Two turtles and a loon?

Last night seemed to speed by at a rapid pace. I was on the beach by about 10pm and found a turtle on the first run to the north. It was AJ- a turtle who is becoming quite the regular on our section of beach. I think we have seen her 4 times this season already! Kelly and I had a few Loggerheads last night to keep us busy between the leatherbacks. I found a second turtle at around 3:30am near the Juno beach fishing pier. She had just finished her nest and was returning to the sea. I quickly checked her tags, measured her and checked her out. It was Scorpio and we have not seen her since we tagged her in 2002.

As Kelly was driving home down the beach after the sun came up she called me to tell me about a Loon on the beach. I said I would check it out and continued North to count and mark the crawls from last night. There were 10! Although they were a bit late, the Loggerheads are here! I found the Loon and she appeared to be healthy so I brought her to the local lake and let her go. She drew a little blood from me before she left! I wish that someday I can hear the call of a Loon on a lake up north someday. Doesn't seem quite right to hear one on the beach in Florida! Not much else to report from last night. We hope the luck continues tonight.

Cold and wet

The night started off warm (almost hot) and dry but by 3am things had changed - dramatically! I started off the night by driving along A1A looking for one of our turtles with a satellite transmitter. The Transmitter also has a VHF beacon which sends out a signal that we are able to pick with a special receiver and antenna. The turtle was "Stewart" and she was right where I thought she was going to be! I found her signal very quickly along the beach near Briny Breezes which is a small community north of Delray beach. We did not need to check her, so I left and drove north to Juno Beach. Kelly had already surveyed the south section of beach and I needed to get up there and do my part! We both rode the beach looking for leatherbacks but did not come across any of the big rubbery beasts. Instead, I found a few loggerhead turtles! Loggerheads are small (compared to leatherbacks) crusty, generally cranky, funny looking turtles with big heads! I spent a few minutes with one to tag her and collect a sample for genetics and stable isotope analysis.

By about 2:30 the weather radar looked BAD. Kelly had decided to drive south and put her ATV away because we would not be doing any more surveying with the approaching weather. It was a good decision! The weather continued for the rest of the night and into the morning. I took a morning drive along the beach to mark loggerhead nests and see if there were any leatherbacks missed. We did not miss any!

And now we just received data from Stewart - the turtle She nested last night in the spot where I found her earlier in the evening. She even nested less than 3 kilometers from her last nest. Nice to find a predictable leatherback!

Eeeks.. a logger!

The loggerheads have arrived! 2 last night!

Expecting a few, but...

Didn't find any! Only one turtle made a brief appearance on our beach last night. I discovered a short crawl near the Marinelife Center steps late last night. I guess she did not like the look or feel of things and she left the beach before we noticed her. I thought that maybe she would have come up somewhere else this morning, but couldn't find her anywhere. Maybe tonight.

Exciting news on our tracked turtles! The turtle that Kelly and I deployed a transmitter on during the morning hours about 20 days ago nested on Miami Beach!! We received a data point from her on April 20 that showed she nested (along with another turtle)in a not so desirable spot for leatherbacks - amid the bright lights and condominiums of Miami. We contacted the folks down that way and they were able to verify a nest in the precise position that we recorded from the satellites!

Here is an aerial view of Aurora's nest:

Does that look like a Leatherback beach? Clicking the image will open up a map showing her movements since deployment.

A bad experience

Last night I encountered �Sara� a leatherback that we first encountered during the 2003 season. She had just finished digging an egg chamber and was getting ready to drop her eggs. I snuck up behind her and noticed that her cloaca (the cavity that the intestinal and reproductive tracts empty into) was very large and inflamed. We had several leatherbacks on the beach at this time, so I left her and headed north to find some more turtles. Nothing else. I headed back down to watch Sara finish her nest and was concerned that she still had not laid any eggs, though she seemed to be trying very hard. I made a few unsuccessful phone calls to our veterinary folks to see if there was anything I could do for her. After about 15 minutes of watching her struggle, I put on some gloves and took a look to see if there was anything I could see. I did not see anything external, so I went a little further and reached in and pulled out a football sized mass of plastic from her cloaca! She was plugged up by plastic debris she had ingested. I took out at least two masses of plastic and she seemed to be doing better. Her cloaca decreased in size by 2/3 and was not as sensitive as it was earlier. She covered her empty nest and crawled back into the water. We took a few images and collected the plastic. After chatting with our veterinarian Nancy Mettee and Jeanette Wyneken this morning we think that Sara has a good chance of passing the rest of the plastic and will likely return to nest.


Leatherbacks and all marine life face the threat of eating plastics everyday out in the ocean. Please try to reduce the quantity of plastics out in the environment. Get out there on the beach, or on your boat and try to clean up and make a difference to these turtles!


All marine turtle images taken in Florida were obtained with the approval of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife (USFWS) and the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commision (FWC) under conditions not harmful to this or other turtles


More information about leatherback and plastic can be found here: http://www.floridaleatherbacks.com/research/threats2.asp

A recent post by Mathew Godfrey on seaturtle.org: http://www.seaturtle.org/blog/mgodfrey/000384.html


General info. about plastics in the marine environment:
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm


http://www.blueoceansociety.org/plastics.htm

1,2,3...

A three turtle night! Not long after Kelly headed to bed, I came across a leatherback nesting just south of the first turtle location. She was already covering her nest when I came across her at around 1am. It was "Tayler" a leatherback that Niki tagged up on Hutchinson Island 10 days ago.

No more than a few minutes later I found another leatherback near the Seminole Golf Course. (You can view our entire survey area on this page - scroll south to find the golf course!)This turtle had a few interesting tags. A quick phone call to Dean Bagley up in Melbourne Beach confirmed she was one of hers! Dean thinks she was tagged in 2002, but will verify and we'll post more information later today.

The wind has blown a LOT of sargassum onto the beach last night. The ride was really tough at high tide due the large mounds of weed. Some of them were 4 feet high! I was really bothered by the amount of plastic debris mixed in with the weed. On my morning run I counted 38 plastic buckets on the beach!

I understand that Mike James (Nova Scotia Leatherback Turtle
Working Group) is a fan of the "project log" !!! Hey Mike, We know you are reading this... I think everyone would like to see some of your notes during your field season. I bet you see some neat stuff.

Salty

The waves continued to hit the beach pretty hard last night. I was blocked from most of the beach during a few hours around high tide. I did find a leatherback though! She was nesting at around 1am near the Seminole Golf Course. I was suprised to see her as the water was up in the dunes at that point. I guess she had to drop some eggs and she was determined to find some dry sand. She nested in the sea oats and her nest was already washed over this morning. I named her "salty" because of the heavy, wet, salty air we have been having over the last few days. I guess I am only going to be using descriptive names for turtles this season....

On my morning pass I found a leatherback nest on the north end of the survey area. I was really not that suprised to find it as we were unable to get up that way most of the night. I was suprised at the location though. She nested in the Sea Grapes! I am not sure if I would have even seen her if I drove past her while nesting. Her nest was quite far into the dune vegetation.
The waves are beginning to calm down now and I expect we will have a few turtles tonight!

the twilight zone

things just don't seem right when you go to bed when it's light, and wake up when it's dark. i got a much needed 13 (that's right) hours of sleep last night (or last day, whatever). i had tonight off to do some school work; so, i caught up on the sleep and have been off the windy, salty beach. i must admit, it has been nice. the Hutchinson crew had no turtles to report as of around 2 am. it is still really yucky out there i hear. we had no turtles friday or saturday nights either. chris and i think they must have headed south to get out of the bad weather, and must have been crossing their flippers tightly, waiting for better weather to nest!

'nother pass

Just took a bit of a ride on the beach. It was pretty wild out there! The ocean has covered every bit of the beach and is washing the dune away in a few places. I will wait for the sun to come up before another ride. I have been spending the time here in the office working on some new stuff for the website. Almost finished with a zoomable map showing our entire survey area. Check it out here.

We will be putting a few maps of the turtles we are currently tracking shortly. Stay tuned.

Unsafe

I have decided that it is unsafe to continue the survey tonight. The swell has increased and now the waves are pushing up into the dune along most of the beach. The swell is predicted to increase in size overnight and subside late Sunday. It seems that the turtles are avoiding the beach also. No nests reported last night on the beaches in the area.

The marine radio is very busy tonight with distress calls and reports of containers adrift. The waves are giant!

The good and the bad

Another tough survey last night! The wind and waves were really wild once again. Sandy and I surveyed from the road for a while and then I headed out on the beach when the tide fell a little bit. The good thing was that the rain kept the flying sand to a minimum! The bad was that it rained and the waves may have been too large for leatherbacks. No turtles on Juno or up in Hutchinson.

Here is a good view of the conditions we endured last night. Inlet Camera

Miserable night - Great morning

Last night was just miserable! At around 11pm the wind started howling. It blew so hard out of the north that I almost quit surveying. It was almost impossible to drive north into the wind due to all of the kicked up sand. I finally figured out that if I closed one eye and used the night scope to cover the other I could drive using the scope. It was that bad!! The wind and resulting currents really ate up the beach and caused a nice scarp to form once again. It was luck that I found a leatherback at about 4am. I was driving north into the wind and saw a leatherback up near the dune. A little confused as to how she got there since there were NO tracks, I went up and checked her tags. It was Juno! Another 2001 turtle that we have not seen since the first season. Kelly and I watched her nest with Frank Harris and his wife Bebe. I remember that she had a terrible wound on her shoulder at the time, but happy to report it has healed completely!

Back to the missing tracks

The wind was so violent last night that it wiped the beach clean in minutes. There was hardly any evidence of turtles on the beach at all! Back down south as the sun was started to come up, I saw another turtle. Yep, no tracks at all but there she was. Another morning turtle - digging an egg chamber at around 5:30am. She was a new turtle and I named her "Habba" which is an Arabic word that means fierce howling winds.

When the sun was up, the wind died and it was a beautiful morning. Nobody believes me about how bad it really was last night!

the HI report

Things have been very crazy on Hutchinson lately...we have a few turtles that have made repeat appearances, and it's great to see familiar "faces" on the beach. Three new turtles that I tagged (Carla, Chrissa, Tierney) have been back to see us. Carla has been seen the most (seems to be picky about the sand she nests in and false crawls a lot), and Chriss and Tierney were back after about 10-11 days after I tagged them. Two new ones were tagged this week, Chassy and Caitlin. Looking forward to seeing more of them. I'm really beginning to feel at home on my new beach. I wish Chris, Kelly and Sandy could come up and survey with me up there! It's a huge beach now, after the renourishment project, but the sand it very coarse and densely packed. May be a problem for nesting turtles (maybe Loggerheads) or for developing and emerging hatchlings. We are relocating all of the leatherback nests now because heavy equipment is still driving all over the beach. Hopefully the hatching success will be good. I hope I get to tag a few more turtles before this position ends at the end of April...but what a great learning experience it has been!

Busy Night

6 turtles last night! Sandy and I found three turtles down on Juno and Niki and the crew on Hutchinson found an addition three nesting leatherbacks. I think Sandy and Niki will post mre information here in a little while. I am tired and off to bed!

New calendar system

Who needs the Gregorian, Mayan or Julian system?? Maybe we should start using the Leatherback calendar. Yesterday we had a turtle (Luna) arrive on her exact 4 year anniversary of her first recorded nest. Then, last night I came across a nesting leatherback with tag scars and PIT tag. I added a few new tags and checked her PIT tag number. It seemed like an odd number to me so I quickly checked the datasheets and located her number. It was Ursa. The second turtle to be tagged here on Juno Beach. She was only 2 days off from her original tagging date!
So now we have found the first and second tagged leatherback. I guess "mary" is due tonight...
It is fun to look back on all the old datasheets and remember the experience of our inaugural 2001 season. It seems as if all of our old leatherback friends are joining us this season. With all of the new girls showing up now and the "old girls" arriving also I guess this is going to be a huge season. 2001 was a record nesting year for us and we are expecting this year to be just as good or better!

Last night I heard from Dean Bagley at UCF in Melbourne beach. She was ecstatic when I answered her call at around 1AM. She found "China Girl"! China has been nesting there regularly for many years now and has been tracked via satellite for 2 seasons. Here harness and transmitter were missing once again - this is a good thing! The harness and trasnmitter are designed to fall off after a certain period of time and it is good to see that they are working.

sort of miserable

Last night did not start out being much fun for me. Maybe it was the realization that I have been working every night for a month now without a night off?? Probably not, because I hate nights off!

I had a hard time dealing with the giant waves and strong salty wind. The waves blocked off large portions of the beach from me for about two hours during high tide. I was sure there were nesting turtles everywhere, but I could not find any. Finally at around 3am I found what I was looking for. I spotted a turtle nesting below the high water line near the Jupiter Reef Club. She had walked in circles for a while before giving up and nesting in the wet sand. I snuck up behind her and checked her tags. XXS458?? XXS meant that this turtle was probably tagged in 2001 - four years ago! I ran back to the ATV and quicly scanned the list of turtles we have tagged. It was Luna! Luna was the first leatherback tagged on Juno Beach. I looked closer at the date of first encounter, I looked again and was amazed to see that it was April 12th. Exactly 4 years later, Luna was nesting on Juno beach.

I just processed the data from our satellite transmitters. It looks like Aurora nested last night on a beach about 15 kilometers north of our survey area. We had hoped she would come back to Juno so we coould check her harness. Maybe next time??

Found her!

As we started the survey last night, Sandy and I sat at the ATV acces ramp and had to decide which direction to go first. We chose south (we usually go north first) and not more than 15 minutes later we came across a turtle as she was just starting to dig an egg chamber. It was Molly! We waited for a few minutes and removed her transmitter and harness.

We were expecting Molly to nest on Saturday night and it seems that she tried. I offloaded the GPS data from her transmitter and found a GPS point that was collected at 10pm on on the beach a few miles north of our survey area near the Hobe Sound Wildlife Refuge. She likely crawled out of the water and encountered a scarp or something that made her turn around. A lot of the beaches here have been eroded quite a bit over the last two days with the crazy winds and swells we have been having. The Argos data show that she ventured south overnight and spent the day just off the beach here near the Marinelife Center. I had been hearing her signal all morning, and was a bit concerned she would nest sometime during the early evening hours. But, we found her and her transmitter is on it's way to be repaired.

There was a turtle that nested in MacArthur Park last night, but we were unable to make it to the area due to the waves. Niki reported no turtles on Hutchinson.

Chasing Molly!

A whole mess of turtles! Last night was a busy one. Niki saw 3 turtles on Hutchinson and we had one new turtle down here on Juno Beach. We tagged a new leatherback at around 12:00am just outside of the office here in Juno Beach. Niki was visited by Snowflake and Ana and another that I cannot remember (maybe I need some sleep)

I ran the beach with Sandy all night trying to find Molly. Molly was fitted 11 days ago with a satellite transmitter. Her transmitter is not functioning as designed and we hope to find it and reprogram it. I saw a leatherback in the surf at abround 1am last night and she apeared to have a trasnmitter on her back. She did not come back to the beach again though. Maybe tonight...

UPDATE:

Molly is swimming right off the beach in front of my office!!! I can hear her Argos messages being sent to the satellites on our police scanner tuned to the Argos frequency. When I first heard the signal about an hour ago, I freaked out and jumped back on the bike and went looking for her - no luck. She seems to be spending a lot of time near the surface fairly close to the beach. I can tell this by the amount of time between transmissions, the strength of the signal and because the transmitter only sends its data when out of the water. I wish I had a boat. Anybody want to donate a boat to the project??

lightning

The weather last night was pretty wild with crazy amounts of lightning!

Last night

Last night on Hutchinson Island Niki found a leatherback we tagged in 2003! She saw the turtle at around 1am as she tried to climb a scarp. She was unsuccessful and turned around and headed back to the water. We thought she would be back shortly and were correct. At about 3:30am she returned and laid a successful nest.

Kelly and I rode around Juno Beach all night with the salty air in our faces and did not see any turtles. Our first satellite tagged turtle is heading south now and we are expecting her to nest in the area in the next day or two.
Time for bed!

What is wrong with this picture??

Something is really out of place here in my office! In addition to the Trimble GPS unit, centrifuge, ultrafreezer, bags of coffee and other important items required for our work there is a baby doll! The doll is a remnant of an Aprils Fools prank played on Kelly. I was just cleaning the beach out of the office and thought it was an amusing photo...

Another good night!

Last night was another great one for the project. We deployed our fourth transmitter on a nesting leatherback. Kelly found "Musca" up near the Jupiter Reef Club at around 2am. Sandy and I rushed up to the location and we proceeded to fit her with a harness and her transmitter. Everything went very smoothly as she finished covering her nest and walked a long way back to the water. This is the second time we have seen Musca this year and we hope that she continues to use our beach this season. Ten days ago she nested up on Jupiter Beach in front of the Ocean Trails condominium which is only about 2 kilometers north.
More information about our satellite tagging work this season can be found here: 2005 GPS tracking Please check back in a few days as we post maps showing the movements of these awesome animals! More tonight...

no turtles

Not too much to report from the beach last night. Kelly, Niki, Sandy and I took turns patrolling the beach but did not find any nesting turtles. I think we are getting a bit spoiled by the numbers of turtles seen so far. This season has been amazing! We have encountered quite a few leatherbacks and there are already more nests recorded by today's date than the 2001 season - which was our largest! There is a graph of nest counts here: Graphs We are expecting a few turtles to return this week so keep checking in!

Cold, cold, cold

It was a cold night out there! The weather station at the Marinelife Center recorded a low temperature of 53 degrees but it felt a whole lot colder on the beach. The leatherbacks that nested last night must have been freezing. We encountered a tagged turtle here on Juno and Niki and Gwen found a turtle they tagged 10 days ago. "Stewart" was found at about 4am last night digging an egg chamber near the bluffs neighborhood. Since "Stewart" has been nesting on our survey area since 2001 we decided she would be a great candidate for satellite transmitter. Kelly and I fitted her with her transmitter and she crawled down the beach into the water. She seemed rather slow on the beach and it was probably due to the cold temperature. We now have three turtles equipped with transmitters and will be posting a few maps of their movements in the next few days.
The forecast is for another cold night. Maybe we will find Windy or Icy tonight?!

It was a pretty morning......

Kelly poses with turtle

It was a real quiet night out there but finally a turtle showed up just as we were getting ready to call it quits. She was tagged during the 2001 nesting season and is observed quite often near the Marinelife Center. We took a few measurements, checked her tags and Kelly posed for a quick picture.



Remember, flash photography is not allowed on the beach during turtle season.