leatherbacks's blog

Nothing tonight

leatherbacks — Sat, 03 May 2008 05:46:35 -0400

No leatherbacks have been spotted tonight along Juno Beach and the rest of our survey area. It is not that boring out there since the loggerheads are starting to nest in pretty good numbers now. Sara and Niki are out there now and have reported about 15 loggerhead nests so far.

Last night we found one turtle nesting right here near the Marinelife Center. Her name is Tuga and she is named after the leatherback turtle on the Go Diego Go show for kids. Tuga attempted to nest on Singer Island the night before, but she spent a lot of time and effort on the beach blocked by chairs near the Hilton hotel. They have many cabana chairs that are left on the beach each night and the chairs often block nesting turtle from accessing the high beach. Tuga probably spent an hour walking back and forth between the chairs before giving up and heading back to the ocean. She laid a good nest less than 24 hours later here right by our office!

Do sea turtles need antibiotics??

leatherbacks — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:47:28 -0400

Last night, Sandy had a very exciting recapture on the south end of Singer Island (Palm Beach Shores)
I was in the office when she called to say she found her first leatherback turtle of the season. She told me the turtle’s name, and I quickly looked her up in our database and told her who it was. After a few minutes of chatting about her first turtle, I realized that it was Venus! We all thought that we would never see Venus again after her last encounter in 2006.

Venus had been hit by a large boat just prior to nesting that season and it was very hard for us to watch her crawl up and down the beach and throw as much sand as she did. The boat had severely lacerated her carapace and the wound was bleeding and full of sand and debris. She seemed to put a lot of effort into making her nests, even though she was bleeding from her cracked open carapace. Many of us that observed her, really thought that there was little chance for her to survive her terrible injuries.

New turtle

leatherbacks — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:51:15 -0400

Despite the cold weather, the turtles are nesting in pretty good numbers. Last night, we found three turtles nesting along the south end of the beach. Two of them were turtles that nested this season and this is likely their third set of nests this season. We did not see either of them ten days ago. The other turtle was Eve. She nested pretty regularly during the 2006 season and we expect to see her a bunch this year.

On Saturday night, we found a new leatherback nesting along Jupiter Beach. She was named "Tuga" after a character on Go Diego Go.
Tuga is described as a "heroic Spanish-speaking sea turtle. An exceptionally strong swimmer, she can zip Diego through the water on her shell or protect her friends from stinging jellyfish!"

Quick update

leatherbacks — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:50:49 -0400

Last night we had two turtles. One of them was a new untagged girl and the second was a turtle tagged way back in 2002. Hillary is her name, and she has nested every other year since 2002. I did not get to see any turtles nesting because I was stuck up near the Jupiter Inlet monitoring a beach restoration project. There is a crew working 24 hours a day to add sand to the eroded section of beach a few hundred meters south of the inlet. We make sure that the turtles and their nests are protected from the equipment that operates all night. Check out the webcam image of the project here: www

Here we go

leatherbacks — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:33:29 -0400

We have begun the 2008 leatherback research season here on the beaches of northern Palm Beach County! This year we should be able to completely survey the whole stretch of beach between the Lake Worth Inlet and the Jupiter Inlet.

They are here!

leatherbacks — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:04:21 -0400

Turtle nesting season has begun here along Juno Beach! As of this morning, we have recorded four leatherback nests.
The season did start off very early this year with a nest recorded in Boca Raton on February 12th. I am pretty sure that the nest may be the earliest nest ever recorded in the state! We are expecting an average # of turtles and nests this year, but we should know better in two weeks or so.

We will probably begin our nightly surveys in a few days to encounter nesting turtles. Stay tuned!

The 2007 nesting season

leatherbacks — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 12:01:55 -0500

The 2007 nesting season has finally come to an end. As of today, there is only one green turtle nest left here on Juno Beach and I expect it should hatch any night now.
This was another record setting year for leatherbacks with thirty more nests recorded than the 2001 season. A graph of the nesting trend can be viewed under the research section of this site.
All of us were extremely busy this season and we did not have much time to keep this site updated. I am very sorry for that and we will certainly do a better job next season!

Why were we so busy? Well, this year the Loggerhead Marinelife Center took on a much larger monitoring project. We developed a partnership with an engineering firm - Taylor Engineering and an environmental consulting firm - Ecological Associates to conduct turtle monitoring on a much longer survey area than in the past. The new group worked each morning (and often well into the afternoon!) along the beach from John D. MacArthur State Park all the way north to the Palm Beach/Martin County line. This area encompasses some of the most dense sea turtle nesting in the United States and we were very busy. Over the course of the season we documented more than 17,000 sea turtle crawls along the beach, dug up more than 1000 nests to assess the productivity of all of those turtles.

Looking Good!

leatherbacks — Wed, 30 May 2007 11:43:06 -0400

The number of nests here on Juno Beach continues to climb. I think that we will beat the all time record of leatherback nests of 128 by the end of this upcoming weekend. Check out the graph below.
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read more

They keep coming!

leatherbacks — Fri, 25 May 2007 08:17:41 -0400

The number of leatherback nests recorded along our entire survey area is now over 170 with more than 107 nests on Juno Beach alone! This season looks to be a record year.

We have been spotting around 5 turtles a night for the past week or so and it has been a lot of fun out there. Many of the turtles we are encountering are new to our beach, but we are seeing a lot of our "old friends" One of the older girls is "Ikeya". She first nested during the 2002 season and she is pretty big - 168 centimeters long!
Ikeya is interesting because she is tends to nest on the same nights each season (May 24th). She also has a wild habit of switching beaches between the south end of Juno Beach and Boca Raton which is more than 50 kilometers to the south. She has been spotted twice on Boca Raton beaches and three times along our beach. She is also one of the few turtles that has nested two years in a row.

Quite a quiet night

leatherbacks — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:49:01 -0400

Not too much was going on last night. After a weekend filled with giant holes, footprints and spring break parties it was nice to have a quiet night with the beach all to myself. Though, it would have been nicer if the leatherbacks had shown up to keep me company. I didn't encounter any nesting turtles on our survey area. There were two nests on beaches I patrol on the morning surveys though and I wonder who laid the nests?? One of them was at the Jupiter Inlet Colony along a new section of beach I am working on, and the other was at MacArthur Beach State park. Yes, you all know this is a beach that is a core component of our area, and I missed a turtle! I hate missing them, but it is really hard to patrol the whole beach by yourself. In a few days, I will have some folks trained to help me out and kelly will be around for a few days later next week or so.