This weekend Chris and Niki found three new turtles! Friday night, Chris had a turtle that had already been PIT tagged by researchers at UCF in Melbourne Beach, named Mattie. Mattie is the second turtle of the season from Melbourne. It's pretty neat that leatherbacks in Florida have such a big nesting range. Joe and Thomas, volunteers at the Marinelife Center, finally got to see their first leatherback of the year on Friday. She was also new and Joe's daughter named the turtle Delilah. Niki had another new turtle, Roomba, on Saturday night in Lost Tree Village. Sunday night we saw Tirzah. Tirzah is new this season but the first time we saw her there was only enough time to give her one metal flipper tag. So last night we gave her a PIT tag and another flipper tag, took measurements and a genetic sample, and thoroughly looked her over for injuries.
There are 42 nests in Juno and Jupiter, 4 in MacArthur Park, and 9 on Singer Island. We are a little behind last year's nest total, but not by much!
