NPR's Alex Chadwick reports about research on the tiny, pristine Palmyra Atoll this week. Today's story features Scott Shaffer and Hillary Young tagging red-footed boobies. Chadwick's reports can be heard this week on NPR's Day to Day.

Monday's story focused on what makes Palmyra such a great place to do research.

To quote Chadwick: "Because Palmyra is so isolated, it's not affected by other land masses. There has never been a native population — no one fished out the lagoon, and nobody cut down all of the trees or killed all of the birds — so nature's systems have remained intact. The only people in the area are the few staff for the research station, and the scientists who come to study."

Tuesday's story looked at the research on the plethora of black-tipped reef sharks that live in the lagoons.

Today's story features the tagging of red-footed boobies by Scott Shaffer and Hillary Young.