Well in the last four nights we've seen just one turtle. Peach was here on Tuesday night. Historically, this is the busiest week of the season for leatherback nesting but it looks like we may be wrapping up a bit early. The offshore lightning storms have kept us entertained throughout the turtle-less nights with some amazing lightning shows. We may post some photos later. We are happy to report that we've spotted our first green turtles of the season. Liz saw green turtles in MacArthur Park and Singer Island on Wednesday night. We're hoping the nice weather and the full moon will give us a fun weekend with lots of leatherbacks!

We had an interesting find a few days ago. Musca was found nesting on Jupiter Beach. Musca was just here last year and nested seven times throughout the season. This was the first time that we've seen her this year. Like Sugaree, we are surprised to see a turtle that nested so many times last year come back to nest again this season. It's not at all unheard of however. There is no predictable pattern to the remigration interval of each individual. Some will nest consistently every other year and then skip two years. Others will nest on consecutive years and not return for three or four years. There are many factors that contribute to the variations in remigration interval so it's always interesting to see which turtles show up each season. The weekend offered us very little in terms of leatherback encounters but we did just wrap up a three-turtle Sunday night. We saw Palm and Patty as well as a new turtle. There are now 72 leatherback nests on Juno, Jupiter, and Tequesta beaches. This is less than half of last year's 167 nests by this date but exactly even with our total in 2008. 2008 was followed by our record 2009 season that ended with 340 leatherback nests so we'll keep our fingers crossed for next year. The numbers presented for Juno, Jupiter, and Tequesta represent just a portion of the beach that we are surveying at night when we look for leatherbacks. At night, we also tag leatherbacks on MacArthur Park and Singer Island but there are separate organizations that do the morning nest monitoring. Throughout this season, on our full nightly survey area, we have documented 74 leatherback encounters with 42 females (many of these have been seen more than once). 16 of these 42 females were untagged turtles. Our most frequently seen turtle is Pumpkin with 5 nests. Zoey, Gisli, and Lacy have each laid 4 nests on our survey area. The loggerheads are starting to show up in bigger numbers now. We've got 867 loggerhead nests on Juno, Jupiter, and Tequesta. This is about 70% of last year's nest count. We are expecting our first green turtle any day now.

Now that loggerheads are here, it's not unusual to see them nesting right beside leatherbacks. Tonight, Sandra watched a loggerhead return to the water just as a leatherback was emerging. As soon as the loggerhead got close to the leatherback, she made a turn and took a very wide path around. Didn't like the size of the shadow in front of her I guess. We took a short nightscope video of a leatherback covering her nest. If you watch in the upper right corner of the shot, you'll see the much smaller sand toss of a loggerhead as she is covering her nest as well. On our 9.5 mile survey area, we now have 55 leatherback nests and 327 loggerhead nests. By comparison, last year we had 140 leatherback nests and 532 loggerhead nests by this date. We've had one leatherback per night for the last three nights. Tonight we saw Veruca for the third time this year. Last night we found one of our new girls from ten days ago, and the night before that we found a new turtle that Kristin named Nala.

Liz just called to say that she found Eve. Eve has a great story. Eve was tagged in 2006 and we saw her again in 2008. Early in the season in 2010, we discovered that we had missed a morning turtle. Morning turtles are the highlight of everybody's season. Being able to watch a leatherback as the sun is rising and daylight is breaking is perfect. We were very disappointed when our morning surveyors called to say they found a crawl that we hadn't seen. She had come up just after we finished our night surveys and left just before our morning surveyors got there. Luckily our friend Donna, who walks the beach often, just happened to be there while the turtle was nesting and was able to get several beautiful pictures of the turtle well after sunrise. From the photos, we could see that the turtle had some very distinct injuries that would be very obvious should we find her again. Sure enough, ten days later, we found a turtle with the exact same injuries. A quick PIT tag scan revealed that it was Eve. Eve was here three times in 2010 and this is the first time she's been back since. We're hoping for another night like last night. Six turtles! We saw a couple of the regulars - Pumpkin and Gisli. We also saw two of our 2002 turtles, Polaris and Electra, as well as two new turtles from this season. One of the turtles was tagged by EAI on Hutchinson Island twenty days ago and named by several Boston residents after the marathon tragedy. She was named Copley for Copley Square which is bordered by Boylston Street.

We were skunked last night! No leatherbacks. It's very rare for that to happen in May. But we can't complain. It was a beautiful morning. It was cool and clear. There were many meteors and a pretty crescent moon as the sun started to rise. The loggerheads are starting to pick up. Everyone is excited to see what the year holds after last year's record-breaking season. On Friday night there were two turtles on the south end of the beach. Chandra, from our 2009 season, nested very late in the night. Even later, Liz found a new turtle. As most know, we give names to all of our turtles. It makes them much easier to keep track of and helps us remember their history after all these years. It's much easier to remember the history on "Juno" rather than her tag number, 441214B3C1. Since we have over 550 names, it can get tricky to come up with names for untagged turtles. Chris chose to name the new turtle Princess Leia. The nerds among us will understand why.

Last night was a busier night. We had four leatherbacks and most of them were after 3am! We dodged some pretty serious rain but the leatherbacks held out until after it cleared. Liz found Veruca, Zoey, and a new turtle on the south end of the beach. Kristin had a really interesting find on the north end. She found Patty nesting north of the pier. Patty was tagged in 2006 and that was the only time we've seen her until last night. Patty has a fairly fresh, pretty gruesome wound. The wound resembles one we found on Nerita back in 2005. Both turtles had a very large, open wound on their shoulder with the deepest part of the laceration in the center. Both turtles also have smaller slice marks to the sides of the wound that resemble knife slashes. The large wound is about 8"x10" and the smaller slash marks are a few inches long. We are posting photos and asking anyone if they have seen anything similar to this? When we found Nerita, she also had fresh propeller wounds. We are curious if the shoulder injury is fisheries related. Could Nerita have been pulled close to a boat to cut a hook free from her shoulder and possibly tumbled under the prop when she was freed? Could Patty's injury also have been caused by a possible hook being cut from free from her shoulder? We are very curious is anyone has seen anything similar in leatherbacks? Or if anyone has heard of scenarios that would result in injuries like this? Please note that flash photography is not allowed on the beach at night. We are permitted to take photos only for the purpose of documenting injuries such as these. [caption id="attachment_2269" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Nerita in 2005[/caption] All marine turtle footage taken in Florida was obtained with the approval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) under conditions not harmful to this or other turtles. [caption id="attachment_2274" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Patty's wounds from last night. The slash marks are not as visible but are located where her shoulder meets her carapace.[/caption] All marine turtle footage taken in Florida was obtained with the approval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) under conditions not harmful to this or other turtles.

It was a fairly uneventful weekend. We saw two turtles each night. Dot and Lacy nested on Friday night. Last night, we found a new turtle and Spica. We've now seen Spica 25 times over the years. She's got some new injuries this year that are pretty severe. It looks like she may have been entangled in something that left some pretty big gashes and removed a portion of her rear flipper. The loggerheads are definitely here. We're seeing several nests a night now and it should pick up to dozens a night very soon!

No, not the leatherbacks. I mean the loggerheads! There are a dozen or so nests around the state and we got our first on Juno Beach last night. There were actually a couple on Juno Beach as well as MacArthur Park and Singer Island. I guess it's that time of year already! It was a good leatherback night as well. We found Electra, an enormous turtle from 2002. We also found two new turtles tonight. Ana, who works on our morning survey crew, got to see her first leatherback ever. She named the new turtle Gia. Our other new turtle of the night was named by two lucky beach visitors that got to watch her nest. Her name is Mia. Gia, Mia, and Electra wrapped up our leatherbacks for the night. We were searching through the blog for posts about Electra and came across one that seems pretty funny now. Way back in 2002, we had just tagged our 33rd turtle. There is a blog post discussing the difficulty of coming up with that many names! Little did we know, more than 500 turtles later, we would be have to be more creative than we ever thought possible. It says a lot about the success of the leatherback population in the area. Back when we started the project, we never thought we would see more than 30 or 40 turtles. We now have 559 tagged turtles in our database and it is constantly growing.

Yesterday we told you about some of the regular nesters that we've been seeing. Today was filled with some not-so-regulars. It's always good to find turtles that we haven't seen in years. Today, there were three! Some friends to the north of us found one of our tagged turtles in Martin County. It was Patricia. Patricia nested twice in 2005 and we haven't seen her since. An eight year return is pretty good! Our first turtle of the night was Annie. Annie was encountered once in April of 2006 and once in April of 2010. After her 2010 encounter, Annie was caught by a trawl net clearing the area in front of a dredge. She was released unharmed and we never saw her again until tonight. Annie was given flippers tags on her front flippers by the crew that released her. She still has one of the front flipper tags. It's really strange for us to see front flipper tags since we only tag on the rear flippers. The last turtle of the night was Mona. Mona was observed just a single time way back in May of 2006. We've got lots of exciting projects going on and any day now we expect the loggerheads to show up so our nights should get a little bit busier.

Well after a very slow weekend, we managed to pull of a three-turtle night with with three of our regulars. Zoey and Sugaree came back for their third nests. We also saw Peach. Peach hasn't been here yet this year but she did nest eight times in 2011 so we're glad to have her back. Peach and Lacy were both tagged in 2009 by Denise. Denise is off pursuing her graduate degree now but we are looking forward to a visit soon! On Saturday night, we also saw Liara for the third time. We don't have a large number of turtles nesting this season but the turtles that we are seeing are coming back often. We've got four turtles that we've already seen three times. We're still hoping to see Clover or Juno but they may have taken the year off. We're still very excited by the girls that have come back already.