We are somewhat concerned by the fact that we do not have a single loggerhead nest on the Juno Beach survey area yet. We have recorded one nest in Jupiter and Sonja encountered a nesting turtle in MacArthur park but so far, we don't have a nest on Juno Beach. Over the past six years, which were the lowest on record, we've seen an average of 20-25 nests on Juno by this date. It is possible that the record cold winter pushed back the start of the season. We're still waiting.
Leatherback nesting continues. Saturday night we encountered two turtles. First we saw Michelle, who was here ten days ago. Shortly after that, Rebeccah found a new turtle near the reef club. She decided to name the turtle Kai, which is Hawaiian for ocean. Sunday night welcomed the return of an old friend - Ursa! Ursa was one of the first turtles encountered by our researchers when the project began in 2001. She nested again in 2003, 2005 and 2007. Curiously, she skipped 2009 but came back to nest this year. Rebeccah also encountered another turtle in the park. Last night we saw five turtles! Denise, Musca and Rosie returned. Andrew found a new turtle in Jupiter and named her Roma. Chris also found a new turtle false crawling just south of the center. He decided to name her Almond - since they look like almonds ;) We also got a call from Dean Bagley tonight from the UCF tagging crew in Melbourne. She found Salty! Salty was tagged here on April 18th, 2005 but hasn't been back since. I guess she prefers Melbourne! Salty nested in Melbourne in 2005, 5 times in 2007, once in 2009 and returned again this year!
