The Project Log

← Older posts

Stormy night

Posted on May 15, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks 1 Comment

Last night was a fun one. There was an unbelievably gorgeous thunderstorm offshore that provided us with a pretty backdrop during our survey. Darryl and Ed found 6 turtles, including Arlene, Musca, Roomba, Sam, and two new turtles. I had a unique encounter myself. I was scared by a leatherback! I was watching a new turtle as she dug her egg chamber and quietly enjoying the pretty lightning storm. I jumped and then laughed as I heard a very familiar sound behind me. The soft “roar” of an exhale. Another leatherback had crawled up just 30 feet behind me! Side by side nesters! It was a welcome sight on an already exciting evening. Both turtles were new so I thought it was perfectly appropriate to name them Thunder and Lightning. Ed and Darryl’s new turtle appropriately became Storm and Bolt.

More exciting news – last night I encountered Gemini! Gemini hasn’t been seen since 2002! It’s been ten years but we finally found her. It’s so exciting to find these old girls nesting! She looked perfect and nested wonderfully. I also found Carla, a turtle that we haven’t encountered since 2005. Encountering these turtles reminds us that their survival rate is high and their site fidelity is low. These turtles are obviously nesting all over the state, not just on our little 12-mile beach. We wonder where Gemini has nested for the last ten years. We continue to learn more about this population as the years pass. We’re hoping for another exciting night tonight!

This entry was posted in Survey Updates and tagged Arlene, Bolt, CARLA, Gemini, Lightning, Musca, Roomba, Sam, Storm, Thunder. Bookmark the permalink.
Kate – the morning turtle

Posted on May 14, 2012 by chris Comment

Here are a few images of Kate. Kate has an issue with her rear flippers and she is unable to dig an egg chamber on her own. The LMC leatherback research team is able to dig a hole for her eggs, but she is very picky about the size and shape of the hole and will spend hours on the beach. She is often on the beach until well after sunrise and lots of people have witnessed her nesting.

Morning turtle – Images by Chris Johnson

You can download the images for your personal use with the password “kate”

This entry was posted in Survey Updates. Bookmark the permalink.
Busy, busy

Posted on May 14, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks 2 Comments

The season is rolling along. We’ve got about a month left before our night patrols end. We’ve got lots of interesting stories coming out of this year. We have now seen Sugaree six times! She’s been seen in June in previous years so she’ll likely be back again this year. We’ve also seen quite a few girls that we haven’t seen in a long time. Last night, Liz found Bobbi. We’ve only seen Bobbi once, way back in 2007. The other night, I found Alta and Sunflower. We’ve seen each of those girls just once (Alta in 2008 and Sunflower in 2007). Several of our new turtles from this year are returning for their second and third nests – Arlene, Willow, Wennie, Harriett, Petra, Cora, and Brooke have returned for additional nests recently. Luna, Venus, and Lucy – turtles from our very first season 11 years ago – are nesting this year. We’ve also got several girls from our 2nd season (2002) – Jupiter, Libra, Lacerta, Pisces, Gemma, and Juliana. We’ve also got quite a few turtles nesting this year that also nested last year – Bonita, Mysteri, Kate, Pearl, and Juliana. We’re still seeing quite a few new turtles as well. We’ve now got a Justine, Berta, Edna, Ethel, Colby, Gloria, and Jen. Tommy recently found a turtle that he named Malone for his mom on Mother’s Day weekend. And just for you Donna – we have a new girl named Ruthie!

Now a bit of extremely sad news. We received word the other day that Pearl, one of our tagged females, was found dead in Martin County. Pearl was originally tagged in 2007. She also nested in 2009 and 2011, as well as a single nest this year on April 4th. Darryl, Chris, and I were lucky enough to see her in MacArthur Park this year. We were shocked at how big she was. She is one of the biggest turtles we’ve seen in the history of the project. We had been waiting for her to come back so that some of our other crew members could see just how enormous she was. Unfortunately, she did not return to nest again. When she was found last week, it was apparent that she had been struck by a boat. She was still full of eggs. It hit us pretty hard to lose one of our girls. She is the 5th confirmed fatality of one of our tagged females. Daisy, Nanelle, Anastasia, and Sandy have also been found with fatal boat interactions.

This entry was posted in Survey Updates and tagged Alta, Arlene, Berta, Bobbi, BONITA, Brooke, Colby, Cora, Edna, Ethel, GEMMA, Gloria, Harriett, Jen, JULIANA, JUPITER, Justine, Kate, LACERTA, LIBRA, Lucy, LUNA, Malone, MYSTERI, PEARL, Petra, PISCES, Ruthie, SUGAREE, Sunflower, VENUS, Wennie, Willow. Bookmark the permalink.
500!

Posted on May 7, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks 2 Comments

Sorry it has been so long since the last post. We’ve just been really busy! Loggerheads are here in full force now. Chris, Liz and I just wrapped up a morning surveys with 123 crawls on our 9.5 mile survey area! Needless to say, we’re pretty tired.

Now for the great news! Last night, we encountered our 500th individual! In the previous post, I mentioned that we are now over 2,000 encounters, but last night we found our 500th individual. We have encountered most of our turtles more than once, that’s how we topped 2,000! But 500 individual females have nested on our beaches in the last 11 years! We are very excited! These 500 females have allowed us to learn so much about leatherback biology.

The night started with a new turtle that Liz found in Jupiter Her turtle, named Cheryl, put us at 499. About 30 minutes later, Chris and I found a turtle nesting on the south end of Juno Beach. When I walked up behind her, I could see that she had tags. A quick check of her tags revealed that she wasn’t in our database. She had tags from the research team in Melbourne and we’d never seen her before! That means that to us, she’s new! She’s never been observed on our survey area and she becomes the 500th turtle in our database! Melbourne turtles do not typically get names so it was up to us to name her. Chris decided to name her Fortuna. Fortuna was the Roman goddess of fortune and personification of luck. While pondering leatherback names a while back, Chris thought that this would be a good one. But the word Fortuna appeared several times that night and over the next few days and we thought it was a strange coincidence that such a rare word would show up so many times. We decided that it had to belong to a special turtle. So, our 500th turtle is now known as Fortuna. Hopefully fortuna brings good fortune and luck to the rest of our leatherback girls! Here’s a quick shot of Fortuna laying eggs on Juno Beach.

Otherwise, we’ve had a slow couple of days. We did get to see Eleanor last night though! Maya and Arlene were the only turtles that we saw over Thursday and Friday nights but we got to catch up with Dean, Brian, and Holly, some great friends that came to town for a quick visit. We were also able to catch up with the turtle team from Isle of Palms in South Carolina. We’ve seen many of our girls return this week, including Wennie, Helen Anne, Carlina, Aurora, Angie, Lucille, Ellen, Costa, and Venus. There are many more stories to tell so I promise to update you soon!

This entry was posted in Survey Updates. Bookmark the permalink.
2,000 and counting.

Posted on April 29, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks 5 Comments

Shortly before 11:00 on Friday night we found two turtles, marking our 1,999 and 2,000th encounters! It’s been 12 seasons and we’ve learned a tremendous amount! We are very proud and very excited to have had this many encounters. We never expected when the project started!

Our 2,000th encounter was a new turtle that Sandra named Charlotte. We saw seven leatherbacks on Friday night and three more last night. We saw Juliana last night which surprised us since she was just here last year and nested 6 times! That was our 17th encounter with Juliana since 2002. We also found a new turtle that some turtle friends from St. Petersburg decided to name Jillian.

That’s a short and sweet update. We are extremely exhausted. Kate decided to return yesterday and stayed until the beach until 10:00am. We’re still catching up on sleep!

This entry was posted in Survey Updates. Bookmark the permalink.
Tonight’s the night!

Posted on April 27, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks Comment

After encountering 4 turtles last night and 9 the night before, we have brought our 2,000th encounter very, very close. We need just two more! Hopefully tonight we can achieve this record!

We saw Clara, Zappa, and Eleanor last night. Each of these turtles has nested already this year. We also saw Nebraska, a huge turtle that we haven’t seen since 2009 (Chris and I tagged her on the 17-turtle night!).

We’re ready for a fun Friday night!

This entry was posted in Survey Updates. Bookmark the permalink.
Getting close to a milestone!

Posted on April 27, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks 1 Comment

Once again, I find myself enjoying the company of a digging turtle! I am watching Eleanor, one of our great regulars that we named in honor of the founder of the Marinelife Center. It reminded me that in the next few days, we will reach our 2000th encounter and around the same time, we should find our 500th individual!! Great news for our leatherback population and it reminds us of how much has gone into this project in the past 12 seasons. And how much we’ve learned! There is sure to be a celebration!

This entry was posted in Survey Updates. Bookmark the permalink.
All or nothing!

Posted on April 25, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks Comment

The turtle that I watched as I wrote the last blog post was a new girl. I decided to call her Betty after several friends’ grandmothers. I hadn’t gone more than 500 yards past Sugaree and Betty when I found another new turtle! For the past few nights, all of our turtles have been on one end of the beach and not at all on the other. This new turtle is now called Willow. But the night wasn’t over. Chris and I headed out to do our morning survey (this is when we GPS all of our crawls and mark nests). I got to the south end of Juno Beach and it was still a bit dark so I decided to cruise through MacArthur park one more time until it got light out. I stopped pretty suddenly when I saw a 4th nest at the south end. Harriett was trying to sneak in without being caught! I watched Harriett return to the water just as the sun was coming up and then continued on with the morning survey

Continuing with our “all or nothing” trend, all SEVEN of Monday night’s turtles were on the south end of the beach. We saw Costa, Jody, Margaret, and Sonoma again that night. We also saw Ellen, named for my mom in 2010, and a new turtle that Darryl named Connie. Last but not least, we found Lucy! Lucy is another 2001 turtle, bringing our 2001 turtle total to 3 so far this year.

We had just two turtles last night and it was cold out there! Everyone laughs when we say it’s cold in Florida but at 54 degrees, driving into the cold, wet wind is brutal! We were bundled up but really enjoying the last cold spell we’ll likely see this year.

This entry was posted in Survey Updates and tagged Betty, Connie, COSTA, Ellen, Harriett, Jody, Lucy, Margaret, Sonoma, SUGAREE, Willow. Bookmark the permalink.
Update from the field

Posted on April 23, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks 1 Comment

I’m sitting in MacArthur park behind a digging leatherback so I thought I would do a quick field update. This is the second leatherback of the night. The first, Sugaree, is just a couple hundred feet south of me right now. That is her 4th nest this season! It’s a gorgeous night. The stars are out and the ocean is very flat. More when I get back to the office but for now, it’s turtle time!

This entry was posted in Survey Updates. Bookmark the permalink.
Turns out we just can’t predict them!

Posted on April 21, 2012 by KellyM @ FloridaLeatherbacks 1 Comment

Each night, we get ourselves ready for the survey by trying to predict where the turtles are going to be. We’ve come to realize that we’re really not very good at it! We’ve broken down our 12 mile survey area into 9 sections. We put our initials in the sections where we think the turtles will nest. The “T” represents where they actually nested. These are the results of yesterday morning. You can see just how wrong we were! -

We had seven turtles last night so we stayed pretty busy. There was one new turtle that Darryl named Helen Anne. We also had 6 returning turtles but we hadn’t seen any of them yet this year. Sable, Romy, Denise, and Button returned from the 2010 season. We also saw Rosie, from 2007/2010, and Espina from 2008/2010. Espina is one of the best nesters that we’ve got so we look forward to seeing her several times this year!

The survey team from Hobe Sound found another one of our tagged turtles the other night – Luna! Luna is from the 2001 season. Venus and Luna are the only turtles that we’ve seen this year that were tagged during our first year of research.

This entry was posted in Survey Updates and tagged BUTTON, Denise, Espina, Helen Anne, LUNA, Romy, Rosie, Sable. Bookmark the permalink.