leatherbacks's blog

Not too much was going on last night. After a weekend filled with giant holes, footprints and spring break parties it was nice to have a quiet night with the beach all to myself. Though, it would have been nicer if the leatherbacks had shown up to keep me company. I didn't encounter any nesting turtles on our survey area. There were two nests on beaches I patrol on the morning surveys though and I wonder who laid the nests?? One of them was at the Jupiter Inlet Colony along a new section of beach I am working on, and the other was at MacArthur Beach State park. Yes, you all know this is a beach that is a core component of our area, and I missed a turtle! I hate missing them, but it is really hard to patrol the whole beach by yourself. In a few days, I will have some folks trained to help me out and kelly will be around for a few days later next week or so.

Wow, I think this may be a big leatherback season here in Florida! Last night the crew working for Ecological Associates saw one of our turtles nesting on Jupiter Island and on their morning survey found five nests! Tonight, Brenda who is working on the same project, found two nesting turtles and both of them were untagged new turtles.
I have been pretty lucky myself! THREE turtles so far tonight! One of them was untagged, and two others were tagged in prior years.
Lyra was first tagged in 2001 and was spotted in 2003 and 2005. She seems to like the area near the Juno Beach fishing pier and has been found there almost all of the times we found her. She has grown quite a bit since 2001 and she is now 163 centimeters long which is about 15 centimeters bigger than when first encountered.

Well, there are now at least six leatherback nests recorded in the state of Florida and any day now we should find the first nest on our survey area. Niki did encounter a tagged turtle (Chassy) on Jupiter Island a few nights ago while conducting some monitoring for a beach nourishment project.
This morning we had a close encounter with a leatherback in the surf near the Juno Beach Park Fishing Pier. The turtle appeared as if she was trying to locate a spot to leave the surf and we followed her for quite a ways down the beach. She didn't come out and I sort of think she will be nesting tonight. I am planning on being out there for a few hours tonight in case she shows up.

April continues to head south. She is now at 13.744 North and -49.815 West, which puts her about 3500 kilometers southeast of Juno Beach. She has been heading south for quite a while and we are not sure where she is heading.
A current map can be found in the "Our Research" section of this site.

I am happy to report that Rosalie is still transmitting data after 576 days! She is heading south rather quickly out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and is now at a latitude just below Juno Beach. Do you think she will return to nest this season?
Rosalie has now traveled more than 16,600 kilometers since being tagged on June 7th 2005. She is currently more than 3,500 kilometers away from Juno Beach over the mid-atlantic ridge and will need to start heading towards Florida if she is going to nest this coming season.
A current map of April and Rosalie's travels can be found in the "O

Welcome to the new site! We have been busy trying to set these pages up for the past few weeks and hope the effort was worth it.

Our goals for the new website were to make the blog content more visible and to showcase some of the results from our research. All content will be moved here from the old site over the next few days/weeks. Please browse the site and let us know what you think about the new design.

We are currently tracking a few leatherbacks, and their tracks may be viewed by clicking "research" in the menu on the right.