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?[…]
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![…]
The 2017 field season has begun! ATVs are ready, gear has been purchased, database system upgraded and most importantly; the turtles have arrived! We now have two nests along our primary study area at Jupiter Island. More updates soon as we begin our nightly surveys.
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[…]
What is it like to do what we do? We thought we’d show you! We shot this time video lapse over the course of three hours as we surveyed for leatherbacks under the full moon. There are dozens of loggerheads and even a few green turtles emerging on this one small stretch. This gives you a feel Read more about Traffic jam[…]
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[…]
Shehyn is almost off our beach! She is 17 km away from her last nest. Tonight could be the night that she returns to nest again. It is now day 8 since we put her transmitter on. While that’s a little on the short end for an internesting interval, she has done it before. We’ll Read more about Tonight?[…]
Shehyn is transmitting beautifully and heading our way! Since we attached her transmitter one week ago, she has travelled 236 km during her journey to the Melbourne Beach area and back toward the nesting beach. We tracked three turtles last year using the same methods and each of those turtles traveled about 500 km each. Read more about The chase is on![…]
Aside from tracking Shehyn, we’re still busy on the beach each night. Last night we found 5 more leatherbacks. That seems to be about average along our regular 12 mile stretch. Two of the girls we encountered last night were on their 7th nests each and we’ve seen them both for every nest. Milan, one Read more about Busy girls[…]