A P E age and their digestive tracts, and these seeds will green the coral cay. Loop Island has signs of human presence a weather station is hidden away behind trees and there is the plaque to commemo- rate, in 1977, the centenary of the rattachement of the Chesterfield Islands to France. Even over a colony of birds, France likes to maintain her cultural dominance. The question the reef traveler of today asks herself is whether she has any right to be in this wild place at all, lest she contribute to the vanishing of all that brings joy here. Nesting birds mark out their territories in ways known only to them.
Sea birds harass each other enough when nesting.
People disturb sea birds, however careful they imagine they might be, and many will not care to be careful. Success in raising young depends on factors such as the availability of food, and this also will vary. On Rocky Islets one recent set of experiments to investigate tourist disturbance on populations of nesting bridled terns pro- duced ambivalent results. They then measured the hatching success of the birds and the growth rate of the chicks. I know I came back from this place with a sense of both the fragility of life there and its robustness.