well, another amazing night. blustery, windy, cold, big waves and lots of turtles! 3 leatherbacks spotted by our crew tonight. we had Jon and Maureen with us from the National Save the Sea Turtle Foundation, and were lucky to get a turtle (Hydra) nesting at 1130 pm on Juno Beach. Maureen's fifth time out with us and she finally gets to see a turtle! Hydra (originally tagged by Chris and Niki) nested successfully tonight. On Sunday night, she attempted to nest in Carlin Park, but she dug 2 egg chambers and then left the beach. Part of her problem may be that she has a huge chunk missing from her left rear flipper and was having a very hard time digging her egg chamber with only one functional flipper. She did finally manage.
around 145, Jeremy called from the north end of the beach to tell me he was just waiting for a leatherback to start laying eggs so he could check if she was new or already tagged. "me too!", I said, and I was doing exactly the same thing 2 miles down the beach. it turned out that we both had new turtles and were able to tag them, take measurements and genetic samples. my turtle was huge (near the record of 167 cm) and very wide. she looked very strong and healthy and had all parts of her flippers intact. her name is 'Electra', which seems like a funny name, but is one of the seven sisters (Pleides) and that is one of my favorite constellations. will update tomorrow on what Jeremy names his turtle.
got to get to bed now......
