We will likely venture out a few more nights to do short surveys later this week, but I guess the season is just about over now. We have been out for the past few nights with no luck, no leatherbacks anywhere in our survey area.
Have you been tracking the turtles with the satellite transmitters? Aries has been really moving up north. She is currently about 600 miles (as the crow flies) north of Juno Beach and does not appear to be slowing down! I am going to put an animated map of her movements on the site in the next day or so. It is really wild to think that we tagged Aries a month ago, and now after swimming over 900 miles (based on satellite track) she is near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

Real quiet lately, no leatherbacks on any of our survey beaches for the last fews days. Maybe tonight?? I think tonight or Saturday will be our last survey night. Check here for updates.

Looks like Aries has finished nesting and is heading north! She is now in Georgia waters approx. 325 miles north of Juno Beach. Aries has traveled almost 750 miles since we placed a transmitter on her and it is hopefully only the beginning. I just received more data from the UCF crew and will process it in the morning, and create new maps.

Yet another wet night on the beach! Warm, very wet, and sort of miserable. But, Ixchel returned once again! Her sixth nest this season was laid in the rain a bit after 1am. I was on the north half of the beach and only saw a few loggerheads, it was a quiet night.

Not much to report last night. The night started off very rainy and it looked like it might rain all night. No observed turtles, but there were two on the south end of the survey area that were missed. The morning crew reported that they likely nested very early this morning after we quit. Better luck tonight......

Last night we had an early turtle! At about 9:30 a very large leatherback crawled out of the ocean at the north end of our survey area in Carlin Park. She was huge! Our largest turtle of the season at 168cm curved carapace length. There were lots of very excited people on the beach as I tagged and measured her. We took a vote and decided to name her "Georgia" Keep checking in for updates on this turtle.

We are getting good positions from our tagged turtles! The maps found on the site will be updated every two days as we get data from the turtles. If you have any comments or questions about the maps, please email me at chris@marinelife.org.

It was a busy nesting night. Many Loggerheads, and I witnessed the first Green turtle nest of the season, then another, and another, and another! There were about 10 Greens on the beach when I quit at 5:00AM. Two new leatherbacks were encountered and tagged last night! I tagged a turtle at about midnight and Niki worked up a turtle on the south end of her survey area shortly after 3AM. The volunteer crew with her from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, and Palm Beach County ERM were very excited to see the turtle. I also had the honor of being observed doing my work by the original "turtle lady" of Juno Beach, Elenor Fletcher. Her daughter and grand-daughter were also on the beach looking for turtles. Busy night... time for bed!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, our team has been working all night on this project and our "regular day jobs". We have all been really busy. Quick update: 11 tagged turtles, two have been repeat nesters with "Sandy" returning 3 times! Check the project log for updates and there will be more info on the turtles we encounter here:
http://www.floridaleatherbacks.com/2002turtles.htm

This past few days were spent at the annual sea turtle symposium. We all had a great time and enjoyed listening to the many informative presentations. On Sunday we began the first night of our daily surveys and were lucky enough to encounter an early turtle at 9:30PM. We tagged, measured and took genetic samples from her. She was the second largest turtle recorded on Juno Beach, and in the tradition of looking to the stars for names we named her "Aries."

Nest Totals (11): Jupiter/Carlin-1, Juno Beach-6, MacArthur Beach State Park/Singer Island-4

Things are starting to get busy! Our survey team tagged our first turtle of the season on Saturday night on Juno Beach!

Nest Totals: Jupiter/Carlin-1, Juno Beach-3, MacArthur Beach State Park/Singer Island-1

The first nest on Juno Beach was recorded on Wednesday 3-20-02. We will begin our night surveys this weekend on Juno Beach. Keep checking this site for information. Kelly and I just finished our poster which we will be presenting at the anual sea turtle symposium in Miami on April 3-7. Come by and check it out!

Nest Totals: Jupiter/Carlin-1, Juno Beach-1, MacArthur Beach State Park/Singer Island-1

Our second nest of the season was laid on Thursday 3-14. A Leatherback was observed nesting at 6:30AM in Jupiter Beach Park. She was observed by the contractor assingned to monitor sea turtle nesting for a beach nourishment project in the area. Unfortunately we were unable to tag the turtle as we arrived on the scene a little late (she was already gone). Maybe this was the turtle we were expecting to return to singer island last weekend.

Wow, what a week! Kelly and I just returned from a meeting in Tallahassee where our grant request was approved. At the meeting, we also received word that the 2002 sea turtle nesting season had begun! We recorded the first Leatherback nest in the state on our study area at Singer Island. We will begin surveying the beach this weekend.

If anyone has any thoughts on how to make this website better, please let us know. You may contact us at info@floridaleatherbacks.com. We are hoping to add many exciting features before turtle season starts in only 41 days!

We are fresh back from vacations and we will be overhauling the web site in the next few days. Stay tuned for updates!