Peter T Young

June 1, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Maritime Fur Trade

The maritime fur trade was a ship-based fur trade system that focused on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and natives of Alaska. The furs were mostly traded in China for tea, silks, porcelain, and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States. (ESDAW)

Before the European colonization of the Americas, Russia was a major supplier of fur pelts to Western Europe and parts of Asia. Its trade developed in the Early Middle Ages (500-1000 AD), first through exchanges at posts around the Baltic and Black seas.

“We have encountered a divine marvel … There are mountains, which slope down to the arm of the sea, and their height reaches to the heavens …. Within these mountains are heard great cries and the sound of voices and [some people] are struggling to cut their way out of this mountain …”

“Their language is unintelligible. They point at iron objects and make gestures as if to ask for them. If given a knife or an axe, they supply furs in return.” (Primary Chronicle, Etkind in the year 1096)

“In their quest for fur, the Russians colonized a huge, exotic, and inhospitable space, called “the land of darkness” by early Arabic travelers. Combining barter with coercion, the Russians locked the peoples of the Arctic North into a system of trade that led to the extermination of animals and humans.” (Etkind)

The maritime fur trade was pioneered by the Russians, working east from Kamchatka along the Aleutian Islands to the southern coast of Alaska. (ESDAW)

Originally, Russia exported raw furs, consisting in most cases of the pelts of martens, beavers, wolves, foxes, squirrels and hares. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Russians began to settle in Siberia, a region rich in many mammal fur species, such as Arctic fox, lynx, sable, sea otter and stoat (ermine).

In a search for the prized sea otter pelts, first used in China, and later for the northern fur seal, the Russian Empire expanded into North America, notably Alaska.

Fur was relied on to make warm clothing, a critical consideration prior to the organization of coal distribution for heating. Portugal and Spain played major roles in fur trading after the 1400s with their business in fur hats.

The North American fur trade began as early as the 1530s was a central part of the early history of contact between Europeans and the native peoples of what is now the United States and Canada.

In 1578 there were 350 European fishing vessels at Newfoundland. Sailors began to trade metal implements (particularly knives) for the natives’ well-worn pelts. The first pelts in demand were beaver and sea otter, as well as occasionally deer, bear, ermine and skunk.

Captain Chauvin made the first organized attempt to control the fur trade in New France. In 1599 he acquired a monopoly from Henry IV and tried to establish a colony near the mouth of the Saguenay River at Tadoussac

French explorers, voyageurs and Coureur des bois such as Étienne Brûlé, Samuel de Champlain, Radisson, La Salle, and Le Saeur, while seeking routes through the continent, established relationships with Amerindians and continued to expand the trade of fur pelts for items considered ‘common’ by the Europeans.

England was slower to enter the American fur trade than France and Holland, but as soon as English colonies were established, development companies learned that furs provided the best way for the colonists to remit value back to the mother country.

Furs were being dispatched from Virginia soon after 1610, and the Plymouth Colony was sending substantial amounts of beaver to its London agents through the 1620s and 1630s. London merchants tried to take over France’s fur trade in the St Lawrence River valley.

From the 17th through the second half of the 19th century, Russia was the world’s largest supplier of fur. The fur trade played a vital role in the development of Siberia, the Russian Far East and the Russian colonization of the Americas.

The European discovery of North America, with its vast forests and wildlife, particularly the beaver, led to the continent becoming a major supplier in the 17th century of fur pelts for the fur felt hat, as beaver hat and fur trimming and garment trades of Europe. Fur was relied on to make warm clothing, a critical consideration prior to the organization of coal distribution for heating. (ESDAW)

James Cook’s expedition brought the news about the sea otter. Cook’s sailors traded several pelts on Cook’s river for a few glass beads each, and then sold them to the Chinese in Canton for two thousands pounds. Published in 1784, this story caused new British and French expeditions to Alaska. (Etkind)

May 31, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Lānai Airport

Aviation history for Lānai began with the creation of an emergency landing strip, there, in 1919. Aviation use was on-again, off-again in different areas of the island for the next few decades.

In its 1928 Annual Report, the Territorial Aeronautical Commission reported the excellent cooperation of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, in making a suitable field available for emergency airplane landings on the Island of Lānai. The field was at Leinukalahua, Kaʻa.

Things got official in 1928, when Inter-Island Airways (now Hawaiian Airlines) began operations to Lānai with Sikorsky S-38 eight-passenger amphibious planes. The landing field was owned by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company.

In July 1930, the Territorial Aeronautics Commission wrote to Hawaiian Pineapple Company asking if they wished to apply for a license for their field. There was no response.

During 1935, Inter-Island Airways started to replace its 8-passenger planes with 16-passenger planes, which were later (1941) replaced by 24-passenger Douglas DC-3s.

The Lanai field was not big enough to accommodate this type of aircraft and once the last of the S-38s were put out of service (shortly after the start of World War II,) air service to Lānai came to a halt.

In 1944, the Post War Planning Division of the Territorial Department of Public Works proposed to construct a new 5,000-foot runway and airport 4-miles southwest of Lānai City (Hawaiian Pineapple Company, Ltd was looking to about 220-acres for the new facility.)

“The existing airport is too small for two-engine planes, and the Civil Aeronautics Administration has advised that it is willing to consider an application for a major airport,” the Public Works report stated.

“The dependence of the population upon air service justifies the proposed project. The part of the Lānai pineapple plantation in the Territory’s economy is very great. The present airport, although in operation, is unpaved and is in great need of adequate paving to prevent erosion from severe winds and relatively high rainfall.”

A new airport site for Lānai was chosen and on September 18, 1946, Hawaiian Airlines resumed service there using its DC-3s. The unpaved sod strip field was practically unusable in wet weather and almost untenable due to dust and dirt in dry weather. In view of these conditions, air service was not reliable and it was therefore decided to pave the runway and taxiway.

A Master Plan was prepared (1946) that called for a single 4,200-foot runway. The Territorial Legislature appropriated one-third of the funds, with the rest matched by Civil Aeronautics Administration funds. In 1947, Lānai Airport management was put under the Hawaii Aeronautics Commission.

The 3,700 feet long runway and related facilities, the first field constructed by the Hawaiian Aeronautics Commission, was officially dedicated on July 12, 1948.

By 1950, the airport was served regularly by Hawaiian Airlines with twice daily passenger service in two directions and twice weekly freight service. Air mail service was supplied.

Over the years, additions were made to the facility. In 1960, the Maui County Board of Supervisors requested both the State and Hawaiian Airlines to use larger more modern aircraft to provide passenger air service to Lānai. (Hawaiian had changed its fleet from DC-3s to Convairs.)

A new Master Plan called for extension of the runway to a total of 5,000-feet, as wells as new terminal facilities to match the requirements of the newer planes. The new projects were completed and dedicated on October 16, 1966.

On October 1, 1979, the Civil Aeronautics Board Order 79-10-3, the Bureau of Domestic Aviation, defined essential air service for Lānai as follows: “Lānai: A minimum of two daily round trip flights to Honolulu and Kahului providing a total of at least 80 seats in each direction per day.”

After minor upgrades, the airport went through another expansion phase. Dedicated April 19, 1994, the new single-story 15,000-square foot terminal was five times larger than the existing and included space for a gift shop and food and beverage concessions and counter space for six airlines.

The Lanai Airport Master Plan Update was published in June 1999. Phase I of the proposed improvements (2000-2010) called for improvements to the airfield, terminal complex, and design, planning, project management and contingency costs.

Larry Ellison bought about 98 percent of the island of Lānai in June 2012; Ellison announced plans to extend the runway by 500 feet so larger planes could land there. (Lots of information from hawaii-gov.)

May 30, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hula Pahu

“For many weeks in succession, the first sound that fell on the ear in the morning was the loud beating of the drum, summoning the dancers to assemble. … Day after day, several hours in the day, the noisy hula – drumming, singing, and dancing in the open air, constituted the great attraction …” (Hiram Bingham)

The Hawaiian term ‘Pahu’ translates into ’drum’, ‘Niu’ being the Hawaiian word for ‘coconut’. The traditional pahu hula (hula drum) was carved from coconut stumps and covered with sharkskin (although possibly other types of native wood (koa, breadfruit, etc.) may have been used.)

The pahu is carved out of a single piece of wood; a bowl-like septum separates the sound chamber from the base or carved arches and a sharkskin membrane is lashed with sennit to the base.

The original material used for the Pahu’s waha (head) was either shark or ray skin. Heiau Pahu tended to be originally made with a waha of ray skin, while non-religious Pahu often used sharkskin. (Kalikiano)

Pahu were made with great care. In pre-European times (pre-1778) each part of the drum’s body, especially the sennit, ‘aha, used to lash the sharkskin to the base, required special prayers which were chanted during the processes of making the sennit and lashing the skin to the drum.

The power of the prayers became entrapped in the lashing, the wood, the skin and remained with the drum always. The rows of inverted arches carved out of the base, called hoaka, are visually symbolic of outstretched hands supporting joined human figures overhead and are poetically symbolic of the shadows of gods (hoaka means to cast a shadow.) (Smithsonian)

“Their wooden drum, with one sharkskin head, is beaten by the fingers of the musician, sitting cross-legged beside it as the uncovered end stands on the ground.” (Hiram Bingham)

Laʻa is generally credited for introducing the drum to Hawaiʻi. Laʻamaikahiki (Laʻa-from-Kahiki) brought the first sharkskin pahu to Hawaiʻi from Kahiki (Tahiti,) “sounding over the oceans” sometime around AD 1250.

On nearing the land he waked the echoes with the stirring tones of his drum, which so astonished the people that they followed him from point to point along the coast and heaped favors upon him whenever he came ashore.

Laʻa was an enthusiastic patron of the hula and is said to have made a tour of the islands, in which he instructed the natives in new forms of the dance. (Emerson)

The shorter variety of Pahu (Pahu Hula) was used to beat time in Hula dances and to accompany chanting mele. It was made to be played by a standing person (always a priest, Kahuna, or Chief), whereas the Hula Pahu was made to more suitably accommodate a seated or kneeling individual.

The sounds of the pahu are referred to as leo (voice) and the drum head is referred to as waha (mouth.) During state rituals in the large open-air heiau, the pahu was a receptacle for a god who spoke through the ‘voice’ of the drum.

There is reason to believe that the original use of the pahu was in connection with the services of the temple, and that its adaptation to the hālau was simply transference from one to another religious use.

Music, particularly drumming, was traditionally important in Hawaiian ritual. A drum would have been played as part of hula – a larger version was used in temples. The seated musician normally played the pahu with one hand and a smaller drum, sometimes tied to the knee, with the other. (British Museum)

Hawaiian musical traditions are essentially vocal. Percussive musical instruments are never played alone, but always to accompany chanting and dancing.

The pahu is an instrument of power and sacredness that exemplifies traditions of ritual music and dance that are steeped in time. The drum is both a sound producer and a symbol. Its music represents the fundamental principles of Hawaiian perceptions of time and timing in traditional music.

Pahu were given proper names and passed down from generation to generation as objects of mana (power) and kapu (sacredness) producing sounds that carried the knowledge of generations of aliʻi and kahuna (specialists, including priests.) (Smithsonian)

Hula is a form of cultural expression of the utmost complexity, reaching back through the centuries to a time in the islands when history was recorded entirely by story and song, and passed along to succeeding generations by skilled individuals.

Since the essence of modern Hawaiian Hula is a medium of expression for communicating thoughts, stories and feelings that are for the most part translated by patterns of bodily motion in which not just the arms and hands, but the entire body, act as story telling devices. (Kalikiano)

Hula combines dance and chant or song to tell stories, recount past events and provide entertainment for its audience. With a clear link between dancer’s actions and the chant or song, the dancer uses rhythmic lower body movements, mimetic or depictive hand gestures and facial expression, as part of this performance. (ksbe-edu)

“The hula was a religious service, in which poetry, music, pantomime, and the dance lent themselves, under the forms of dramatic art, to the refreshment of men’s minds. Its view of life was idyllic, and it gave itself to the celebration of those mythical times when gods and goddesses moved on the earth as men and women and when men and women were as gods.”

“(W)hen it comes to the hula and the whole train of feelings and sentiments that made their entrances and exits in the hālau (the hall of the hula) one perceives that in this he has found the door to the heart of the people.” (Emerson, son of Missionaries)

In describing a hula danced before Keōpūolani and her daughter Nāhiʻenaʻena, in Lāhainā in 1823, Missionary CS Stewart wrote: “The motions of the dance were slow and graceful, and, in this instance, free from indelicacy of action; and the song, or rather recitative, accompanied by much gesticulation, was dignified and harmonious in its numbers.”

”The theme of the whole, was the character and praises of the queen and princess, who were compared to everything sublime in nature, exalted as gods.” (Missionary Stewart)

“This was intended, in part at least, as an honor and gratification to the king, especially at Honolulu, at his expected reception there, on his removal from Kailua. Apparently, not all hula was viewed as bad or indecent.”

“In the hula, the dancers are often fantastically decorated with figured or colored kapa, green leaves, fresh flowers, braided hair, and sometimes with a gaiter on the ancle, set with hundreds of dog’s teeth, so as to be considerably heavy, and to rattle against each other in the motion of the feet.” (Hiram Bingham)

May 29, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Tamana

“If placed within its international context, the Sv. Nikolai’s 1808 voyage has significance for Russian expansion in North America that might be compared, for example, to the 1540 expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado on the northern borderlands frontier of New Spain.” (Preface, Wreck of the Sv Nikolai)

The Sv. Nikolai (a 45-50-foot schooner,) owned by the Russian American Company, set sail from New Arkhangel (modern-day Sitka, Alaska) to explore and identify a site for a permanent Russian fur trading post on the mainland south of Vancouver Island in the Oregon Country.

Heavy seas drove the ship aground on the Washington coast just north of the mouth of the Quileute River, forcing twenty-two crew members ashore.

Over the next several months the shipwrecked crew clashed with Hohs, Quileutes and Makahs; they lived in hand-built shelters roughly 9-miles up the Hoh River.

The tribes captured and enslaved several of the crew members. In 1810, an American captain sailing for the Russian American Company ransomed the survivors. (Owens)

OK, but what about Hawaiʻi? … Let’s look back.

Throughout the years of late-prehistory, AD 1400s – 1700s, and through much of the 1800s, the canoe was a principal means of travel in ancient Hawaiʻi. Canoes were used for interisland and inter-village coastal travel.

Most permanent villages initially were near the ocean and sheltered beaches, which provided access to good fishing grounds, as well as facilitating canoe travel between villages.

With “contact” (arrival of Captain James Cook in 1778,) a new style of boat was in the islands and Kamehameha started to acquire and build them. The first Western-style vessel built in the Islands was the Beretane (1793.)

Through the aid of Captain George Vancouver’s mechanics, after launching, it was used in the naval combat with Kahekili’s war canoes off the Kohala coast. (Thrum)

Encouraged by the success of this new type of vessel, others were built. The second ship built in the Islands, a schooner called Tamana (named after Kamehameha’s favorite wife, Kaʻahumanu,) was used to carry his cargo of trade to the missions along the coast of California. (Couper & Thrum, 1886)

Then, on June 21, 1803, the Lelia Byrd, an American ship under Captain William Shaler, arrived at Kealakekua Bay with two mares and a stallion on board – they were gifts for King Kamehameha.

The captain left one of the mares with John Young (a trusted advisor of the King, who begged for one of the animals) then left for Lāhainā, Maui to give the mare and stallion to Kamehameha.

During his stay, Shaler asked Kamehameha for one of the chief’s small schooners. Wanting bigger and better, in 1805, Kamehameha traded the 45-ton Tamana and a cargo of sandalwood for the Lelia Byrd,) a “fast, Virginia-built brig of 175-tons.” It became the flagship of Kamehameha’s Navy.

Kamehameha kept his shipbuilders busy; by 1810 he had more than thirty small sloops and schooners hauled up on the shore at Waikīkī and about a dozen more in Honolulu harbor, besides the Lelia Byrd. (Kuykendall)

That, then, takes us to the Tamana and her fate.

Shaler’s agent, John Hudson, sailed the Tamana east to Baja California. Within a year, Hudson sold the Tamana to Russian Captain Pavl Slobodchikov for 150 sea otter skins.

Slobodchikov renamed the Tamana to Sv. Nikolai.

With a makeshift crew of three Hawaiians and three Americans, Slobodchikov sailed the newly-named Sv Nikolai back to Hawaiʻi, and later returned to New Arkhangel (Sitka, Alaska) in August 1807 where the boat served the Russian fur traders along the Northwest Coast of North America.

At the time, the Northwest was unsettled territory. To bypass hostile Native Americans in the Northwest, the Russian American Company contracted with American ships to carry Russian fur traders to California.

Then, the Sv. Nikolai took the fateful trip in 1808 (as noted in the introductory paragraphs, above.)

Under Nikolai Isaakovich Bulygin, the Sv. Nikolai sailed to explore the coast of Vancouver Island and select a site for a settlement on what is today the Oregon coast.

The expedition did not succeed. Near Destruction Island the ship was becalmed and they aimlessly drifted. Then, on November 1, 1808, Sv. Nikolai was pushed onto a rocky reef by a heavy squall.

The ship did not sink immediately, and everyone on board reached shore safely. At low tide the crew returned to the vessel to salvage sail canvas, food, munitions and other supplies. (NOAA)

The survivors (including Anna Petrovana Bulygin (Captain Bulygin’s wife) – reportedly the first western woman to set foot in Washington state (Cook & Black) were crossing the Hoh River and three of the group, including the captain’s wife, were captured.

The rest of the crew then followed the Hoh River inland. They spent the winter in the valley, foraging for food and constructing a boat which they hoped would take them down the river and out to the freedom of the ocean.

In February 1809, they attempted to leave in their new boat, but at the mouth of the river it capsized. All the rest of the crew was taken captive. They lived in captivity for about 18 months.

In May 1810, an American vessel arriving in Neah Bay learned of their plight and attempted to arrange their release. All but seven members of the expedition were eventually freed. However both the captain and his wife died in captivity. (NOAA)

A monument was constructed on Upper Hoh Road to commemorate the 1808 shipwreck of a Russian sailing vessel near Rialto Beach. It was created to remember the lives lost when the Russian brig Sv. Nikolai (formerly owned by King Kamehameha and known as the schooner ‘Tamana’) beached in heavy squalls along the Pacific coast of the North Olympic Peninsula.

May 28, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Brother Matthias Newell

“Victoria is the county seat of Victoria County, and is situated in the southeastern part of Southwest Texas, on the right bank of the Guadalupe River, about 114 miles southwest of San Antonio, and 28 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.”

“It is one of the oldest towns in the state, having been founded in 1822 and incorporated in 1836, the first year of the independent Republic of Texas. The actual history of the school in Victoria goes back to the time of Reverend A Gardet who took over the care of St. Mary’s Parish in Victoria in 1857.”

“After building a church and a convent of the Incarnate Word Sisters he erected a building of two stories on the corner of Main and Church streets. In this building he started a day school for boys.”

“[I]n 1870 a group of three Brothers, on their way from New Orleans to San Antonio, went through Victoria. One of these Brothers [was] Matthias Newell …. The Brothers spent several days with the pastor whom Brother Matthias described as a ‘very friendly old man.’” (Pariseau)

Matthias Newell ( 1854-1939) was born in Zerf, Bavaria, where his father was a forest warden. The Newell family immigrated to the US while Matthias was still a child. In 1868 he joined the Society of Mary at Dayton, Ohio. (Texas Ornithology Society)

“Brother Matthias, as Mr. Newell is familiarly known to the Catholic brotherhood, came to the [Hawaiian] Islands some seventeen years ago [1885] from San Antonio, Texas, where he had already gained the local title of ‘Rattlesnake-catcher,’ owing to his zeal in the various branches of natural history.”

“From the Brothers at the college I learn that after a year’s residence in Honolulu he moved, to Wailuku on Maui, where he spent fourteen years in the Catholic mission in Iao valley. … From Wailuku Mr. Newell was removed to Hilo on Hawaii”. (Bryan)

“When the Sacred Hearts sisters discussed hiring lay teachers, math and science were the fields they most willingly abandoned. Even when a competent science teacher found his way onto a faculty roster, he was unlikely to transform his class with innovative methods.”

“Brother Matthias Newell, who taught at St. Mary’s School from 1896 to 1924, supplemented the brothers’ income by practicing applied science. He was the agricultural inspector at Hilo’s wharf, cared for the Territorial Nursery there, and monitored the seismograph machine.” (Alvarez)

“In August 1909, Brother Mathias Newell was appointed to establish a tree nursery in Hilo by the Territorial Board of Agriculture and Forestry. He was given a small stipend for supplies and compensation for his time.”

“Brother Mathias was an avid cataloger of species, having recorded specimens of birds and moths endemic to the islands in the 38 years he spent in Hawai‘i. …”

“The nursery proved successful as in the first year Brother Mathias distributed 3,500 trees to residents in Hilo and Hāmākua. Around this time, homesteading was booming across the island – there was a great demand for fruit and timber trees – while there was also a curiosity about what could grow in the range of Hawai‘i Island’s climates.”

“Charles S. Judd’s interest in testing exotic trees on Hawai‘i Island led him to Brother Mathias. Charles was the Territory of Hawai‘i superintendent of forestry from 1915 until his death in 1939. He was born and raised in Hawai‘i, and after graduating from the Yale School of Forestry, returned to direct the administration of the forest reserve program.” (Anderson, Ke Ola)

But it was the ‘A‘o that is more memorably linked to Brother Newell. “The ‘A‘o went unnoticed by foreign naturalists for a long time, given the fervor by outsiders in the last decade of the nineteenth century to document bird life in the islands.”

“‘I have described a new Puffinus from Maui,’ mainland transplant Henry Henshaw wrote in 1900 to Ernst Hartert, the ornithology curator at Walter Rothschild’s private museum in Tring, England, referring to the bird’s first published description.”

“‘It ought to be common but if so how did [collectors Henry] Palmer, [Scott] Wilson and [RCL] Perkins overlook it?’ … Henshaw named the bird after its discoverer, Brother Matthias Newell, a missionary in Wailuku, in 1894.”

“One of the sugar plantation workers employed by Werner von Graevemeyer, a manager, caught one of the birds, skinned it, and had it sent immediately to Newell to be stuffed.”

“Henshaw noted at the time that the species was ‘numerous enough’ but that the mongoose was rapidly exterminating the birds.”

“The ‘A‘o had been first discovered by nonnatives in 1893 when one blew ashore on Maui after strong southerly winds and heavy rain, but nothing came of it until the following year. It had apparently been long known to the natives.”

“William Bryan and Alvin Seale noted in their report on a 1900 collecting trip on Kauai. ‘The fact that the native name of this bird has come down to us through all these years …”

“… but that the species to which it had been applied by the kanaka naturalists should but so recently come to the light of science speaks much in the favor of those skilled old bird-catchers who had worked out the ornithology of their land with such exactness.’”

“Very little was known about the ‘A‘o, and Henshaw noted in 1900 that ’as to nests and notes upon the breeding habits of Hawaiian birds I assure you the gaps will be long in filling.’ By 1908 it was thought to be extinct.”

“However, a trio of the birds was sighted offshore in the summer of 1947 between Kauai and Ni‘ihau. Eight years later the bird was confirmed to exist, and in 1967 it was discovered by none other than John Sincock to be breeding on Kauai.” (Unitt)

“The field biologist located the bird’s long-lost breeding grounds and would go on to fill in just the kinds of gaps Henshaw had lamented decades earlier.”

“As a result, more than sixty years after Henshaw’s initial description of the bird (the 1947 sighting) buried in a report on Alaskan birds, went almost entirely unnoticed), the shearwater received some renewed attention.”

“The nesting locations of the Newell’s shearwater on Kauai and other islands had been known to both natives and foreigners in the early twentieth century, but were forgotten. It was later discovered that colonies existed on other islands, but mongoose predation, feral cats, and Barn Owls had dramatically reduced their numbers there.”

“Henry Henshaw noted that natives had found the birds in the burrows on Maui and brought them to Matthias Newell alive. Ornithologist William Bryan, writing to Richard Sharpe at the British Museum, observed in 1908 that …”

“…‘P newelli … nest[s] in the high cliffs 2000-4000 [feet elevation, on Molokai in holes under the roots of etc in the tangle trees – undergrowth and vines and are very hard to locate.’” (Lewis)

“Newell’s Shearwater nests only in the Hawaiian Islands, primarily on Kauai. Its pelagic range lies primarily in the Equatorial Countercurrent, between 4° and 10° N. It occurs mainly between 160° and 120° W, but small numbers range east to 106° W, well to the east of the longitude of California.” (Unitt)

“It breeds in at least 20 colonies on mountain slopes in the Hawaiian Islands. The main colonies are on Kauai, on slopes around the Alaka‘i Plateau and probably in the Mokolea Mountains. Its distribution on the other islands is uncertain but it is known to breed on Molokai and the island of Hawai‘i and may breed on O‘ahu, Maui and Lānai. “

“From April to November it can be seen in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands, particularly around Kauai. Outside the breeding season, it disperses into the tropical Pacific Ocean. Its distribution at sea is little known but many move south and east into the waters of the Equatorial Counter Current.” (Ramel)

“The species has been collected or photographed as far west as Guam and Saipan in the Mariana Islands. It has been collected as far south as Tutuila, American Samoa, and Dargaville Beach, New Zealand. There are no previous records of Newell’s Shearwater for the coast of North America or as far north as the latitude of Del Mar (32.95° N).”

“A Newell’s Shearwater (Puffinus [auricularis] newelli) captured alive on land at Del Mar, California, on 1 August 2007 was the first of its species to reach the continent of North America or a latitude so far north.” (Unitt)

The Newell’s Shearwater has been declining at an accelerating pace on its breeding islands, principally as a result of depredation by introduced predators, habitat deterioration and hurricanes. Therefore, it is listed as Critically Endangered. (BirdLife)

“In 1924, Newell returned to the University of Dayton where he taught until his retirement. His collection of plants, birds and insects went to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.” Newell died in Dayton, Ohio, on October 12, 1939. (Texas Ornithological Society)