Whether it was the lucky shoes or the lucky dog, we ended up seeing 5 turtles! On our very first pass, Sara spotted Icy going back in the water by the Reef Club. We were surprised that she would be finished nesting that early in the night, but after seeing what she had done it kinda looked like it was a false crawl. We didn't end up seeing her again so she may have gone to another beach to nest or might be back tonight.

Next, I found Rhoda already covering in front of Ocean Mall in Singer Island. I knew it was her before I even checked her tags because of the extensive covering that she had done. Every time we see her she does a very good job of hiding her eggs and leaves a big mess behind. On her way back to the ocean, she was blocked by several beach chairs and did a couple circles trying to get around them. A nice man visiting from Maine helped me move the chairs out of her way so she could safely return.

There was only one turtle last night and she was another tiny one! Sara spotted her coming out of the water at 10:30 in front of Ocean Mall and said that she thought it is was just a really black loggerhead. It turned out to be a new leatherback! Jim Richardson, a photographer for National Geographic, was there photographing light pollution in Singer Island and named the turtle after his wife Kathy.

The seas were pretty rough the rest of the night and the water was coming up to the dune in most parts of the beach. Chris and Jim ended up getting stuck on Singer Island and Sara went to go rescue them around 2 am. Hopefully we didn't lose too many nests with the big swell.

Last night there was only one leatherback that showed up here along the beach. She was a tiny little girl and we found her nesting at about 10pm near the Seminole Golf Course. Her carapace (top "shell") is only 133 centimeters in length which ranks as one of the smallest turtles we have encountered. I sort of thought she looked like a big loggerhead when I first saw her.

The loggerhead turtles are arriving on the beach in pretty good numbers now with about 40 crawls each night. As of last night, there are 147 loggerhead and 49 leatherback nests here on Juno Beach. On the other beaches we monitor each morning (Jupiter/Carlin and Tequesta), the numbers are pretty similar.

Two turtles last night, Morsel and Tuga. Morsel is new this year and is our smallest turtle with a ccl of 125 cm. She is very cute! It was the third nest and fourth time seeing Tuga this year. We have encountered 46 different turtles already this season in our entire survey area, but we aren't seeing them come back too often. At this rate, Tuga may very well be one of our best nesters this year. We are glad to have Tuga around this season. If you are interested in playing a computer game with Tuga, click here: Tuga the Sea Turtle Game Don't eat the trash!

As of tonight there are 53 leatherback nests in Juno and Jupiter. At this time last year we already had 82 nests. The season started off ahead of 2007, our highest year, but we are slowly falling more and more behind. Leatherbacks typically have alternating high and low nesting years, but since we were ahead for a couple of weeks we were hoping that it would be another big year. Maybe it just means they were early nesting this year. I guess we will have to wait until the end of the season to see how it plays out.

There were two turtles last night in Jupiter. The first was a turtle seen in 2001 named Ridgey. When she was first encountered in 2001 she did not lay any eggs even though she tried very hard. Since she did not drop eggs, there was never an opportunity to properly tag her but she did have a very distinctive scalloping on her left rear flipper. In 2003, a turtle with the same problem tried nesting in Juno Beach and this time she was named Alice. The beginning of this season Chris spotted her again and remembered the scalloped rear flipper. After looking through files and blogs, we realized Alice and Ridgey are probably the same turtle. Last night she was attempting to nest in the Inlet project area. She would dig a little bit then try to deposit eggs, then dig a little more and try to drop eggs again. She repeated this for almost 30 minutes. At one point she got so frustrated she slapped her rear flipper down causing sand to fall into her egg chamber and then tried nesting again. Every time she tried dropping eggs you could see the strain in her rear flippers. We are very confused as to why this turtle can't lay eggs because she appears to be in excellent health. Since leatherbacks in Florida have such low site fidelity, we don't know when and where we will see her next. Hopefully next time we will be able to come up with some answers. The second turtle was Lily and had a much easier time laying eggs. She is new this year and was first seen 10 days ago nesting in Juno Beach.

We were starting to get a little sad because we had not seen a leatherback since Saturday night. But thanks to Sara for wearing her lucky turtle pants, we saw three last night! Rhoda, Tirzah, and Deneen. Rhoda and Tirzah nested together in April and were about 50 meters apart. Last night they were on complete opposite sides of the beach, but they came out of the water at the same time. They must be best friends! It was our first time seeing Deneen since 2005 and we expect to see her a lot more this year.

No leatherbacks have been spotted tonight along Juno Beach and the rest of our survey area. It is not that boring out there since the loggerheads are starting to nest in pretty good numbers now. Sara and Niki are out there now and have reported about 15 loggerhead nests so far.

Last night we found one turtle nesting right here near the Marinelife Center. Her name is Tuga and she is named after the leatherback turtle on the Go Diego Go show for kids. Tuga attempted to nest on Singer Island the night before, but she spent a lot of time and effort on the beach blocked by chairs near the Hilton hotel. They have many cabana chairs that are left on the beach each night and the chairs often block nesting turtle from accessing the high beach. Tuga probably spent an hour walking back and forth between the chairs before giving up and heading back to the ocean. She laid a good nest less than 24 hours later here right by our office!

Last night started off a little sketchy with the return of the kibs (killer invisible beach scarps). After two very slow, careful passes north, I found a loggerhead nesting in the Jupiter Inlet project area. There have been a couple of loggerhead false crawls in the project area over the past few nights, but this was the first nest that we had to move. After we finished moving the eggs around 3 am, I was heading back to the office for lunch when I found Reeves nesting just north of the Jupiter Reef Club. Reeves wore a satellite transmitter in 2006 and followed an almost identical path up to New Jersey as Julianne. We also had a new turtle, Lily. We ended the morning watching a loggerhead return to the ocean a little after sunrise. It was a good night!

This weekend Chris and Niki found three new turtles! Friday night, Chris had a turtle that had already been PIT tagged by researchers at UCF in Melbourne Beach, named Mattie. Mattie is the second turtle of the season from Melbourne. It's pretty neat that leatherbacks in Florida have such a big nesting range. Joe and Thomas, volunteers at the Marinelife Center, finally got to see their first leatherback of the year on Friday. She was also new and Joe's daughter named the turtle Delilah. Niki had another new turtle, Roomba, on Saturday night in Lost Tree Village. Sunday night we saw Tirzah. Tirzah is new this season but the first time we saw her there was only enough time to give her one metal flipper tag. So last night we gave her a PIT tag and another flipper tag, took measurements and a genetic sample, and thoroughly looked her over for injuries.

There are 42 nests in Juno and Jupiter, 4 in MacArthur Park, and 9 on Singer Island. We are a little behind last year's nest total, but not by much!