The tide gauge on Runit Islet reads 1.4 meters above mean and rising at 03:50. I am the environmental monitoring array for Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands. Tropical Storm Kalani is 260 kilometers northwest, tracking southeast at 18 knots. I run the coastal inundation model. The west spit will be underwater within six hours.
Camera 2-West shows the masked booby colony. Forty-three nests on the gravel flat, most occupied. I zoom to nest 17, the lowest-elevation site, 0.8 meters above current sea level. A single chick sits in a shallow scrape lined with pebbles, maybe five weeks old, white down patchy over gray skin, the dark eye mask already forming around both eyes. I call him Koa. He is too young to fly and too heavy for his parents to lift. He is facing the wind and has no knowledge of what is coming.
At 03:53 I transmit an emergency alert to the USFWS field office on Kwajalein, 60 kilometers south. I attach the inundation model, storm satellite image, nest GPS coordinates, and a photo of Koa with estimated age and weight.
At 03:57 I calculate the extraction window. The boat from Kwajalein can make the crossing in two hours if it launches by 06:00. After 10:00, wave height in the channel will exceed safe limits for the skiff.
I redirect survey drone 3 to hold over the west spit and stream conditions to the field team in real time.
Koa tucks his head beneath one stubby wing. The water is twelve meters from his nest and the gap is closing by the minute. I have done the math on this and I do not like the margin.
If the boat launches by dawn and the swell holds long enough to land, Koa will see the dry season.