Geological History. French Frigate Shoals are the remains of what was probably a rather large island a million or so years ago. As all the Hawaiian chain is doing, it is slowly drifting westnorthwestward away from the subterranean source which most recently created the Big Island of Hawaii and is currently pushing up a new island from beneath the sea eastsoutheast of Hawaii. As the original island drifted, it also slowly sank beneath the sea but as it sank, coral formed and grew at a rate fast enough to keep up with the sink rate. A crescent shaped barrier reef had formed and encircles the central lagoon on its northern and eastern sides. The shoal area itself is about 30 miles across and part of the original mass of the island, La Perouse Pinnacle, still protrudes above the sea. La Perouse rises vertically about 120 feet above sea level, 7 miles south of Tern Island.

Coast Guard lore on the island indicated that the area was discovered several hundred years ago by a French Naval Officer, Jean comte de la Perouse, who literally stumbled onto the area by accident and spent several months shipwrecked on the shoal until the crew could repair the ship. Among the natural islands that I was aware of was a small uninhabited sand bar we called Shark Island less than a mile W of Tern Island. It is about the same size that Tern Island was before World War II. Several miles to the east were two islands we called Whale and Trig, although material I've seen recently refers to them as Whale and Skate. Going towards La Perouse about 5 miles brought you to East Island, the original site of the Coast Guard station. During my stay I visited Shark, Whale and Trig by means of our 16 foot recreational boats.

The Military and French Frigate Shoals. Prior to World War II, the area had no particular strategic value. During the early part of the war, the Japanese occasionally used it to refuel seaplanes from a submarine. In one instance a seaplane raid on Pearl Harbor was refueled from this location. When they tried to do this again, after the Battle of Midway, they found that a complete Naval Air Station had been constructed by the U.S. That attack plan was cancelled. The shoal was now an important emergency stopover and navigational point for aircraft flying between Hawaii and Midway. Tern Island had been enlarged from the size of a tennis court to an airfield bearing the resemblance of an aircraft carrier flight deck, 3300 feet long and 400 feet wide. Eventually, the Coast Guard would take over the site and operate a low frequency radiobeacon and a double-pulsed Loran A station until the phase-out of Loran A. The station also served as a monitor station for the Central Pacific Loran C chain which had transmitter sites at Kure, Johnston, and Hawaii Islands. When Loran A was shut down, Johnston provided the Loran C monitoring functions and the Coast Guard left French Frigate.

The Military and the natural Marine Life. This paragraph represents my own personal views and does not reflect any official views of the U S Navy or U S Coast Guard. French Frigate Shoals is a natural marine environment for a number of species of birds and sea life. Many of the natural inhabitants of the shoal do not do well in the presence of man, particularly the Hawaiian Monk Seal. Seals covered the beaches on the uninhabited islands of the shoal but they were very rare on Tern Island. The presence of 20 humans and 3 seal-chasing German Shepherds took care of that. But were we really depriving the animals of their rightful home? To put things in a more realistic perspective, the Navy built that island out of bottom dredgings and they were the original inhabitants from the day of its creation. The Navy represented the "Indians" and the encroaching turtles, birds, and seals were the "settlers" coming into Indian territory in their covered wagons. So there were surely many casualties. But in the long run, the humans gave much more than they took. The military greatly enlarged the nesting areas available in the shoal and it is my opinion that this additional area far outweighed the number of wildlife casualties. Now that the military is off the island, seals have become abundant on Tern Island's man-made mile of beachfront. This is as it should be. They put up with us for years and in payment, they get to have the new island! It should be mentioned that while the Coast Guard was on the island, all of us who were stationed there were told repeatedly that we were on a Wildlife Refuge and that ALL species were protected.

The Sharks. While I was there, the local information was that the sharks that could occasionally be seen were Sand Sharks that fed off the bottom and were not a particular threat to humans. Information I have found on the internet does not mention Sand Sharks but does say that the area is the territory of the man-eating Tiger Shark. Wish we had known that! We went swimming just a couple of dozen yards from where another sailor would have a baited shark hook in the water. We caught a couple of sharks off the northwest corner of the island during the year but I don't recall ever actually seeing any swimming around Tern Island or seeing a fin break the surface. However, I saw a sight on one of our boat trips that I will never forget!

One day, a group of us got together in one of the 16-foot boats and headed over to Whale Island. It had been a couple of months since our last boat trip and we needed a change of scenery. As we approached Whale Island, we could see something in the water surrounding the island - in fact, a LOT of somethings. As we drew closer we could see that all these black specks were sharks, hundreds of them. At 100 yards off the beach, the water was about 8 feet deep and we were right on the edge of the school of sharks. One swam beneath our boat and it was easily more than half the length of our boat - over 8 feet. We retreated and began to circle around to the windward side of the island looking for a clear path to the beach. Every route in from where we were would have taken us directly over the top of about 20 sharks. As we began to get a view down the other side, we could see that the island was completely encircled. We could see hundreds of seals up on the beach but it appeared that for every seal on the beach, there was a shark in the water. We cancelled our plans to make a landing and returned to Tern Island. The Hawaiian Monk Seal population probably got hammered that day, perhaps losing a hundred or more to the sharks as hunger overcame the danger and they began to enter the water.

The Birds. The uninhabited islands were home to thousands of nesting sea birds, including the famous Frigate Bird. We didn't pay them much attention and couldn't tell one from another as they flew around the island except for the Frigate Bird with its pterodactyl-like wing shape. I got there in August and there was not a Gooney to be found. A couple of months later, they arrived in swarms. We were entertained for hours with their mating rituals and the associated dancing and unusual cooing sounds. We would watch them fly ever so gracefully with their wingtips sometimes just barely grazing the water and leaving a faint ripple. I watched one crash into the beach. He slid halfway up the beach on his belly, got his feet down and started running to maintain his momentum, and when he got to the crest of the beach, he was airborne again. Another one caught the tip of a 35-foot fiberglass antenna with his wing root. It spun him around and he found himself with his back to the antenna and his beak pointed at the ground. He slid down the entire length of the antenna, shook himself off, and decided to walk the rest of the way.