On April 22nd of this year, we smashed yet another record. We encountered 13 turtles in a single night! Almost all of these turtles were seen before midnight - it seemed they all came ashore at the same time. There were 17 nests on our survey area but unfortunately we missed four of the turtles. Tagging 13 other turtles keeps us busy and we can't get down the beach fast enough to catch them all! 4 of the turtles seen that night were new turtles that had never been seen before by our staff. 4 other turtles had been seen by our researchers in prior years but were being seen for the first time of the 2009 season that night. The other 5 turtles that we encountered had already been seen previously in the season.
This trend continued through to the next night when we encountered 9 more turtles! Of these, 4 were new turtles. These two incredible nights brought us Ariana, Caitlyn, Cleopatra, Fanny, Juno, Mola, Rikki, Sara, Taylor, Eleanor, Leigh, Pearl, Navi, Remora and our 8 new turtles - Lola, Riviera, Nebraska, Nevada, Florida, Virginia, Kali and Cyndi! Many times, there are interesting stories behind the names of our turtles. Once we get our website a bit more developed, we will have more information about all of our turtles for you. You can also use the search bar to look for more information about some of these turtles in our past blogs.
