This is anachronistically combined with other Easter Island traditions, in particular the race for the Sooty Tern's egg in the Birdman Cult.
In the Tongan archipelago, the sooty tern and the Alvin shrimp cope when an underwater volcano becomes an island.
The Field Museum, for example, has a male specimen which was found exhausted on August 2, 1933 on the slopes of Mount Cameroon above Buea, about 1000 m (3,500 ft) ASL, after foul weather had hit the Gulf of Guinea.
The ritual was an annual competition to collect the first Sooty Tern (manu tara) egg of the season from the islet of Motu Nui, swim back to Rapa Nui and climb the sea cliff of Rano Kau to the clifftop village of Orongo.
Sooty Tern | Caspian Tern | Arctic Tern | White Tern | Sooty Shearwater | Sooty Falcon | Fairy Tern | tern | Sooty Oystercatcher | Sooty Gull | Sandwich Tern | Common Tern | Antarctic Tern | Tern | Sooty | Royal Tern | River Tern | Little Tern | The Sooty Show | South American Tern | sooty tern | New Zealand Fairy Tern | Little White Tern | Least Tern | Large-billed Tern | Forster's Tern | Damara Tern | Common tern | California Least Tern | Black-fronted Tern |
18 species of seabird, the Black-footed Albatross, Laysan Albatross, Bonin Petrel, Bulwer's Petrel, Wedge-tailed Shearwater, Christmas Shearwater, Tristram's Storm-petrel, Red-tailed Tropicbird, Masked Booby, Red-footed Booby, Brown Booby, Great Frigatebird, Spectacled Tern, Sooty Tern, Blue-gray Noddy, Brown Noddy, Black Noddy and White Tern nest on the islands, most of them (16) on Tern Island.
Mānana is a State Seabird Sanctuary—home to over 10,000 Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, 80,000 Sooty Terns, 20,000 Brown Noddys, 5-10 Bulwer's Petrels, and 10-15 Red-tailed Tropicbirds, and numerous Hawaiian Monk Seals.
The site first came to national attention among birders in July 2005 when a Sooty Tern paid a very brief visit, before relocating to The Skerries and Cemlyn.