I am finally back in Juno Beach! I've missed a good bit of the early season but I'm very happy to be back in the field and finding our familiar turtle girls out there nesting. chris has been keeping me up to date on all the new turtles and all our old friends that he's been finding since early March. I've most recently arrived from NC where I go to school but not long ago I was in Greece at the 26th sea turtle symposium where I gave a talk about our project and some of the exciting results that we have found - especially with regards to the GPS tags that we deployed on a few of our turtles last season. I hope to write more here about those results soon. right now I'm in the process of trying to get my dissertation written up so I can graduate and so it's really a tough decision to leave the beach each night just when things are starting to get good out there - like yesterday when chris found a turtle just as I was about to turn in. but I did stay for that one and then headed off to bed.
tonight we had a similar story....Sara and Simona were out with Chris and I this evening and about 12:55 Simona and I came across the type of tracks we'd hoped to see (we also saw a couple of loggerheads nesting). Our big turtle was just covering her eggs as we approached. I checked her tag (she only had one left) and found that it was Elaine - one of our 2003 turtles. Luckily she still had that one tag hanging on or we would not have been able to identify her as she'd never been given a PIT tag. So Simona and I fixed that situation, giving her a new PIT tag and a new flipper tag. we also took a genetic sample. just then Chris and Sara arrived to see Elaine - she's a much bigger than average turtle at 161 cm in length. then, sadly for me I had to go to bed...so the group is out there without me, still looking for another turtle. I'm sure they will post an update on what went on....
