A Little Tropical Island - Rota

Hi all!


This blog is going to be about my trip to Rota. First a little geography!

Geography of Rota
Rota (Chamorro: Luta) also known as the "peaceful island", is the southernmost island of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and the second southernmost of the Marianas Archipelago. It lies approximately 40 miles north-northeast of the United States territory of Guam. Songsong village is the largest and most populated followed by Sinapalo village (Sinapalu). In 1521, the first European to see Rota, was the lookout on Magellan's ship Victoria, Lope Navarro. However, Magellan's Armada of three ships didn't stop until they reached Guam, so the first European to arrive in Rota (in 1524), was Spanish navigator Juan Sebastian Elcano, who annexed it together with the rest of the Marianas Archipelago on behalf of the Crown of Spain. Rota has diverse flora and fauna.

Rota is approximately 11 miles (17 km) long and 3 miles (5 km) wide. Its coastline is about 38 miles (62 km) long. The highest point on Rota is Mt. Manira which is 1,625 feet (495 m) high. Rota is 47 miles (76 km) north of Guam, and is 63 miles (101 km) south of Tinian and is 73 miles (117 km) south of Saipan.
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Before visiting the little island of Rota last week for the first time, I was wondering how I was going to get there. Well my method of transport turned out to be a very solid plane that was built in Ireland – the Shorts 360.

It can carry about 30 people and it was full of people both coming and going to Rota. The mix of people flying is about the same as Saipan – Japanese, Korean, a few Philipino, local Chamorro or Carolinian and very few “haole”s like me.





We made it up into the air and I got my first aerial view of Saipan, since we landed in the middle of the night when we first arrived here – 3 weeks ago already!

While flying to Rota I was on the West side of the plane and was just looking towards all of you thinking boy that's a lot of water between us – not a glimpse of any land, roughly 6000 miles of water!

Whew, after thinking this, about 30 minutes later I was happy to see Rota show up right under the engine. As it turns out it is a beautiful, tranquil island with only two very small villages on it. It has some of the most pristine jungle because it wasn’t the target of as much Allied bombing during World War II as was Saipan.

The Rota “bat biologist” – Julia  picked me up at the little 1 or 2 room airport and we were off for my tour.

And a grand tour it was. Driving down the road I spied my first monitor lizard – about 2 feet long in the road. Cool - a little komodo dragon!

Whoa, what a beautiful view, and looking down what do I see but white “fluffs”. Look closer Julia said and so I did.  They are nests of the red-footed Booby!!!

A lifer, and a fluffy baby too. Flying overhead are red-tailed and white-tailed tropic birds! White Terns were diving towards the cliffs, just over the little boobies.

And the ocean vistas! Whew…

 

That's the island of Guam in the background.

The next stop was a Challenge! A spirit tree – a strangler fig tree, an old druid that has withstood typhoons, war and many generations of humans. Julia asked, “Want to climb it?”!! Whoa, well sure. It doesn’t look as big as it is and certainly not as big as it was when we were climbing it!!

But perched up on top!! It was well worth it! And Nathan helped me climb it. He always loved to climb trees and grew up climbing avocado trees in California, so help was there. So neat, felt pretty special sitting up there, breeze blowing, birds calling, a tropical ocean spread out in front of us.

Trees are the earth's lifeblood and ancient cultures were wise to recognize this. Writers too – the Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and most recently the film Avatar. To this day many indigenous cultures worship trees or one specific tree. In Avatar, the Na'vi worshiped the tree God Eywa, while in Haiti Voduists worship Loco, the spirit of vegetation in the Vodun religion.

The energetic spirit in trees and plants connects us to nature, it makes us feel their strength, their longevity, their steadfastness! It was good sitting up here. Now to climb down? It turned out it wasn’t too bad and suddenly I had an extra incentive -- a car showed up behind our truck that was parked in the middle of the road. Hey, this is a quiet island! In fact this was the only car we saw on this road.

Now re-energized, our next stop brought us to my first view of the Mariana fruit bat – the fanihi in local vernacular. It was awesome. I first saw it flying above a cliff and you wouldn’t believe it but it looked like a hawk flying, only problem is there are NO raptors breeding on these Mariana Islands! But these bats are big and beautiful. A nice warm brown underside and dark features – on their wings and heads.

It was time to move on.  We had to meet a boat in the small southern village of Songsong, so we take a boat ride off of Wedding Cake point and count the bat colony facing the ocean. First we made a stop to get some lunch at Tia’s Café. Very few restaurants here, maybe 3 to 5, but the two I tried out were very good.

Got on the boat and headed out for the sea. What a sight, just a gorgeous harbor, blue, blue ocean. Our guide was Yamamoto from the Rota SCUBA center, and he was telling me the visibility off the point here is over 200 feet!

We found the bats roosting on a very steep ocean front cliff. Next we headed back to Julia’s house where she is rehabbing some fanihi (s). It's always special to see animals out in the wild, but it sure is fun to see them right in front of you and to be able to hold them. She has one bat that has an injured wing and is used for environmental education – a special bat, helping to protect other bats from poaching.

It turns out that part of the Chamorro culture includes the eating of bats, but because they are currently listed as a threatened species, it's illegal to capture or kill these bats. So of course, the price of bats has gone way up and people still buy them so poachers have a real incentive. Local efforts are being made to educate the people about the need to protect these bats now, so that in the future they could perhaps be legally hunted and remain part of the local culture. One of my challenges here.

Now, done for the day, I found my hotel – the Valentino. A very nice hotel with a room looking right over Sasanhaya Bay. And a nice room inside too.




Woke up the next morning about 5:30am before sunrise and walked down to the water and watched the sun come up. I saw a great egret, a reef heron, a gray-tailed tattler and a rudy turnstone. It is hard for me to imagine the great distances these birds fly to make it here and survive!

See Mike I really am working!

The next morning I went out and observed one of the best maternity colonies remaining on Rota. This colony actually produces young every month of the year – this is the source for most of the other bat colonies on Rota -- a very, very important resource. But just this morning the wildlife technician found some shotgun shells just below this important colony. Some work definitely needs to be done here….

After lunch we met with the mayor or Rota and the new director of the Rota Department of Lands and Natural Resources. We discussed the potential of having the bats play a role in the ecotourism of the island, but that requires protection of these unique animals. The local children seem to think this is a good idea!

After meeting with the mayor I had enough time to go visit the field team that is conducting research on the Mariana Crow. It just happened to be the day that the team was going to release their rehab bird, Latte, into the newly finished outdoor aviary. Of course, Sarah, the team leader is going to be sad because she won’t have Latte living in her bedroom anymore. She had it all set up with a large tree, perch branches and its own little escape alcove in the corner! Crazy biologists! They’re all over the world.

Sarah's bedroom; Latte's old bedroom!

Here' the Mariana Field Crew - Phil, Sarah and Gabriella.

So after seeing visibly just how elated Latte, the crow, appeared to be in her new aviary it was time for me to head back to Saipan.

A reef heron I saw just outside my hotel.

Some more shots while on Rota...