After four nights without seeing a turtle, the streak was finally broken on Saturday night. Tommy called to report a turtle just north of the pier at about 4:00am. Chris and I joined him and watched what appeared to be a very confused turtle. There was a small scarp in front of her that stood only about a foot high. This is nothing to a giant leatherback, we've often seen turtles climbs scarps that are three or four feet high. She attempted to get past it and gave up to start digging below it in the surf line. She attempted to go over it two additional times before eventually deciding to give up. We were able to put one flipper tag on her before she left. We were hoping to see this turtle again tonight but so far she has not made an appearance. Tommy named the turtle Alizebra after his neice Alexandra, who had a hard time pronouncing her name when she was young so she called herself Alizebra. Eagerly awaiting her return, Sonja headed out on the beach early tonight. Often, if they false crawl so late in the night, they will come back early the next night. Sonja was on the beach by 8:15 and called me by 8:30 to say that there was a turtle coming out of the water in the exact same spot that we had seen Alizebra the night before. Assuming it was her, I quickly made my way to the office to meet up with Sonja. When I got to the turtle, I checked her for tags and found that she had none. Another new turtle! She was a tiny turtle - only 145 cm long - and beautiful! A large family from Maryland was lucky enough to be on the beach and witness her nest. Some of their kids decided to name this turtle Cocoline. Still no sign of Alizebra but we're very happy to have seen two turtles in two nights!
