Beep, beep, beep-beep-beep

We found her! After searching for the last three days, we finally found Stewart. Kelly, Niki, Sandy and I were at it once again patrolling our beach and the beaches to the south last night. Sandy and I set ourselves up south of the Lake Worth Inlet on Palm Beach island. We were using the VHF receiver and had been hearing her signal off of the inlet at around 11pm. By midnight her signal put her location to our south so we headed that way and found a good spot to scan the ocean for her. After about 20 minutes we decided she was still moving south so once again moved a mile or two down the beach and listened again. The spot we stopped at seemed pretty good since Kelly and I found a turtle down there about two weeks ago. We turned on the VHF once again and heard - NOTHING! We waited for a while and finally heard a strong signal which seemed to be right in our vicinity. We listened as her signal became very strong and we could hear the rapid beep-beep-beep of her transmitter. This signal meant that she had been at the surface for a good amount of time or else she had exited the water. We still thought she was in the water, but were surprised that we once again heard the rapid beep-beep-beep and then a quicker pulse rate on the receiver. This could mean only one thing.... Stewart was on the beach to our north!!
We started running to the car to race up the beach before Sandy said "maybe we should look in the night scope first" Good idea, because Stewart was only about 400 meters north of us crawling up the beach!


We grabbed our gear and headed up the beach to find her crawling up the dune to nest. She quickly dug a nest and started to drop her eggs. Sandy and I removed her harness, checked her condition and thanked her allowing us to track her for a little while. She did seem a little happier with the transmitter off and we hope to see her again soon. Maybe ten days from now! Time for bed!