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[…]
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[…]
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[…]