Another turtle

Last night Kelly and I encountered a new turtle just as she was finishing up her nest near the Jupiter Reef Club. Interesting that she nested 10 meters from a nest that was laid 10 days ago. Maybe the same turtle?? A few folks from the Marinelife Center watched as she finished up and headed into the water. The turtle will be named "snowflake" I am not sure why Lance would admit that he wanted to be named snowflake as a young boy, but he did!

We received the first set of data from Molly and will post a map in a few days. After nesting she headed straight offshore and then veered north. All of the turtles we have tracked off our beach have taken a similar path. We'll see where she ends up!

pretty morning

Last night was cold,clear and turtle free! No turtles nested in either our survey area or up on Hutchinson Island. It was a cold one and Kelly, Sandy and I were bundled up when riding the ATV. Gloves, hats and jackets were required as we surveyed the beach until 6:30am. The sunrise was beautiful and I spent some time taking pictures in MacArthur Beach State Park this morning.

nothing

I could talk about how beautiful the night was (and it was!) but that is getting a bit old. What I really want to say is that we tagged a lot of new leatherbacks, but we did not. No turtles once again last night. There were quite a few on Hutchinson Island though. At last report there were at least three that showed up there! One of the goals of our study is to figure out why leatherbacks will nest on juno Beach for a while and then move to other beaches to nest. Why are they doing that?? Expecting a few turtles tonight....

Sorry

Sorry about the missing post this morning. There were no turtles this on Saturday night. I had thought that "Bunny - the easter turtle" was going to make an appearance but nothing. There have been a few turtles up on Hutchinson Island over the last few days. Kelly and I are back out here tonight and are heading out on the beach right now. I feel lucky!

She came back!

Her name is Musca and I think she was the turtle that was on the beach yesterday morning. I encountered a turtle just before sunrise up near the Jupiter Inlet this morning. She was covering her nest, so I checked her flipper tags and discovered she had none. I quickly tagged her and checked her PIT tag. Beeeep! She was a turtle encountered once during the 2003 season. More info. about Musca can be found here. I had a nice chat with some folks who had seen her from their condo and had ventured down at about 4:30am to take a look. I think we need to add a beachfront condo to the list of things that make our surveying lives easier!

Clenching her flippers tightly

Well, at least I hope she is! This morning on my final pass at 5am, I saw a leatherback. She slipped into into the water before I could get close to her. Bummed out that I missed one, I walked up the beach to find a "false crawl", a non nesting emergence!
Sometimes a leatherback will crawl out onto the beach and decide something is not quite right, turn around and head back to the water. Leatherbacks do not do this as often as other species, but I was glad she did. I knew she would be back on the beach somewhere soon. I spent another 2 hours riding around looking for her but had no luck. She will probably be back tonight if she is not on the beach somewhere right now. If you find her today, please call me!

A new turtle!

Matthew Simmons (Ecological Associates Inc) and Niki encountered a new turtle on Hutchinson Island last night at around 2am. She was a new turtle and Mathew named her Carla. Nothing to report down here on Juno. I thought it was going to be a good night for turtles and I even surveyed from inlet to inlet looking for one. Our brand new Honda ATV made the ride much nicer. Kelly is around tonight so we will probably find two or three turtles. She is kinda lucky that way!

Salty

Last night was warm and windy. Sounds nice, but driving an ATV for 7 hours on the beach is not easy when the wind is whipping in your face half the night. My clothes are encrusted with salt and I am still trying to get the sand and salt out of my eyes this morning.

No turtles nested last night here on the Juno Beach study area or up on south Hutchinson Island. Take a journey through the archives (over there on the right)The first turtle is usually spotted around this day each season. Maybe tonight I will catch the 5th!

Kelly arrives on Thursday and we will be announcing some cool stuff we are doing this season. Stay tuned....

no turtles

Not much to report from the beach last night. There was a lot of lightning offhore which entertained me as I rode along the beach. I thought I saw a turtle in the water, but it was probably just a "shadow turtle" One of the many things the mind makes up late at night alone on the beach.
The weather has changed into a more typical spring pattern. Rainy early in the evening and then cool, hazy,windy and humid the rest of the night.


Dean Bagley has reported 2 crawls to us in the last few days on Melbourne Beach. I guess the season has now begun!

changing every day

My new favorite bird is the Merlin (Falco columbarius) I was sitting on the beach this morning watching the sunrise and this little fighter jet of a bird came screaming right towards me. It flew past me and stunned a small sanderling about 50 feet behind me. The Merlin snatched the bird before it even knew what was coming. Amazing to watch but I feel bad for the little Sanderling. Nowadays my "most entertaining in the morning" bird list starts off like this; Merlin, Grey Catbird, and the Sanderling. Speaking of birds, the Kodak Birdcam is back online for the season. We need to figure out how to make the leatherback cam someday!


No turtles last night. I am exhausted and hope to be able to sleep today....

kilometers!

The computer on my GPS recorded 105.99 kilometers (65.89 miles) driven last night! It also recorded six hours and 43 minutes of time spent moving. So why did I miss another turtle??

Right now we are surveying the beach with a "skeleton crew" - Just me! In a few days we will have a full survey team riding the beach - Me and Kelly! I have been trying to cover the full survey area when possible. The Lake Worth Inlet to the Jupiter Inlet. is about 20 kilometers long and I am learning that it is probably too much for one person to cover.

I spotted a turtle just as she was entering the waves. I quickly got out a flashlight and checked her for tags before she entered the large swells. She wasn't tagged. She swam away before I could introduce myself. I hope that she returns so we can meet properly (and get a few measurements & tag her)

The nest from last night brings the total number of nests on Juno Beach to four. I just checked the database and was amazed to find that we have never had four turtles by this date. I thought that was really cool, but then ran another query and found out that we do not often record four nests for the entire month of March! Want to place bets on a record year? May be a bit early to predict that, but I feel good about it.

Lots of fun

Last night was a ton of fun. Started out in Ft. Lauderdale at the Interpol concert. It is a little wierd to wake up and go to a concert BEFORE work! Had a great time and then headed up here to Juno beach as fast as I could. I knew there would be turtles. A call to Rick who was working on Hutchinson confirmed the night was "turtly" as they had an untagged turtle on the beach at 9pm. Got up here by 1am and headed out on the beach. The waves were awesome and the beach had been cut in half since the night before. I headed north hoping not to find any tracks from missed turtles - nothing. A quick turn around at the Jupiter Inlet and I headed south. Near the Seminole golf course I saw the unmistakable dark smudge in the sand ahead of me. Yep, I missed a turtle. I was bummed that she had just left the beach and she had the biggest track I had ever seen in my life! I sat for a minute and then cranked up the bike and cruised south again.
Didn't have to go 100 meters before I found a turtle! AJ (click for more info about AJ) was just finishing up her nest and was getting ready to leave the beach. I checked her flipper and PIT tags, took some quick measurements and checked her out.

Leatherbacks are really cool and exciting to sit next to. I sat for a bit enjoying her company and we parted. I headed south again. Wonder where she went??

Quiet on the beach

It rained the entire day on thursday so I thought it might clear out by the time 9pm came around, but I was wrong. Spent the night in raingear riding up and down the beach in the rain by myself. I did not see a single person all night - which was nice.
No turtles were spotted.

Lots of birds on the beach huddled up against the wind and rain. I saw the first group of night herons that have arrived for the summer. They are fun to watch when they are hunting for crabs. Sometimes in the morning they will sit a wait for a crab to run down the beach after being spooked by our ATV. Smart birds!


Do Sanderlings EVER sleep?? They seem to eat 24 hours a day!

Good Morning

Well, the rain held off for most of the night. It is miserable out on the beach now and I am glad to be back in the office with my dog under my desk! No turtles on the Juno last night. Niki had a false crawl early this morning and they are still patrolling to see if she comes back to nest.

Last night I viewed a talk and had a nice dinner with Edie Widder at the Reef Grill here in Juno Beach. Dr. Widder is an expert on bioluminescence It was neat to learn more about the bioluminescent critters that our leatherbacks feed upon.

rain

Leatherback surveys are already tough on the body. Lack of sleep, windburned face, sand in the eyes, etc. But add a little rain to the mix and it is just plain miserable. Radar showing a lot of rain tonight. It is warm and windy though and I feel lucky!

Pretty night - but no turtles

Last nice was a very pleasant night to be out on the beach. It was warm, bright and the ocean was pretty. I really thought I was going to find a turtle. (maybe it was the six hours of sleep yesterday that put me in a good mood) I was so confident that I even called the Marinelife Center's new education director Leslie in the evening and told I her to be ready to help with a turtle when I found one. Leslie has not seen a leatherback turtle and I could use a bit of company out there.

Sorry Leslie! Maybe tonight?

Two turtle night

Monday night was a very good one for the project! This season Niki is working for Ecological Associates Inc. on Hutchinson Island (about 40 miles north of Juno) She is monitoring sea turtles for a several ongoing construction projects. The cool thing about her job is that she is working all night on a beach with similar numbers of nesting leatherbacks as Juno Beach. Before the season we contacted the guys who run the projects up there and asked if it would be OK if we tagged a few leatherbacks during the course of Niki's work. They said "great" and we applied for a permit to do the work with the State of Florida.


Well, we got the permit and sent Niki up with a tagging kit and sure enough she finds some leatherbacks - before me!! There were TWO turtles on the beach last night. Niki was able to tag one of them, but was unable to tag the second turtle. The leatherback dug an egg chamber and sat with her tail and flipper in the hole for about an hour, but no eggs. It is interesting that we have seen this before. We have now encountered three early season turtles do the exact same thing. Niki was unable to spend a lot of time with the turtle or tag her as she needed to check the rest of the beach.


Working on Hutchinson Island will allow us to collect a lot of great data this season and we are grateful to Erik Martin and Bob Ernest for allowing us to work up there!
This is going to be an exciting season! Keep checking in for more exciting things we have planned.....

The cycle of the beach at night

I was riding around last night thinking about all of the interesting things we see out here on the beach. People are very predictable...



When starting out each night, the beach is usually very crowded. Folks are sitting on large blankets or in fancy chairs. There is usually a bunch of young children running around and everyone is very nice.



At around 10pm the mood of the beach starts to change a bit. The familys are gone and the beach is taken over by lovers and walkers. People encountered are usually friendly and often wonder what I am doing out there. I have often been offered sandwiches, a cold beer, or even a nice glass of wine near an (illegal) fire.



By 2AM all of the bars have closed in Palm Beach County and I guess everyone comes to the beach! The smell of cigarettes and alcohol are abundant. These people are very friendly and will often chase the ATV like a crazed puppy!



A wierd thing happens by about 5am. Most everyone has gone to bed, but a new crowd takes over the beach. These are "the walkers". I imagine these guys wake up and wish to start the day with a little excersise and watch the sunrise. What I don't understand is why they seem so unhappy?? They are the most unfriendly people I encounter each night. They never stop me, wave, or even say good morning. Not a good way to start the morning or for me to end the night....

Another cold night

Last night was cold once again and the swell picked up a bit. No turtles nested on our survey area last night. When the tide was out, I was able to make it down to Singer Island for two passes. The beach is so different this season. I took a bunch of photos this morning and will post a few later tonight.

First night out

We had the first leatherback nest on our survey area on Friday morning so I decided to try my luck last night. The first full night out on the beach is never an easy one! It was really beautiful out there but it was really cold. I took a nap during the 4am hour (we have many names for this period!)
The beach is completely different than it has been in past seasons. The hurricanes that hit the coast north of us really changed the beach dramatically. We will post some images in a few days. I am not sure we will be able to survey our whole section of beach this season. We'll keep you posted.

Back out tonigh!

No leatherbacks to report

No turtle nests have been reported on Florida beaches at this time. Any day now....

The folks from Palm Beach County called me today to report a stranded leatherback. I drove down to Lantana ( about 15 miles south of our survey area) and was saddened to see a large 158cm dead male leatherback turtle. I bet he was on his way south for the season. No immediate cause of death could be identified.