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[…]
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 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[…]
Shehyn, our tracked leatherback, has made the turn south and is headed back our way. Leatherbacks that nest along our survey beaches typically follow the same pattern. We know this from years of looking at satellite data. They use the Florida Current to swim north. Once they reach the Cape Canaveral area, the either keep Read more about She turned![…]
Last night, Niki, one of our permitted volunteers and a staff member at Ecological Associates was conducting some monitoring on Hutchinson Island and ran into an old friend. Actually, it was a turtle that she had tagged on that very same beach 11 years ago while working for Ecological Associates conducting monitoring for a nourishment Read more about An old friend[…]
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night brought in 16 turtles. We had a pretty good mixture of old and new faces. There were five turtles each on Friday and Saturday night and six more last night. Friday night we saw two turtles that were tagged in 2011 and 2012. Parker, one of our girls from 2014 Read more about Sweet Sixteen[…]
Over the past few nights we have encountered four or five leatherback turtles a night and the loggerheads have been really making their presence known! Last night there were probably about thirty loggerheads on our study area. Now that we are getting into the main sea turtle nesting season, we have put together a few “dos and dont’s” Read more about It’s now getting busy[…]
As we head into May, we thought we would give you a bit of an update on March and April. One of the more exciting bits of news to report is that we have received a grant from the Sea Turtle Grants Program which is funded by the sale of the “Helping Sea Turtle Survive” Specialty License Plate. We Read more about April Update[…]
We found eight more leatherbacks last night in what turned out to be a really fun night on the beach. Busy turtle nights always keep us awake. They kept Liz awake at least. The turtles seemed to be concentrated on the south stretch where she was surveying since she found 7 of the 8. She Read more about 15 turtles in two days![…]