it has been so hard to do the survey for the past few nights due to extreme weather. it has almost felt like tropical storm conditions here since Sunday night. the waves are huge, and are breaking hundreds of yards out - the force of the waves has been phenomenal. our whole beach up to the dune has been getting completely washed over every high tide and this will take a toll on some of the nests. I think we have probably lost some nests due to high water and erosion. it is really salty, humid, and cold working on the beach. despite the conditions, we have still seen new leatherbacks nesting. last night we had another 2 new turtles! at around 1230 am, Amy (one of our dedicated volunteers) and I spotted a leatherback getting ready to nest on Singer Island. she was missing an entire left rear flipper, but still went through the motions of digging with it, even though it was scooping no sand. luckily, her right rear flipper was in good shape and she was able to construct a fairly good egg chamber with just one flipper. she was tagged, measured (145.7 cm CCL), and sampled genetically. she lay all her eggs in 10 minutes and began to cover them. we left and continued north and I felt sure that other turtles must be up on the beach, we had been with the Singer turtle (Bellatrix) for about half an hour. sure enough, there was another on Juno Beach, high up on sand. she was a smaller turtle (140.2 cm) but had all flippers intact and was a good nester. after tagging Mira, we surveyed a bit longer, but by 315 am, the waves were just getting too big and it was starting to rain, so we called it a night. Jeremy had a quiet night on the north part of the beach, surveying from the road.
one interesting note about loggerheads - last night when the waves were so big and coming up onto the beach a long way, the loggerheads we saw nesting were tucked right into the dune, nesting there. usually they don't get so high up on the beach, but last night must not have had a choice - that was probably the only spot with some drier sand.
