It’s only April 6th but we’re already up to 37 leatherback encounters! That could be a sign of a good year! At this point last year, we had just 12! Several of our turtles have now been seen more than once. Rosa is already on her fourth nest! Last night we encountered six leatherbacks! That’s Read more about Big Year?[…]
It’s the beginning of the 2018 nesting season and the girls are here! We’ve been anxiously awaiting the start of this nesting season after several low years in a row. Nest numbers have dropped for unknown reasons around Florida since about 2014. However, we’re hopeful that it is just temporary and things will pick up Read more about The Season Has Started![…]
Well it has been a while! Sorry for the lack of updates but the season always keeps us busy. Last night marked our 50th leatherback encounter of the year. Sadly, it’s been quite slow out there. Low leatherback numbers are being reported around the state. After a couple of low years in 2015 and 2016, Read more about Mid-Season Update[…]
We’re so excited for the 2017 research season! There have been a handful of nests reported in and around our nightly survey area in the last three days. We are getting all of our gear prepared to start regular surveys this weekend. It takes a full army of ATVs and lots of Pelican cases full Read more about It’s that time of year![…]
Well we’ve come to our least favorite time of year. Our nightly leatherback surveys are over. Despite a relatively low nesting year in our area, we had a great season. We had 214 total leatherback encounters this year. We saw 84 unique individuals and 35 were new, previously untagged turtles. We saw as many as Read more about End of season summary[…]
Although the season seemed to be coming to an end, we were pleasantly surprised to find four leatherbacks while surveying last night. It was an absolutely gorgeous night. The water was eerily flat and perfectly clear. You could see turtles swimming everywhere just offshore. At one point, we even saw a small shark swimming in Read more about another perfect weekend[…]
The team at Florida Leatherbacks would love it if every day was World Sea Turtle Day! It is to us. We are getting ready for our last week of leatherback surveys here in south Florida and hoping a few girls have stuck around for us. We want to remind everyone of a few ways that Read more about World Sea Turtle Day[…]
We are reaching that time of year when the leatherbacks have begun to move north in search of foraging grounds and the nest numbers have dropped off pretty dramatically. We’ve seen just 4 turtles in the last five days. We will likely continue to survey through this weekend and then call that the end of Read more about just about done[…]
Last night at around 1:00am, we got the familiar and consistent beep-beep-beep-beepbeep-beep of Shehyn’s VHF tag. Her satellite transmitter led us to St. Lucie County at the start of the evening and from there we were able to determine her location offshore by listening to the beeps from her VHF tag. Every few minutes we Read more about Found her![…]
Shehyn stayed just off Hutchinson Island last night as we followed her around for hours. Last night wasn’t her night so we’re back out tonight. A perfect overpass by the weather satellite NOAA18 just gave our team a good location showing that Shehyn was located just south of the Ft. Pierce Inlet. We rarely see Read more about So close[…]