kelly's blog

In case anyone wondered where I've gone to and why I've not been writing recently - I left the field earlier than usual this year because I had an opportunity to come out to San Diego (La Jolla to be exact � where I am now) to analyze all the genetic samples that we�ve been taking from our leatherback girls for the past 6 years. This blog entry is to give a little bit of info about this work. As you've probably seen on our project log from time to time, we take a small skin sample from our nesting turtles - you only need a tiny bit to be able to get enough DNA to do the analysis. We've been fortunate to team up with Dr. Peter Dutton at the NOAA Fisheries Southwest Lab to do this work.

it has been perfect out there on the beach recently and last night was no exception. the waves have been small - barely lapping at the shore and the tides have cooperated in letting us get to the full extent of our survey area. a tremendous amount of sand has also built up along the length of the beach, owing to the small waves carrying it in. so it's a nice easy, clear run of it each time. this week, we begin our survey when the tide is nearly fully out, so in some ways we expect it's going to be a long wait for a turtle. it was.....

this week we we have one of our great friends visiting and volunteering - Mike James from the Nova Scotia Leatherback Turtle Working Group. Mike has an amazing project in Canada and he wanted to come and see some nesting turtles - somehow he is convinced that by his being here, we will find a Canadian tagged turtle (we are doubtful!). Mike also has his friend Scott with him. the NSLTWG captures leatherbacks at sea and they have done extensive satellite tagging work that has answered many of the unknown questions about leatherbacks.

even though it did rain most of the day yesterday, the evening was cool and calm, with no rain. plenty of loggerheads were nesting - many up near the dune. As well, we had the first green turtle nest in our survey area! it was great to see her - they make such a big mess when they are nesting. first they make an enormous body pit about 2 feet deep and 5 feet wide, then they get into the bottom of that to lay their eggs. upon finishing, they move forward and dig another huge pit to fill in the first pit! green turtle nesting is a very lengthy process - some take about 3 hours or longer to complete it.

last night we were able to do only one pass of the survey area before we were chased off the beach by impending severe weather. we waited at the office and watched the radar as the storms moved from the southwest toward us. around 2 am, I beetled for home on my bike, the storm was bearing down on us. by 2:15 the thunder was so loud and the lightning so bright, it was a shock each time it happened! chris and the rest of the crew were not able to get back out until morning - of course one turtle had nested! during the storm but we were not sorry that we weren't out there. it was really dangerous.

I am back in from the beach already, while chris and sara continue to patrol. I thought I would just write about the one turtle we've seen so far tonight before I turn in. A terrific night out there, calm winds and quiet surf and I was returning from the southern inlet when I saw through my scope a leatherback up at the dune in MacArthur Park. Great, I thought, first turtle of the night. I stopped my atv and snuck up to see what she was doing. She was already laying eggs and she seemed to be about half finished. I was just bending down to check for tags when what I saw next nearly stopped my heart. This beautiful turtle had been hit by a boat and was sliced deeply on her back from nearly her shoulder all the way to her rear flippers all along her carapace. I could clearly see down into her body cavity and I could see lung tissue exposed, and several bone fragments just hanging on with a bit of skin. With each breath she took, her carapace opened and closed. It was really the most horrifying injury I've ever seen on a turtle and it took me a moment to regain my balance. I did check her tags then and found that this was Venus a turtle we'd seen way back in 2001 when we started this project and not since then. Still I could not believe that this turtle was nesting at all with the injury she had. I called for chris and sara to come down we needed to document this injury and take photos of the wound.

last night we began our survey by having a bbq at our headquarters. it was a beautiful evening and we had friends and project volunteers join us for some grilling. it's always a fun way to start out - speculating about what the night will bring - we also talked about the bumper crop of turtles we got last night! we got our ATVs loaded up and headed out around 10 pm. the tide was still going out, so we figured there would be some time before the first turtle. I was surprised to see so little activity - as I rode along to the south, there were no crawls at all, just a wide clear swath of beach, bright in the moonlight.

at long last the weather is cooperating with us a bit more. the wind has finally died to a gentle breeze, making the waves lie down and act normally! it has been a rough week with many hours spent in the car or the office, wondering how many turtles were out nesting while we were not able to patrol. luckily only one or two were missed and we still managed to encounter several more turtles.

last night we were lucky to have one turtle visit our beach. I had arrived late to the beach - chris had already made a full pass. I'd been up at the Chelonian Research Institute in Oviedo with our volunteer Simona who was doing some other turtle work so we got into town around 11. nearing high tide I headed out to the south, while chris and simona went north. the large piles of seaweed that have been swept in over the last week made for a bumpy ride. We have to be extra careful and use our night scopes well as we make our way down the beach so that we don't run over that hidden nail, or miss one of our turtle tracks. the beach is completely littered with huge smelly piles of rotting seaweed. Soon they will rake the seaweed into piles and then we'll be thinking the beach is full of leatherbacks!

I am finally back in Juno Beach! I've missed a good bit of the early season but I'm very happy to be back in the field and finding our familiar turtle girls out there nesting. chris has been keeping me up to date on all the new turtles and all our old friends that he's been finding since early March. I've most recently arrived from NC where I go to school but not long ago I was in Greece at the 26th sea turtle symposium where I gave a talk about our project and some of the exciting results that we have found - especially with regards to the GPS tags that we deployed on a few of our turtles last season. I hope to write more here about those results soon. right now I'm in the process of trying to get my dissertation written up so I can graduate and so it's really a tough decision to leave the beach each night just when things are starting to get good out there - like yesterday when chris found a turtle just as I was about to turn in. but I did stay for that one and then headed off to bed.

just to let everyone know, we haven't fallen off the face of the Earth! we've just been taking a few days to recuperate (and some of us are switching back over to daytime schedule). we had a celebratory evening on Wednesday - complete with champagne and a toast to a fantastic season. since then we've been catching up on paperwork, our other jobs, and sleep. there have only been a couple of leatherback nests in our area, as far as I know. soon we will be posting the season summary as well as updates on our little satellite turtle - as of this morning, she still appears to be transmitting off the coast of Charleston and has been hanging around there the past few days.

despite it being a pretty, cool breezy kind of night, we had no luck with finding leatherbacks. even the other species were fairly quiet out there. the water has really flattened out and sometimes we think although this is great for swimmers and going to the beach, it's not great for bringing turtles in to nest. I did see a few pairs of mating green turtles in the water and several nesting. I think we are pretty much finished up now for the season, we'll take a couple runs on the atv over the next few days but as far as full night surveys, we're done! we will however, still be posting on our Project Log as we want to keep everyone up to date on the naming contest (20 names entered so far) and also on the progress of our satellite turtle.