happy visitors

Last night one leatherback made a few visitors to Juno Beach very happy. Trudy the turtle nested in Juno around 3 am. I was running the south route and spotted her after a snack break in the office. I was heading south and saw a crawl up, then a crawl down...DARN! I thought I had missed her, but then there was another crawl up, and so I found her just about finished digging her egg chamber. She had decided to move a bit farther down the beach before nesting, so her crawl was quite long and windy. I called Kelly, whose friend Jesse (who also worked on the project during the 2003 season) was visiting for the weekend. Jesse really hoped to see a leatherback before she left and she had been skunked the past two nights. So those two raced up to see the turtle (Kelly had tagged her last time she nested). Another visitor to Juno Beach was Joe and his wife CeCe (not sure if I spelled that right). Joe was the manager at MacArthur Beach State Park a few years ago (and one of the first major supporters of starting a leatherback project along our coast), and had never seen a leatherback in all his time there. I called them just after I found the turtle. Despite having traveled from Key West earlier in the day (in traffic!) they rallied and made their way to the beach. Despite poor directions and difficulty locating the turtle, they got to her just as she was finishing up her nest and making her way back to the water. They were so excited to see her, but not so happy about some of the really bad beachfront lighting near where Trudy nested. Nevertheless, Trudy made it back into the water (CeCe was watching through the nightscope and said she shook her head once she hit the water, seemingly relieved to feel the cool water rinse her eyes, but that's just a guess!)
Chris had a quiet night up North (well, not so quiet if you count all the people on the beach).