long night

Last night seemed to drag on forever! I only saw a few people and did not speak to a single person the entire night. At around 4am, I was getting tired and looking forward to the sunrise and the night ending when I spotted the first turtle. She had just popped out of the water and she was big. I watched her crawl up the beach before I headed up to the Jupiter Inlet to look for other turtles - nothing. I went back down the beach and watched her through the night scope as she dug an egg chamber very slowly. I knew she had a missing flipper or something because she took forever to dig. When she finished, I checked her for tags and she did not have any. Another new turtle? She had a wound on her carapace that looked very familiar to me but she did not have a PIT tag. Our flipper tags will sometimes come loose and some turtle have lost them after a few years, but losing a PIT tag is very rare. I really think that this turtle has been here before and I will go through all of our datasheets to see if I can match the injury.

After working up the turtle, I buzzed south to find another turtle just finishing up her nest. She had tags and a check of the database turned up the name "Oregon"
Oregon was one of our best nesting turtles from LAST season. She is back again! She has now nested here on Juno during the 2003, 2005 and 2006 seasons. Pretty cool.