalama's Journey, a story about an albatross chick adopted by two moms, and the cultural and ecological significance of her species.
Prior to working in conservation, Hob graduated from the University of California-Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in Ecological Geography, and earned a master’s in Nursing from the University of Hawai`i-Manoa. She later founded Hawaii’s first inpatient pain management program at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu.
Thank you for joining us today, Hob!
Hob Osterlund: Thank you!
L: Albright, so I wanted to ask you, first off, what exactly does being a conservationist mean to you? Because that is a very umbrella term for a lot of different jobs within wildlife conservation, so I wanted to ask what that term means to you specifically.
H: Mmm, good question. Off the top of my head I would say what it means the most is that we include lots of other lifeforms in our planning and our thoughts and in our decisions, really. Politically, socially, spiritually… so that when, for example, here in my community we just had a presentation about what could happen for sustainability in the town where I live, and at the end my question, of hearing the list of values and the list of possible resources, I said, “do any of these assumptions include the native animals?”
And the person who was presenting and who is actually an expert on the topic and has implemented policies like this in other parts of the country, said “oh no we want to do that, we want to consider that…” And from a conservationist’s perspective, it would be an assumption to begin with.
So in other words, what you’re planning to build, what road you’re planning on putting in, or what other kinds of human structures that are being planned, somewhere in there there’s conversation about the impact it will have on the native plants, animals, cultural values of the core culture… Here, the Hawaiian culture is very important and filled with wisdom about how we fish, how we divide land, what access is allowed.
All of those things enter into, I think, a much broader way of think. “Conservationist” I like a lot more than “environmentalist,” just because environmentalist seems a little bit more data driven. Conservationists, I think the value is in the word, in that we want to conserve a number of the things that are here in front of us, but we can sometimes too easily ignore.
L: So what exactly do you do as a conservationist with the Kaua'i Albatross Network? What does that look like, your sort of day to day?
H: Well, it depends on the day, a lot of days I’m on call for what tragedy has happened, and other days it’s more joyous calls which is that hatching has started or egg-laying has started… I keep data on more than 10 years of data on Kaua'i and the number of birds we have nesting here, and where they are and how safe they are… and by safe they are I mean, there are a number of levels of safe, but the one that we can do the most about is predators. So how safe they are from predators and what we can do about it in encouraging the surrounding neighbors and community to help keep the birds safe.
I have a regular social media presence with the birds, and so I do a contest every year in guessing the first day that the first albatross is seen back at the beginning of the nesting season—which might coincidentally be on November 7th, the day of the Safina Dinner. It usually is sometime November 6th or 7th or 8th, somewhere right there. I’d like to see it happen minutes before the dinner so I can announce the first bird back.
L: That would be so exciting!
H: Yeah it would be very exciting! So they spend months at sea solo, and when they come back here, they come back to reunite with their mates for the purpose of loving up their mates, and the purpose of starting the next breeding and nesting season.
So, we keep close track of that and where they all are on the island… we keep track of what the egg count is, and then after that we have an egg adoption program from the West side of Kaua'i where there’s a Navy bass, and we move fertile eggs, if you saw Kalama’s Journey, we move fertile eggs away from there because we don’t want bird-aircraft collision, and bring them to nests that have infertile eggs up here on the North shore.
And here in Princeville, we have, nearly half of the nests are female/female pairs, and so a lot of them will have infertile eggs, unless they’ve found themselves a sperm donor, they’re going to have infertile eggs, and so how wonderful to bring them fertile eggs for the two moms to raise, and also sometimes male/female pairs have infertile eggs. And so we want to not waste a single one of those fertile eggs and bring them up to parents who can raise them—all chicks require two parents
So, there’s that part, there’s coordinating that, there’s coordinating access to the properties… roughly half or sometimes more of the birds of the nest are not on federal refuge property, they’re on private property. So that requires ongoing relationships with the property landowners and property managers, having the gate codes, knowing where I can get in and how I can get the adoptions and the banding and a number of things we have to do with the chicks,
L: Mhm.
H: And then the first month is keeping them safe from feral cats. Feral cats have learned that young chicks are prey and they will sneak up in the middle of the night to an unsuspecting parent sitting right on the chick, and startle the parent and then just swipe the chick out from under them. Ground nesting birds all have that problem in Hawaii because none of them grew up with predators, so they don’t have any particular strategies for avoiding predation.
That’s the early part of the season, there could be any number of other things: meetings around cat trapping, meetings around laws and legislation to help protect them, meetings around environmental impact statements and learning what we can do to keep them safe within building codes. All sorts of things come up, every season is a little bit different.
L: So, speaking of the seasons, I believe that the albatross nesting season goes from November to July?
H: That’s correct.
L: So now that we’re in August, you know coming right off of that, how was this season for the albatross?
H: This season I don’t have the total fledge yet, I think our fledge count will be similar to last year…
It was a rough season in the properties that I monitor because we had some unusual predation events, one involving bulls breaking through a fence and wreaking havoc in a colony and that’s never happened before… and it’s tougher in ways that we can’t do anything about. The plastic pollution problem has gotten worse… we’re seeing chicks now suffering not just big pieces of plastic, we’ve always big pieces of plastic in their—they puke out something called a bolus when they fly, albatross are pre-programmed to puke and so they throw up indigestibles much like an owl will throw up an owl pellet.
L: Mhm.
H: and those typically include quite a bit of plastic chips. Gets them out of the digestive system and that’s good to get it out. The new problem that we’re seeing that’s more alarming is a collection of microplastics that bypasses that puke system—that regurgitation system—and goes into their lower intestine and then causes bowel obstruction. Little tiny microplastics the size of the grains of sand. Those are not things that we can do much about here, and that’s tough for those of us that monitor them regularly several times a week… you know, you can’t help but fall in love with these birds. They’re so innocent, and curious, and bright, exploratory… the things humans are throwing in their survival path are pretty difficult.
L: Yeah, I feel like microplastics are definitely going to be one of the next big issues. They already are one of the big issues right now that a lot of conservationists and pretty much every animal on the planet are facing.
H: Right.
L: Just because of how much we use them and how it hasn’t seemed to stop, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop any time soon.
H: Right. It’s not anything you can go scoop up.
L: Yeah.
H: These big rescues and taking tons of fishing nets out of the ocean are great, but the ocean, as Carl would say, the ocean is a very big place, and has lots and lots of flotsam and jetsam in it. It’s tough.
But, you know there’s a quote that I posted this morning by Tennessee Williams that makes me think about exactly what I’m referring to, let me find it here… he said “We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it all the time is love.”
L: That’s a very powerful quote. I love that, actually.
H: Yeah, it really brings the truth to me because what we’re doing with the birds and a lot of our attempts that I haven’t even mentioned yet in public outreach for people to get to know who these birds are, is help people to fall in love with them.
L: Mhm.
H: What’s difficult then is the grief. For the ones that don’t survive, or the ones that become disabled as a result of the issues that we;ve caused. It takes a—I don’t have anything like a thick skin… I can’t ever see myself ever aspiring to it, much less attaining it—what I do have, what I have learned is the ability to grieve. And to not try to pretend it’s not there and not try to avoid it because it’s painful, but to have it and move on. And that is, to me, the access to love. Or the ability to not lose love as an option.
L: Mhm.
H: And love, as we know, can create communities. And can create great interventions. In fact, there's another quote that I love that said whenever love is in the collective—this is misquoting—but yeah, whenever love is involved in a group of people, miracles occur. So that’s the other quote that I live by, is that the way that the Safina Center works and the way that a number of our projects work here is that the assumption is love. And the encouragement is love. Data is there, of course, you have to be practical… you know, there’s an old Hindu saying that goes “trust in the lord, but tie up your goat.”
You know, you can’t trust that everything is going to be taken care of if you do nothing.
L: Right.
H: So that’s the two wings of the bird, is grace and self effort.
L: I think that intersection of grief and love is something that I’ve had the privilege of seeing a lot after working for the Safina Center for a little over a year now. It’s something that’s definitely common among those who work in conversation because that’s the biggest motivating factor, I feel like—love for our planet, love for the beings we share the planet with.
H: Yeah, I’ve found that rage, anger, are part of all of it but it can’t be the main motivating force, I don’t think. I think it burns itself up, or kills us.
L: Right.
H: So if we can—the more we can inspire love and the more we can be love ourselves which is the main way to inspire it—not just teaching it, but being it—with these critters and with our native cultures and our native plants and all that we have—our air, our water, our everything—the more other people will become involved in the solution.
And I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen countless miracles happen around these birds, where the timing of something that saved them was unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable, impossible to create timing. And so, I have lots of reinforcement for that belief and that's what I’m going to take with me till the end of it, whenever that is.
L: So, speaking of love, I’ve noticed that, in your writing, you present this love for a lot of native Hawaiian birds.
H: Yes.
L: You take great care in writing about their ecological and cultural significance, much like you do with the albatross or mōlī, as you say, and I was wondering what was it exactly that drove you to love mōlī so much over these other birds? I’m not saying you don’t have love for them, but what is it that made you devote so much of your time to these birds specifically?
H: Yeah, that’s a very good question. You know I stumbled upon a pair of—or three, I guess—albatross back in 1979 when I first moved to Hawaii. And by the way, I’m a sixth generation Hawaii resident. In my parent’s generation they moved to Berkley where I was born. But when I came here, I felt summoned here. I didn’t really quite understand why I was coming to Hawaii, but I felt summoned. And shortly after moving here, I was working on Oahu and Honolulu, and I visited Kaua'i and I stumbled upon three albatross up here on the north shore. And I didn’t really realize how rare they were, and I didn’t understand anything about them. Except, they stuck with me. I photographed them, I had a photo of them up on my wall for years, they just stuck with me in ways that I didn’t understand.
And then, I read portions of—my Grandmother’s cousin was an anthropologist here in Hawaii. She wrote a book called Hawaiian Mythology, which is still in print. And it’s a translation of lots of stories—moʻolelo, or stories, here—fabled stories about how life came to be. It’s also called the Kumulipo, which is the creation chant, describing how life came to be and what interacts with what, and what means what. And so, in that book, I came upon the concept of aumakua, which perhaps is similar to Native American totem animals. Aumakua is an ancestor that comes to you often in the form of an animal. It can be also a type of rain or a type of wind, it can be other things but animals are among them. And so, I realized in that point, when it said the way you know your aumakua—your family's aumakua—is how you feel around them.
And I had felt an immediate kinship with them that I still feel to this day. I have never been bored around them, or seen an albatross in flight that I thought was just humdrum. So it’s the way I feel around them. I feel that they’re ancestors that are guiding me, protecting me, warning me, that they have told me that my life’s purpose is.
So when I was able to retire from the acute medical scene and leave behind my 24 hour call, I could then focus much more on albatross. And other native birds, too—most things that you do that will protect albatross will also benefit other native birds.
L: Right.
H: So, they’re not exclusive in the protection that we’re trying to provide for them, but they are and always will be my favorite critter. I think they’re nature’s greatest creation.
L: That’s very high praise! I love that, though.
H: Laughs
I do!
L: I’m glad you mentioned all of those ties to culture too, because I always was very fascinated with how much your writing and everything you produce has such a deep respect for Hawaiian culture. And, you know, it’s the same thing you kind of see in a lot of Indigenous people’s writing, and I’ve always loved that about your work.
H: Thank you! Well I don’t pretend to have any Hawaiian blood. I wish I did, but I don’t. But I have inherited my ancestors’ deep curiosity and deep respect. I try not to represent the Hawaiian culture because I find that even single words have multiple meanings here.
L: Mhm.
H: And so I try not to use many Hawaiian words without talking to colleagues to make sure that I’m using it correctly. But the Hawaiian respect for the Āina—for the Earth—and for understanding our relationship with it, is a deeply evolved and profoundly meaningful way of looking at things. So I think we can all benefit from the whole concept of aloha, the whole concept of sharing resources and not overtaxing them, overusing them or claiming them as ours.
L: Mhm.
H: Yeah, the Hawaiian culture, I feel a great deal of respect for it. I’m glad it shows up in my writing. That’s my intention
L: Yeah, I think it really is that care you take for it too. Like you said, you don’t have Hawaiian blood, but you’re so careful in how you respect and recognize that culture, and present that in your work. That definitely comes through.
H: Good!
L: So, you also mentioned your time working pretty much 24 hours on call as a nurse.
H: Laughs
Yeah.
L: So I wanted to ask, before you were helping animals and wildlife, you were helping people as a nurse, so what exactly… did you switch, or did you just retire and had more time for the albatross? What exactly happened there?
H: Laughs
Yeah. Well, I started at the Queens Medical Center in Honolulu. I started back in the eighties. I started a pain and palliative care program there, which was intended to be its own service that could be consultants on any patient in a 500 bed hospital that was having uncontrolled pain or other symptoms. It started out as pain management and then gradually morphed into pain and palliative care, which is end of life care, as well as care for people who are sort of chronically, medically unwell.
So, the beauty of it is really the same beauty as it is working with birds, in that, if I enter the room of your mother and she’s on her last days, I will very quickly become part of your family. You will welcome me because you can see what I can do to help your mom. And, your mother’s last days, you will always remember. More than all the other days that you’ve ever had with her. Or your father, or your uncle, or your brother—whoever you want to substitute in that story. Or a partner, or anybody. A spouse, a child, anyone. You will remember their last days profoundly. And so, when a person can be invited into that room, to help control the physical symptoms, and sometimes other symptoms of your loved one, it transforms those last few days, or weeks or months, in a way that’s profoundly intimate.
With the birds, I feel an intimacy with the tiniest little—if a sparrow hits a window, and it’s lying on the ground—I don’t even like to say it, let’s say she—I pick her up, and hold her in my hand, in my fist, for a half an hour until she can fly, I feel profoundly moved. By this miracle
L: Mhm.
H: By this little, flying miracle. I feel this way about all birds, really. Maybe not so much around some birds, but most birds.
Laughs
So that was my job. To provide expert opinion—I have a Masters degree in nursing so I could have an independent practice—most people would probably think of me as having been a nurse practitioner, and a lot of people are familiar with that role now. So I would be there, as part of my team, and we had a bunch of other people that were part of the team too, who had more or equal expertise about different things. So, it’s really similar in some ways.
L: Mhm. I think what you were saying about that beautiful profound moment of holding that bird…
H: Yeah.
L: I think that’s something a lot of us sort of devalue, because you know, we can have moments like that every day with things like our pets, any animals we see outside… and we’ve sort of shifted away from that thinking, and honestly just moving towards that thinking really does—it changes your life for the better so much.
H: I so agree, and I think pets are the access to that way of being better than anybody. Pet, dog, cat, bird, whatever you have, you can see their individuality, you can see their character, their desire to stay alive, their desire to just be fully themselves. So absolutely. And I think when we can’t feel that love, it’s a failure in grieving because we have lost so much… I don’t know anybody that’s not been heartbroken.
L: Mhm.
H: And so, how then do you escape from this burning house with love in your hands, right?
So that’s it. If you can feel deep love for your pet, you at least know it’s there. You at least know it’s possible for you.
L: Yeah.
H: And if it’s possible there, maybe it’s possible for a tree, or maybe it’s possible for a bird at the feeder outside, or maybe it’s possible for your neighbor who you don’t particularly like.
L: Laughs
H: You know?
L: I feel like I always sort of—it really is something to experience yourself, because I always sort of knew that, right? Like, I had that idea in my head, but paying more attention to it, is such a difference. Like, I had two cats, and they were brothers in the same litter, and one of them passed away in November. And the other cat was behaving so differently because he was mourning.
H: Yes.
L: I noticed he would go to the spots that his brother was in more often… we found him laying where we buried his brother even though he never goes over there, and he was very much trying to be alone for a while—he’s normally very affectionate. And for like months, he was very different for a while, and seeing that firsthand, and really experiencing that firsthand, really does affect you.
H: It does.
L: And going back to what you were saying about grief and love, it’s a great motivator, too.
H: Yeah, absolutely. With albatross, we definitely see grief. One brief story, I came upon an albatross chick one day that was about two months old that was previously very healthy, and a parent—the mom—was right beside the chick, and I quickly realized that the chick had died. We still don’t know by what.
L: Mhm.
H: The chick had died, and so the mom was right there, talking to the chick and preening him and showing affection to him. So I told the property manager, “let’s just leave them alone and let the mom have her time.”
And then the mom stayed, for about three days. By then, we have to think about burial, because of other problems a dead body can cause.
L: Right.
H: So, the property manager came and dug a grave, and put the chick in the grave and covered it. And then, there were just some rocks nearby that were part of a flower garden, and just coincidentally, by the way that the rocks were, one of the rocks looked like a tombstone. And the mom came and sat right there next to the grave and the tombstone-looking rock. I posted that picture, and boy, it brought out hundreds and hundreds of reactions from people, and I thought, “What is it about this photo?”
I looked at it and realized that it had that tombstone look. Ever since then, every year since then, that mom and her mate, have created a nest on that grave site.
L: Oh my god… that’s…
H: That’s where they have built their nest, and where they have raised their subsequent chicks.
L: I’m sorry, I’m like, about to cry… that’s so powerful, that is amazing.
H: I know, I know. They know things. So many times I just wish I could get inside their brains and see, or their hearts and see what they’re experiencing. They talk when they lay their eggs. When the females lay the egg, and the mate comes back, male or female comes back, they both talk to their eggs and talk to each other—animatedly talk to the egg and talk to each other. And when the chick hatches, one of the parents will be sitting on the egg when it hatches—always only one egg—and then when the other parent comes back, they’re often just so excited to see that chick under there. But the other parent doesn’t want to stand up yet! They don’t want to move! They don’t want to relinquish their babysitting duties, their childcare duties, and so I’ve seen the mate try to pry the mate up by sticking their beak underneath them like a tool to try and get the bird to stand up.
They’re so excited to see their babies, they talk talk talk to the babies and touch it, and talk to it, and even when they’re hatching—takes them three days to hatch—at first it just looks like a little pin prick in the egg, and when it’s dime-sized or quarter-sized, they’ll try to touch the chicks with their beaks or their bills, try to touch them and talk to them. And the chick will chirp back. So you can see the relationship even before hatching starts, you can hear the chick chirping inside the egg.
So I guess what I’m saying is, if you’ve ever wondered whether birds can love, take a look at an albatross parent and chick. You can see it in that film—it’s only eight minutes long, take a look at it for your own enjoyment some time—called “Kalama’s Journey” on Vimeo. But, yeah, you can sure see, and equal to the previous part of our conversation, because they can love they can also grieve. And because they can grieve, they can also love.
L: I think something about your work that always strikes me is the way, even through photos or videos, the way you capture these albatross and just the way they are naturally, makes them feel so alive. Because a lot of times, when you see like, nature photography of any animal, there’s definitely a disconnect because you’re not there, you’re not seeing it in real life.
H: Right.
L: But, you know, photos like you mentioned with the gravestone one… like that one, seeing that raw emotion from an animal, even through a photo, really does reach you.
H: It does, yeah. In my photography—my kind of photography—is that when I’m in a colony, I’m always looking for what photo depicts part of their story. I’m not looking to win the world’s best nature photographer. I’m looking for what picture can I send Louis that will remind him of what his cat did when he was grieving. So that then your network expands, because you already had that sensation with your cat, and now you can see “look, that happens with a bird too!” And if it can happen with one bird, why couldn’t it happen with 10,000 species of birds. And then, the next time you look out your window, you think, what is that bird in the tree doing?
L: Mhm.
H: Why are they doing that thing, or why are they making that call? What does that mean… and gradually—Amy Tan’s new book really tells this story, Amy Tan’s new book about her notebook and drawing and writing about birds. You gradually can see more and more about what they’re doing, and what they want to try to accomplish. It all has to do with staying alive, but it also has to do with the wellbeing of their babies. A lot of it has to do with the wellbeing of their babies, especially the female birds… what mate can I choose that will be the best for the survival of my babies?
L: Mhm.
H: And male birds have their own survival instincts too, that may or may not be part of the chick rearing, but they’re part of the whole story in a huge way.
L: I think the photo that always stuck out to me, like the one that really struck me from you, was—I think it was Audubon, where they nominated it as one of the best female bird photos—was the female/female pair.
H: Right.
L: Because for one I’m queer, so I thought that was awesome. But it’s also like… seeing these two birds show so much affection when there’s no way they can mate—you know it’s not just a biological thing at that point, there’s something more there. And that was very moving to me.
H: Yes, well I’m a female/female nester myself!
L: Laughs
H: Laughs
So I share your affection for that. And they do mate, by the way! They do physically mate.
L: Oh, really?
H: Yeah, they just don’t end up with a fertile egg, usually. And, you know, albatross have a reputation of mate for life. And what I say now after these years of studying them, is they mate for life except when they don’t. I’ve seen lots of threesomes, and I’ve seen divorces and remarriages, and when the first bird comes back in November, and their mate is not back yet—when they’re waiting for mate—they could easily run into the bushes with another bird.
L: Mhm.
H: For literally 60 seconds, that’s all it takes. And then, they both go back to their pre-ordained nest sites and wait for their mates. And it has no interruption at all—it’s not obstacle in their love for their mate. It simply was a moment.
So it’s not exactly what we think mate for life means to humans!
Laughs
But it does mean—it does mean that they still are, choosing a mate for them is all about “are you going to be all in for our baby?”
L: Mhm.
H: Are you going to be all in? Are you going to replace me on the egg? Are you going to come back with food? Are you gonna be all in for the baby?” And so, it's’ actually a good thing for one of them to have been in the bushes with a boy for 60 seconds, because that means they’ll have their own chick. Their own biological chick.
L: Right.
H: If they don’t do that, if they have—and we recognize the nests, by the way, because they have two eggs in them—if we candle both those eggs to see if they’re fertile, if either of them are fertile, and if they’re not then we give them a fertile egg, and they accept it with zero hesitation. I’ve never once—in all the adoption years I’ve followed—never once seen a mom or a dad resist their new egg. You just take away their old one and give them a new one. They have a good sense of smell, they must be able to smell that they’re different. But they just look down at the egg, and they go “Eee eee eee? Oh you took my baby and gave me a new one? Okay! I’m cool with that!”
L: That’s something I thought was really amazing in “Kalama’s Journey,” where you have the clip of them doing that.
H: Yeah!
L: And they’re using that little like, board to I guess hide that they’re switching the egg, but the bird obviously knows it. And they’re just okay with it!
H: That’s right. They’re okay with it, they somehow trust it. I’ve seen—I’ve seen situations where, for example we were doing some cat trapping, and I put a trap in an area that I thought was a safe distance from the chick. But the chicks get very exploratory, and one day I found that a chick had gotten into a cat trap. And, you know, it’s a Havahart trap, it’s a live trap, it doesn’t harm them, it just confines them… And so, the trip was inside the trap, and so the pop—the dad—was just sitting outside the trap waiting.
L: Laughs
H: He wasn’t furious, he wasn’t flailing, he wasn’t crying… he was just sitting there, as if he trusted that one moment, one of these days, somebody is gonna come along and do something about this problem!
Laughs
So, I got the chick out of the cage and the parent kinda scolded the chick for being far away from the nest—some parents like to feed them only at the nest site—and the chick will wander around, you know, 10, 20, 30 yards away… So they want them to come back so they can find them. So he sort of scolded the chick and the chick dutifully went back to the nest and got fed, and then that was it!
I was able to film that whole thing. Those are the kinds of stories I mean. On social media, if you can confine it to a paragraph—the story to a paragraph—enough so that people can see the core of the story, it can carry a lot of love with it.
L: So, we’ve mentioned “Kalama’s Journey” a few times, and that movie came out in I think 2018?
H: Yes, that’s right.
L: So it’s been around the time it would take for an albatross to come back home, to my knowledge. I wanted to ask, has Kalama come back?
H: Yes! Kalama came back when she was five, I saw her for the first time and I was just like a cheerleader, out loud. And there she was, not far from her nest site. So that would’ve been 2023? And then this year, in 2024, she not only came back, she laid an egg!
L: Oh my gosh!
H: And found a mate! And they normally don’t do that until they’re nine or 10, and so she was the youngest nester I’ve ever seen at six years old, and that egg did not survive. And that’s really common for new nesters, they don’t really quite know what to do. So, but I—she lasted on that egg long enough, or the egg lasted long enough, for me to see who her mate was. And she has a male mate. And the egg was fertile. So all of that portends well for her for this next season.
So hopefully, she won’t get caught in longline fishing and she won’t consume too many plastics, and she can find enough food and come back and nest again in nesting year 2025.
L: I am so happy to hear that, because when I was like, drafting the questions for this interview earlier this week, I was thinking like, “should I even put this on here? Because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to take it if the answer is no.”
H: I know, I know, I know! Exactly! That’s really true. You don’t know. Well if they don’t come back it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve died. It sometimes means that they’ve relocated, and I can’t believe that some birds don’t stop at Midway—which is their mothership, and on the way from the North Pacific here—some birds don’t decide to stay there because… shoot, the mate pool—the potential mate pool—is hundreds of thousands of birds, as compared to, you know, a handful here.
So, I don’t assume that they’re dead for sure. But, it would be sad if we didn’t see her again. It’s true.
L: Speaking of Midway, I did want to ask a few questions about that.
H: Sure.
L: So like you said, it’s sort of their mothership. That’s where they’re known to nest, it’s where you can see all of the albatross. You’ve been there a few times, I believe.
H: Just once.
L: Oh, really?
H: It takes a lot to get there. I would love to go back there, but I’ve been there only once for the nest count.
L: Mhm.
So, I know that there’s a lot of concern about rising sea levels at Midway because it’s at a low elevation.
H: Yes.
L: So, a lot of focus on conservation that I could find is focused on recolonization—whether that be supporting the colonies that just showed up naturally, like you’re doing, or, I did read about some people questioning whether or not they could forcibly recolonize some albatross in California. And I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.
H: Yeah, I think recolonization is brilliant. And, I guess I wouldn’t call it forcing, although in some ways it is. It’s basically expanding their loyalty. Albatross are hugely loyal to their nest site, and so, are they able to predict sea level rise? Are they able to come up with a strategy of what to do when storm surge first and sea level rise after that completely inundates their nesting ground? What happens then?
And what we do know is that they’re very attracted to their own species. They’re attracted to themselves, so a colony here on Kaua'i that has dozens of birds is going to be more attractive to them than one that has only one bird.
L: Mhm.
H: They like that. They like the activity. So it’s been successfully done at Guadalupe Island, Mexico, where there is, organically, a Laysan albatross and black-footed albatross nesting colony, but was devastated by predators and a number of other problems—cats were one of the big problems—so what happens is that, either chicks or eggs are moved to a new place, and then raised by hand, by humans. Or, if there are parents—if there are adult parents that have infertile eggs, then they can raise them.
But basically then, the chick imprints on a different place. It imprints on a place where he or she will return if they survive—roughly half of them survive to five years old—so those half of them will come back to the place they grew up. And then, therefore, hopefully expand that colony after that so it happens organically after that, rather than done with human intervention.
L: Mhm.
H: And the reason that black-footed albatross were the first to be moved—to places on Oahu and then at Guadalupe—is that the black-footed albatross at Midway tend to nest closer to the shore. And closer to the shore means the storm surge will take out their nest sooner than it will birds that are farther inland.
L: Right. So, I also wanted to ask, speaking of things like rising sea level and storm surge—if you don’t mind me asking—I wanted to ask about the wildfires last year. We know that they had an incredibly tragic toll on the human population on Hawaii, between people losing their homes or lives.
H: Yes.
L: I wanted to ask what the impact on the wildlife was, from your perspective, and also if it impacted the albatross at all.
H: No, the fire was on Maui, and there are no albatross on Maui. And the reason that the albatross are almost exclusively on Kaua'i is that we don’t have any mongoose here. Mongoose are a predator that was brought to Hawaii by sugar cane growers, thinking that they would get rid of rats—that they would predate on rats. But mongoose don’t predate on rats, they just became an additional predator.
L: Mhm.
H: So, Kaua'i got saved from that fate, and that’s why we have albatross here—because we don’t have mongoose on Kaua'i. We have other predators that are problematic.
So, I’m actually unaware of there being negative wildlife impacts because of the fires. It may be that it’s happened, but usually on low lands of Hawaii, the birds that are there are largely introduced birds, not native birds.
L: Okay.
H: They can survive well on their own. They have survived by being brought here and/or arriving here on their own, and they are quite numerous actually—doves, and mynas, and wild chickens—they were brought here too. You know, they know how to survive well.
Up in the mountains, and down in the freshwater areas where the water birds are—different problems.
L: Right. I think that’s really fascinating that there’s so many introduced and invasive species in Hawaii.
H: Yeah, some of them are not invasive, some of them are not harmful. They’re just introduced, and are actually quite charming. Others will become a problem, but our main issue right now in the mountains—mostly people are thinking these days about our honeycreepers and our mountain birds—they’re being destroyed by mosquitos. That’s because of climate change, because mosquitos can get to higher elevations now. Mosquitos themselves are an invasive species, they’re not native to Hawaii. We know to the day what day mosquitoes were brought to Hawaii in a water keg. So, mosquitoes now can get to higher elevations because it’s not as cold as it used to be up in the higher elevations, and so one female mosquito landing on the exposed skin of a native bird—90 percent of them will be dead from avian malaria.
So that’s our crucial issue right now, is our forest birds.
L: Mhm.
H: Entirely different intervention than for albatross.
L: Yeah, that sounds like a much greater task. Dealing with mosquitoes as opposed to like, larger predators.
H: Right, yeah, it’s a very different task.
L: So-
H: You’ve done a lot of good research Louis, I have to hand it to you.
Laughs
L: Thank you! It’s what I do! I do have a degree in journalism, despite being here now.
H: Well, good job!
L: I wanted to ask something else as well about conservation. How exactly did you get your start? We know what motivated you and what inspired you, but where did you start in the field of conservation?
H: Oh, I think that came to me organically. My parents were animal lovers, you know, we went camping and I think probably the most influential was that I went to camp as a kid. I went to both campfire girl camp and church camp growing up, and those were my Mecca. Boy, those were… I live for that. To be able to be in the woods, to be able to see the critters and hang out with them was—that will forever have an impact on me.
So wanting to have something to do with their well-being just, I think, just comes automatically with the love that you have for them. So, when I was at Cal Berkeley, I declared an individual major called “Ecological Geography,” so I could design my own curriculum. And wildlife biology was part of that. My senior thesis was, I backpacked into a place called Mineral King in Sierra Nevada where Disney was planning on building a ski resort. So I was a very mini version of Erin Brockovich, a wannabe mini-me.
Laughs
And I wrote my thesis on why there shouldn’t be a ski resort in Mineral King.
L: Well I’m glad we had a mini-person like you to do that!
H: Well, I can’t take any credit at all for it happening, but I think the likelihood is that Disney decided it was too expensive to do.
Laughs
L: Yeah.
H: But anyway, they would’ve had to break some laws too. Anyway, it didn’t have anything to do with me, but that’s where my interests were.
L: Okay, now speaking of your interests, when you were still working in the health field, you had a bit of a stint as an in character comedian.
H: Oh yes! Absolutely!
L: And I wanted to ask—you’ve also done research in laughter and humor in—I think it was… chemotherapy units.
H: Yeah, that’s right.
L: So, I was wondering, have you considered how that sort of energy—like that sort of comedic energy—can affect conservation? And I’m mainly asking if Ivy Push will ever come back.
Laughs
H: Laughs
L: I did watch the two sessions you have up on Vimeo, and I thought they were hilarious.
H: Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, wow. You have done your research, hats off to you.
Ivy Push: And then I was seeing this patient with one doctor, the doctor say “Nurse, get me one tongue depressor.” I say “Doctor, the patient don’t need no tongue depressor… her tongue already depressed, she been eating hospital food for two weeks.”
H: You know, I was fortunate enough to have a parent—my father—who was extremely funny. And not in the—he didn’t tell jokes. It was never disparaging. He just found things to be funny. And he would laugh until he cried. It was easy to make him laugh until he cried. And it was highly contagious, his laughter. Everybody in the room would be laughing and having no clue what they were laughing at because he just found things so amusing.
And so thank heavens I inherited that gene from him. That was my greatest inheritance I could ever imagine—is finding what’s amusing in things, and then finding the power of humor. So, if you read in my book—in Holy Mōlī—I describe, in nursing school, how the nursing instructors tried to repress that out of me, because in those days—that was a long time ago, way before you were born—it was nursing school and it was supposed to be very serious. Nursing was supposed to be very serious. And I don’t think they would’ve said it this way, but how I see it now is that laughter was too intimate. Because when you laugh with someone, you basically like them.
L: Mhm.
H: I mean if you’re laughing at a comedian’s joke and the joke is disparaging, it might actually be anxiety laughter, or it might be a different kind of laughter that I don’t think is true… the true form of humor.
L: That sort of like, nervous laughter where you’re doing it to fit in.
H: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
So, they gave me a very hard time about laughing with patients. And it caused me to really examine what was my relationship with humor and what do I think about it. And I thank them to this day, because it really helped to cement my relationship with laughter and its role in creating intimacy between people. To this day, I can’t be really, really close friends with anyone unless I can laugh with them.
L: Mhm.
H: You know, some people have a hard time laughing… and so, I can love them, I can think they’re great people and have high respect for them, but we’re probably not going to hang out that much together if we can’t laugh.
L: Right.
H: Just because, to me, that’s so much a part of me persona… so much a part of what makes me get up in the morning.
L: Mhm.
H: And so, then I created this persona, this alter-ego named Ivy Push, and I performed that character hundreds of times. And the idea with Ivy Push was to make nursing visible. Because I found that nursing was so invisible to most people that they thought nurses were basically handmaidens for doctors, for one thing. But the other thing is that if you—almost any media portrayals, it’s changed a little—it’s a little different now—but almost any media portrayal that you would see of nurses in hospitals would be that they would come into the room and tell you that visiting hours were over.
L: Mhm.
H: And I can promise you in forty years of professional practice, I never once said that sentence. That is not what nurses do!
Laughs
L: Yeah!
Laughs
H: But that’s what media thinks they do! And that’s what creates that Nurse Ratchet kind of… you know, you’re either this battle-ax, awful human being; or you’re this sexy night shift nurse that everybody wants to climb in bed with. And nurses are just a gigantic range of people in between that. And I think to this day, the most heroes I’ve ever met have been in nursing. People who care about strangers every single day and work their butts off to take care of them, and sometimes people who are very abusive.
L: Mhm.
H: So I wanted nurses to be visible, I wanted to walk that really fine line… if you notice, some of those topics have changed because those films are old now, but, walking that fine line like the gay marriage piece, back when it was much more controversial.
L: Mhm.
H: And of course that tide has been rising again to make it controversial again, but Ivy Push had to figure out what she thought about it, because one of her patients asked her to be his maid of honor. For—to marry his boyfriend, because he was dying of AIDS and he wanted to marry his boyfriend. So Ivy Push had to figure out what to do about that.
Ivy Push: Now I get this one other patient with AIDS tonight. Now this guy, he thinks his life is short. So tonight, he likes marry his boyfriend. Now I know there’s been all kinda brewhaha about this in the papers lately. So I don’t know what to think. So I come inside this utility room to ask God what I should do.
God says to me, “Ivy Push.” I like when he calls me by name. He knows I’m gonna pay attention. He said, “I’d like you to remember two things: First one is ‘Love one another.’ The second one is, ‘Don’t believe everything you think.’”
So tonight, I was one maid of honor.
H: So, the issue is very real, and very painful. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be funny.
L: Yeah, I remember, when I was watching it, that show specifically said it was from ‘88… and I remember watching it and you start the joke by saying like, you know, you have this patient who was suffering and dying of AIDS, and I was like, she’s not going to go there, is she!? Like in ‘88!?
Laughs
H: I know! Yeah, that was an old film, and that was a very real issue when gay marriage was not legal in anywhere yet. And so, I wanted to bring it forward—end of life care, resuscitation of the terminally ill… all those kinds of things are real issues that nurses deal with every single day. And so, how could I bring them forward in a way that didn’t make you run for the hills because it was way too serious and way too painful? And that’s the magic of humor. It gives you a chance to laugh about it and see yourself in everybody. You see yourself in the nurse, you see yourself in the patient, you see yourself in the patient’s boyfriend, you see yourself in the terminally ill patient who doesn’t want to be resuscitated. You know, all of that, you see yourself. And then, those sort of walls between us start crumbling on their own.
L: That’s very powerful, I love that.
H: I use it in conservation all the time too, and the way I do that, number one, is with language—because in language, I saw this happen in the hospital countless times—in the hospital, you know, we speak—in medicine we speak a language. And I often call it TLA, or “Three Letter Abbreviation,” where we go in and say “you know Louis, we checked your CBC and your EKG and we thought you were going to be DOA, but no…” then we, you know, and then we go on with our three letter abbreviations. And we—if I said that to a medical audience, and when I do tell that story to medical audiences, everybody knows exactly what I’m talking about because we use those abbreviations.
But you don’t necessarily understand them all. And so, then you start feeling stupid, and you don’t want to seem stupid, because my ability to take care of you depends on our relationship, and, so you want to please me, so you’re going to want to nod and say “yes doctor” or “yes nurse” or whatever you say and act like you understand, and then afterwards, you didn’t learn anything that I told you about.
So that’s number one, is speaking a language that everybody speaks. So, for example, we had—the one and only abuse situation I’ve seen with humans and albatross here on Kaua'i was some teenage boys drove up to a cul-de-sac and started honking and flashing lights and trying to scare these albatross chicks. Who stopped them, were the roofers, who were on top of a house on that same cul-de-sac, stopped those boys. And those roofers, when they got off work each day, had come down and were taking pictures of the chick and taking pictures of the parent. I had communicated with them on a number of occasions, you know, just to walk up and say “Isn’t this cool? You know, look at this thing!”
I don’t want to walk up to them and speak science talk to them. Because then they’re going to feel stupid, and here in Hawaii, then we’re also going to have the racial divide, where they’re going to think, “Oh that’s just a haole, that’s just a white person, who’s trying to be superior.”
L: Mhm.
H: And then they’re going to reject the bird, because they reject me. I don’t think people think that through very far sometimes.
And so, the idea is that whoever comes forth with interest, whatever amount of money they make, whatever they do for work, whatever culture they come from, the idea is to connect with them at their level of interest. It doesn’t mean talking down to them, it doesn’t mean anything derogatory. It just means, “Look, you and I can stand shoulder to shoulder and share this joy. Isn’t that cool?”
L: And who isn’t interested in laughter, also?
H: Exactly!
L: That’s the perfect communicator.
H: Exactly, who doesn't want to laugh? And pidgin, which is out language here in Hawaii, is full of humor. It’s very funny. So that’s why Ivy Push spoke in pidgin, and that’s why we—one of the things that I’ve done that the Safina Center has been so helpful with, is that I wrote and paid for four public service announcements that are 30 seconds long—that are very expensive to air on radio stations, PSAs are very expensive to air on commercial radio stations—and they’re all funny. All four of the commercials focus on one particular aspect of albatross life, and it plays during the time that that thing is happening in their lives on the island. So each one plays for two months, twice a day on each station, and it’s one of those rare conservation messages that asks nothing of you. It doesn't ask you to donate, it doesn’t ask you to feel ashamed for how we’ve ruined the Earth.
L: Mhm.
H: And so many—so much in the way of environmental messaging is like that, like you know, we’re doomed because this thing is happening, or this species is doomed if you don’t contribute. And so, I don’t know if that’s effective—maybe it must be because people use it a lot—it’s not effective to me. I’m not usually excited to donate to an organization that makes me feel depressed.
L: Yeah, that’s something I, you know, have thought about a lot from my perspective as someone who does social media for a living. Um, and I never really thought about it from that, like, angle. Of just making it, you know, funny, and not necessarily as dire, or almost guilt trippy.
H: Right. It is very guilt trippy. Well, I understand why 501c’s do that. They need people’s money, they’re constantly on the search for money and I get that, I totally get that. In this situation, because of Safina Center money, and other donors, I am able to spend money without asking for any more. Right? I’m able to say… I’m able to donate this money to an organization that’s another non-profit who gets—because they get a special rate for playing these PSAs… they get a special rate which is half of what it would be if it was a commercial rate, and so, you know we work as a team—I write the stuff, we hired the guy who’s a comedian—very funny guy—and well-trusted here because he’s from Hawaii, he grew up here, he’s local… and he was also a ranger at Kīlauea Point, so he understands both the birds and the culture. So, he’s not going to be suspect. Nobody is going to think he’s trying to manipulate for any reason, and we’re not trying to manipulate for any reason. We’re trying to illustrate to people who live here that we have a species of bird nesting here that nobody else in the world has.
L: Right.
H: And isn’t that cool? And here’s some cool things about them. And they’re very funny.
So that’s what it’s meant to do, is sort of riding in on the horse of humor and dropping off a letter that says “here’s a cool factoid.” And because when you laugh with somebody, it usually means there’s a certain degree of trust.
L: Mhm.
H: Right, if you don’t trust somebody, you tend not to laugh at them. Their jokes aren’t funny, and if you’re seeing them on stage you’re not going to stay… you just don’t feel great. But you know, you met people who’ve just—everything, you meet them and automatically you’re laughing together because there’s kind of a—there’s sort of an instant trust. That’s how Patrick is with these PSAs.
And we’re doing that with murals now, too. We want the murals to be fun, to be interacted with. So the mural that we’re hoping to get painted sometime real soon, the albatross wingspan in the mural is life size. So that means that if you want—and it’s at eye level—so you want to come up to it and stretch out your wings and compare your wings to the albatross wings. That’s what I mean, is it encourages play.
L: Yeah.
H: It encourages you to want to interact with it, you’re not being preached to or looked down upon, but saying “look, we’re all in this together, and isn’t this cool?”
And so, Ivy Push isn’t going to come back, to answer your question
Laughs
But that’s the beauty of having recorded videos and writing books, is that they outlast you.
L: I’m glad the spirit of Ivy Push is still there in those PSAs!
H: Oh absolutely, yeah.
L: So, I’ve had you for a little while now, I don’t want to keep you for too much longer, so I want to ask one more question. What sort of advice do you have for somebody who wants to get into conservation in their local area?
H: Hmm… Wow… Great question. I guess I would say, find a species or a place that just resonates with your heart. It might be—you know, it might be a kind of flower or botanical garden, or it might be a forest, or it might be a sea shore… it could be one species of animal or bird, it could be a piece of the ocean, a lake… whatever it is, someplace that you feel at home. See if you can find that. See if you can be quiet enough, still enough, to recognize when your heart says “that’s the place I love, right there.” Maybe it’s one in a million, but it’s just—pick one.. And just see what’s happening there that you can serve.
L: Mhm.
H: Can you go pull weeds there? Can you… that just happened to me that last week, a pair of older women who had rescued an albatross chick—was walking down the middle of their street in their neighborhood going the wrong way trying to fledge—they rescued it. And so, I went to photograph them and give them a shirt that said “Mōlī” on it, just to thank them… if you look on Facebook, I think I put it on Instagram, too, you’ll see a picture of these two ladies.
L: I think I did see it on Instagram
H: Yeah, so, from different cultures themselves—they were both Jehovah's Witnesses, which is how they met each other, and—but they knew something needed to happen to save that bird, and they did it. And I said, “You know, you could be around them more if you wanted to go to the refuge just down the road from you, you could volunteer there.” And they said what they wanted to volunteer to do was pull weeds. And so, I said, you know once a month there’s a “weed and watch,” where you can go at sunset after the refuge has closed and really—and experience sunset at one of the most beautiful places on this whole Earth, and pull weeds while you’re at it.
And so, that’s what they wanted to do. So, I gave them the phone number of who to call, and as fate would have it there’s one this week, so hopefully they figure out how to get there and how to do it. But that’s what I mean, every—it takes a gigantic village, all this work. So, I heartily resist something when people tell me I single-handedly did something—mope, nothing is single-handed in this Earth. Nothing ever is single-handed. So, I want them to be part of the family of people who do something good for the albatross, and of course when they’re doing something good for the albatross, it’s also good for lots of other reasons. That's what I’d recommend.
L: I love that you narrowed it down to finding just one specific thing, too. Because there are so many problems in this world that weigh on pretty much everybody, and when you try to tackle all of those, it’s very exhausting. Like, as someone in both conservation, and a lot—and who does a lot of activism, it’s so hard to keep up with. But when you have that one thing that you truly love, it’s not as tiring to put that much effort into it, you know?
H: Exactly. And do it at the rate you can do it, you know? If you’re raising children and you don’t have any spare time at all, see what there is spare time for. Or can you take the kids with you? Or what can be done that’s practical for you? If you’re a single mom raising little kids, I would say… you’re already doing enough.
L: Laughs
H: You’re already—if you can raise kids and instill in them a love for critters and the Earth? If you can do that, that’s the biggest gift of all, you know? Don’t feel guilty that you’re not out there stopping sea level rise, you know. And one more thing I’d encourage, which is to vote.
L: Right.
H: Please vote.
L: It’s so important right now
H: So important.
L: Well, thank you so much for all of that. I want to ask: Where can we find you?
H: You can find me… well, I have a website—albatrosskauai.org, you can—on social media—you can find me on Facebook by my name Hob Osterlund, and on Instagram I am @hobatross. H-O-B-A-T-R-O-S-S. @hobatross.
Or you can come to Kaua'i and hire me as a bird guide, and I’ll take you out on an adventure.
L: If I ever get the time, I’ll take you up on that offer!
H: There you go! Or just come here some time when I’m doing book signings at Kīlauea Point—well if you came here Louis, that would be different of course, you have access to me.
L: Laughs
H: You know all my numbers!
Laughs
L: Yeah, that’s true!
Laughs
H: And anybody, just give Louis five dollars and he’ll share it all, and spit out his drink
Laughs
But no, come to Kīlauea Point some time! Come when I’m doing a book signing and then you only spend the 10 dollar entry fee—and of course the airfare to get to Kaua'i, but that’s a whole other thing.
L: I’m sure the views are worth it!