They're FINALLY here!

What an eventful night! Our turtles have finally returned! We encountered not one, but two turtles last night! About 2 minutes after venturing onto the beach, Rebeccah and Andrew called to say there was a turtle just north of the Loggerhead Marinelife Center so we all went out to see her. It was Starry, a turtle that was originally tagged back in May of 2003 by the research crew at the University of Central Florida. She was tagged in Indialantic, FL. They are the only other organization that does nighttime tagging of leatherbacks in Florida. Starry was also seen on Juno Beach in April of 2008. She returned to visit with us again tonight on Juno Beach. The entire crew ventured out to see the first turtle of the year. We have several new crew members this year (Tommy, Andrew, Liz and Sonja) and after 17 nights without seeing a single turtle, we were all ecstatic to see her! Tommy, Rebeccah, Chris and I have been working since March 1st in search of our girls and this was a much appreciated reward for those of us working tonight. We were all very happy to have seen one turtle for the evening and headed on after watching Starry return to the water. A short time later, Rebeccah called again to say she was watching yet another turtle emerge. This time, she was in Jupiter. Liz and I, who had been covering the south end of our survey area, headed back down the beach to meet our second turtle of the night. Rebeccah and Andrew were standing with Kathleen, a turtle that has only been seen once before, in May of 2006. Chris met us all there and we watched Kathleen for about an hour. Many people ask why we name our turtles. We give names to our turtles because it makes it easier for us to remember their history and important information. Trying to remember a turtle by a code or ID # becomes difficult but having a name allows us to recall them quickly. This is helpful when we need to recall how many times we've seen a certain turtle or other specific aspects about that turtle and we don't have access to our computer database immediately. Overall, it was a beautiful (but cold) night out there and a great "first turtle" night!