Sometimes they do come back!

A majority of our turtles are observed nesting only a few times each season, but a few of them do nest regularly on our beach. Last night at about 4am I watched a big shiny leatherback crawling from the surf near the Ocean Royale condominiums! It is always exciting to see them crawl out of the water and take the long walk up the beach. This turtle was Eve, the first turtle of the season that we observed on March 20th - ten days ago.
No other turtles were spotted last night. The weather wasn't too pleasant with the wind cranking out of the east at about 15 to 20 mph. Now it is time to shake the salt off and head to bed for the day.

New ATV

Last night I had some help on the beach! Niki and Sandy helped me for half of the night on the brand new ATV. We are extremely grateful to one of the projects best supporters, Betty Fournies, who has purchased a new Honda ATV for us. This new bike will allow us completely patrol our survey area safely and comfortably!

All of you Project Log readers can also support the project by making a donation or by adopting a leatherback sea turtle. For more details, contact Jessica Perkins at 561-627-8280 x 106

No turtles last night, but I bet there will be a few tonight!

Monday night

Sorry for the late post!

Monday night was a lot quieter than the night before. The tide was out for most of the night and it was pretty bright out there on the beach. We ride along the beach on our ATV's at night with no lights, so we are thankful when there are a few clouds to reflect some of the sky glow.

There was one turtle last night - a new girl. I encountered her in Carlin Park at about 2am as she was covering her nest. The tide was out and she had to crawl a really long distance to find some dry sand to nest. The track was really pretty in the glow.
She was a new turtle and I decided to name her "Tallulah" for our friends out in Colorado!

Cold and busy!

Last night was another cold one with the temperature dropping into the 40's once again. The turtles didn't seem to mind. I saw 4 of them!

The first leatherback arrived at about 1:30am near the Jupiter Reef Club. I really wasn't expecting to come across her in the cold and I had to do a double take when I first saw her track. I had to laugh when I checked her tags. It was "Windy" a turtle that Kelly and I tagged on another very cold night back during the 2003 season. I wonder where her friend "Icy" is?

On my way back down the beach, I spotted another turtle. This was a new untagged turtle and was in kind of a bad mood throwing cold dry sand in my face! I quickly tagged her and and headed down the beach. I decided to name her "Cleopatra" - a name suggested by a blog reader in England!

I was able to take a run down to the Lake Worth Inlet while the tide was low and on my way back to the office to warm up I came across another turtle nesting in MacArthur Park. This one was a turtle we saw only once last year and was nesting again this season! I sat with her for a while and watched her cover her nest before deciding it was too cold to be outside anymore. I headed north once again to warm up with some hot coffee. I didn't get very far before I spotted another track up the beach! The turtle was all the way up near the dune and was facing the water. I love it when they do that! It was really dark at this spot, but I tried to take a picture to show the view. She looked sort of majestic laying on a big rise in the sand looking back out to see as Venus was rising over the water. She was a BIG turtle and one that we have not seen in quite some time. "Jupiter" was the first turtle observed during the 2002 season and has not been seen since. She must be living right, because she was FAT! I guess that is kinda rude, but she looked like she was going to bust out of her carapace!

What a night!

This morning, the swell was still pushing the water up the beach and made the morning run very hard. The beach is blocked from the ATV in a few spots and is covered in water in other locations. Hopefully it will die down a bit today and maybe even warm up a bit!

Too cold for us!

An hopefully too cold for the leatherbacks. We had to quit early tonight due to the cold temperatures. The temp. was 48 degrees with a very cold wind chill of 42 (about 33 degrees when riding on the ATV!)
The tide is also racing in with a very large swell pushing water up the beach. All in all not a very pleasant night to be on the beach. The stars are amazing though, and we did see quite a few meteorites.

Cold and windy night

This morning the weather station at the marinelife center recorded a low temperature of 48 degrees. It sure did feel a lot colder than that out there on the ATV all night! I did spot one turtle though! Kalindi was spotted at around 1:30am nesting near the Seminole Golf Course. She did not lay any eggs though. She crawled up the beach, dug an egg chamber, waited about 2 hours and then covered up her empty "nest" Not really sure why she was unable to lay any eggs. Maybe she just wasn't ready to lay eggs?? Kelly and I watched a leatherback named "Ridgy" do the same thing for a few hours during the 2001 season and the first turtle of the 2004 season did not lay any eggs either. Since she is a regular nester on Juno Beach, (she has was first seen on Juno Beach during the 2003 season and was our first one year recapture - nesting again in 2004) Maybe we will see her again.

Lights

No turtles to report from last night. The night started out very wet and rainy, but the rain pants and jacket did the job! It was a very quiet night and I did not see a single person on the beach that was not working. I chatted for a bit with Shannon who is working for Chris Peretta at DB Ecological Services. Shannon was monitoring the Jupiter Inlet dredging project. The project is occuring during turtle season and the permits require a person to monitor for nesting turtles - although if I were a leatherback, I would stay away from the bright lights of the bulldozers!

I also met two guys at around 3:30 am working for Palm Beach County. They were adding shields to the traffic lights and turning off the streetlights along A1A. It was amazing to see the differnece on the beach when the lights were shielded! Although it was a bit dark without my night scope.

Folks have been sending lots of good names for new leatherbacks! I have a list now and will use it when we need a new name. Hopefully I will get to pull out the list tonight!

Daisy

No leatherbacks were spotted nesting in our survey area last night. I did come across the remains of "Daisy" the 2004 season leatherback turtle that was found dead after being hit by a boat last week. Her bones are washing up on the beach near the Jupiter Reef Club about two miles north of where she was originally found. We often find turtle bones on the beach here, but leatherback bones are rare and unmistakable. They are GIANT! I salvaged a few of them to display here at the Marinelife Center.

After a marathon session, I am getting ready to put the ATV away and head home for some well needed sleep. As Sandy said yesterday, I spent the day netting sea turtles in the Lake Worth Lagoon. The conditions were not that great - it was really windy, but we did catch two juvenile green turtles. I took a lot of photos and will post them on this website in the next day or two.

Some girls are bigger than others...

I was happily riding along the beach last night listening to The Smiths song "Some girls are bigger than others" when I happened across a GIANT black thing up the beach near Mercury Road in Juno Beach. It was my first leatherback of the season, and she was definitely bigger than others!
When I saw that she was laying eggs through my night scope I approached her and checked for tags - none. A new turtle! She was a perfect leatherback, not a scratch on her and she was large. A bit bigger than our average size at 159 centimeters, but she seemed larger than most.
I gave her a few new tags and left her to finish nesting. Nothing else to report from last night. Getting sleepy now and getting ready for a good days sleep.

If you have a good name for this turtle, leave a comment below and maybe we'll name her for you!

Venus

As the planet Venus rises in the east before the sun, I am packing up and heading off to bed. It was a nice night last night with a warm salty breeze off the ocean. I thought there would be a turtle or two, but none were spotted.
There should be a few turtles in the next few days as we head deeper into leatherback season. If you take a look at in the archives (over on the right) you will notice that we spot turtles regularly beginning on about the 20th of March.

lonely

It was a very quiet night on the beach. Only a few people enjoying the moonrise and cool temperatures. No turtles have nested yet, and I am heading out for a final pass before heading off to bed.

Sad night

Last night I saw my first leatherback of the season, but unfortunately she was dead. As I was making my first pass south along the beach, I saw the unmistakable shape of a leatherback in the surf. She was facing to the south and I watched her for a bit before realizing that she was not moving. When I got closer I immediately knew what had happened. There were three or four long slices in her carapace from a large boat propeller. I checked her tags and was really bummed when I found that she did indeed have two flipper tags and a PIT tag. The numbers were ours, I checked our database to find out the turtle was named "Daisy" Daisy was seen only once on Juno Beach during the 2004 season. She was spotted nesting on 6-23-04 and was actually the last turtle that was spotted that season.

The tide has now taken Daisy back out to sea and sadly, it really does look as if she wants to keep swimming.

This is the second tagged turtle to wash up in the past 24 hours! Dean Bagley's turtle on Tuesday morning was first observed nesting on Melbourne Beach in 2005.

Oh yeah, there were two nests in our survey area last night!! I was unable to reach one of the turtles due to the recent beach erosion, and I missed the other one while being tied up with some police activity on the beach.

I bet there will be another one tonight and hopefully we will see her. Night night.

Nothing to report

Last night, Sandy and looked for leatherback on our survey area. No turtles to report. Maybe tonight!
On a sad note, Dean Bagley from the University of Central Florida called me this am to report a dead leatherback turtle. This turtle had a PIT tag and we were unsure if it was one of ours. It turned out that it was a leatherback tagged last season on Melbourne Beach. Was she coming back to nest?? They will be taking a closer look to see if they can determine the cause of her death.

A new season

Well, it is finally here. The 2006 leatherback field season has begun! There are now three leatherback nests in the state as far as we know. There have not been any nests on our survey area yet, but any day now!
I will be beginning our nightly patrols starting this upcoming weekend.

Stay tuned!