Last night, Sandy had a very exciting recapture on the south end of Singer Island (Palm Beach Shores)
I was in the office when she called to say she found her first leatherback turtle of the season. She told me the turtle’s name, and I quickly looked her up in our database and told her who it was. After a few minutes of chatting about her first turtle, I realized that it was Venus! We all thought that we would never see Venus again after her last encounter in 2006.

Venus had been hit by a large boat just prior to nesting that season and it was very hard for us to watch her crawl up and down the beach and throw as much sand as she did. The boat had severely lacerated her carapace and the wound was bleeding and full of sand and debris. She seemed to put a lot of effort into making her nests, even though she was bleeding from her cracked open carapace. Many of us that observed her, really thought that there was little chance for her to survive her terrible injuries.

Despite the cold weather, the turtles are nesting in pretty good numbers. Last night, we found three turtles nesting along the south end of the beach. Two of them were turtles that nested this season and this is likely their third set of nests this season. We did not see either of them ten days ago. The other turtle was Eve. She nested pretty regularly during the 2006 season and we expect to see her a bunch this year.

On Saturday night, we found a new leatherback nesting along Jupiter Beach. She was named "Tuga" after a character on Go Diego Go.
Tuga is described as a "heroic Spanish-speaking sea turtle. An exceptionally strong swimmer, she can zip Diego through the water on her shell or protect her friends from stinging jellyfish!"

Last night we had two turtles. One of them was a new untagged girl and the second was a turtle tagged way back in 2002. Hillary is her name, and she has nested every other year since 2002. I did not get to see any turtles nesting because I was stuck up near the Jupiter Inlet monitoring a beach restoration project. There is a crew working 24 hours a day to add sand to the eroded section of beach a few hundred meters south of the inlet. We make sure that the turtles and their nests are protected from the equipment that operates all night. Check out the webcam image of the project here: www

We have begun the 2008 leatherback research season here on the beaches of northern Palm Beach County! This year we should be able to completely survey the whole stretch of beach between the Lake Worth Inlet and the Jupiter Inlet.

Turtle nesting season has begun here along Juno Beach! As of this morning, we have recorded four leatherback nests.
The season did start off very early this year with a nest recorded in Boca Raton on February 12th. I am pretty sure that the nest may be the earliest nest ever recorded in the state! We are expecting an average # of turtles and nests this year, but we should know better in two weeks or so.

We will probably begin our nightly surveys in a few days to encounter nesting turtles. Stay tuned!

After swimming in the Atlantic Ocean for almost two years and traveling 9,500 miles, April is heading north once again. She is currently located to the northeast of Antigua and may be returning to Florida to nest.

There are now two leatherback nests laid here in Florida! One of them was found in Boca Raton last week, and another was laid on Monday on Hutchinson Island. We have not found any nests here on Juno Beach yet, but I am out there every other morning looking. Here on Juno, we will begin our daily surveys when turtle season officially starts on March 1st.

Click the image for a larger view and be sure to stay tuned for updates.

My son and I are wondering why April's satellite tracking ended in March. Where is she?

The 2007 nesting season has finally come to an end. As of today, there is only one green turtle nest left here on Juno Beach and I expect it should hatch any night now.
This was another record setting year for leatherbacks with thirty more nests recorded than the 2001 season. A graph of the nesting trend can be viewed under the research section of this site.
All of us were extremely busy this season and we did not have much time to keep this site updated. I am very sorry for that and we will certainly do a better job next season!

Why were we so busy? Well, this year the Loggerhead Marinelife Center took on a much larger monitoring project. We developed a partnership with an engineering firm - Taylor Engineering and an environmental consulting firm - Ecological Associates to conduct turtle monitoring on a much longer survey area than in the past. The new group worked each morning (and often well into the afternoon!) along the beach from John D. MacArthur State Park all the way north to the Palm Beach/Martin County line. This area encompasses some of the most dense sea turtle nesting in the United States and we were very busy. Over the course of the season we documented more than 17,000 sea turtle crawls along the beach, dug up more than 1000 nests to assess the productivity of all of those turtles.

Usually by June 15th we are all very tired and ready to quit, but this season has been very exciting and it is really hard for me to say it is time to quit. Last night we encountered another six turtles along Juno Beach! This week alone, we have encountered more than 18 nesting leatherbacks - quite a few for so late in the season.
Juno Beach, now has 145 nests incubating in the sand and I expect that we will end up with about 160 nests along this six mile section of beach. Our previous record of leatherback nests was 128 in the 2001 season and it is pretty exciting to beat that number. Other leatherback nesting beaches in the carribbean are also receiving good nest numbers this season as well.

The number of nests here on Juno Beach continues to climb. I think that we will beat the all time record of leatherback nests of 128 by the end of this upcoming weekend. Check out the graph below.