OK! we are ready to announce our contest, and we hope that you will join in. the other night I gave several clues about our little turtle, that we'd spent a lot of time with her and we'd need a name because she's a new turtle. well, for those of you who remember Beatrice - the turtle we satellite tracked for 10 months, we've got a 'new' Bea! that is to say that we outfitted the little turtle with a harness and a transmitter which is programmed to last for up to 2 years! we hope that by looking at where she goes when she's finished nesting, she will tell us where these little leatherbacks are coming from. because the satellite tracking page is such a popular one, we thought it would be fun to have all of our readers participate in choosing the name for this turtle. her name and her tracking map will be displayed prominently in the Loggerhead Marinelife Center as well as on our website. If we choose the name you send in to us, we'll post your name as well (only if you wish). So we have a special page set up where you can Name our Leatherback! in order to submit a name, we are asking for a minimum $5 donation to support the program. the transmitter cost $2,000 and the satellite time will also be about that much, depending on how long it lasts. at the moment we are totally relying on donations to run the project so your help is very much needed and appreciated - none of it is used for salaries - we just work for kicks :). more details are on the contest page.

as for what happened last night on the beach, well Tropical Storm Arlene starting kicking up the surf yesterday and when we went out to start surveying, it was already 6-8 feet and carving out huge chunks of the beach. Return of the KIBS!! (if you remember Sandy's blog from earlier this year, those would be Killer Invisible Beach Scarps)! at least 4 feet high, these scarps now run the length of our beach, and all that sand that has been slowly building back up on the beach over the last couple months - GONE! my friends in the Geology Dept. at Duke would have loved to see the beach last night - incredible amounts of sediment transport! likely the sand has just moved offshore and with smaller waves it will come back in. very few turtles even attempted a run in and we only saw a few loggerheads and a couple of greens. none of our leatherback girls even tried...we'll see what this storm brings us, but it looks like it's headed north. looking forward to seeing the names you submit!

Not much to report from last night. It was warm, windy and salty once again. The wind has picked up from the south in advance of a cool front and the resulting waves have scarped the beach quite a bit during the course of the night making riding along the beach dificult. I did not see a single turtle on my area, but kelly must have seen a few! On my morning ride to count crawls and mark them with stakes and GPS, I found 13 crawls - all down on the south end.

On the tracking front, Beatrice is no longer transmitting. We have not heard from her for over a month now and have come to the conclusion that her harness likely fell off her. The harness that we use was designed by Scott Eckert (WIDECAST/Duke University) to release itself from the turtle after a period of time. Given that her last reported location was in a generally safe location for leatherbacks and that the batteries on her transmitter were in good condition we have concluded that the harness released prematurely. We are looking forward to seeing Beatrice next season when she nests here on Juno beach! A complete map of her movements is below. Clicking the map will take you to our main tracking pages.

Leatherback season officially starts on March 1st. I will be on the beach in the mornings looking for tracks from turtles that lay eggs during the night. I will probably start nightly patrols on the 12th or so!
I say it every year, but this season it really does look like one of our satellite tracked turtles is heading back to florida. They usually turn around but maybe...

Vheck out the most recent track of Beatirice here: Beatrice map

Check back soon!

It has been a while since I typed one of these updates - sorry! We have been rather busy with the hurricanes Jeanne and Frances. All of us fared pretty well down here with only minor damage and the little annoyances such as no A/C or traffic lights for a few days or weeks. I have just updated the track of beatrice: here, and added some images from the storm: Here


On another exciting note, we found a post hatchling leatherback turtle on the beach along our survey area the day before hurricane Jeanne arrived. The turtle was brought down to Gumbo Limbo nature center in Boca Raton to ride out the storm and get a little TLC by Jeanette Wyneken and the rest of the crew from FAU. The leatherback is in pretty bad shape with a missing flipper, missing eyelid and has a pretty bad cataract in one of it's eyes. But, as soon as I put it in the water it started to drink and chased after food that was placed in the tank. Leatherbacks are rather hard to take care of and this little guy will be released as soon as he gains a little strength and weight. It is really neat to see a leatherback this size! Images below...

It loooks like the outer banks of North Carolina are in the path of a hurricane once again! The storm looks as if it will pass right by Kellys office in Beaufort NC this morning.


It will be interesting to see how the storm has affected Beatrice. Check back in later to see for an update from Kelly and a new map for Beatrice.

She is back! We are once again tracking Beatrice here on the website. She is currently located in the gulf stream about 75 to 80 kilometers south of Cape Fear. Check out her travels here

finally! We've heard from Beatrice recently - or at least found out what the problem was. she has been transmitting regularly but there was a problem with the emails getting to us. so she's fine, which is a relief to all of us - when we stopped receiving transmissions we thought something had gone wrong with either her transmitter or with her. she's still in pretty much the same place she has been in for quite some time now, off South Carolina - she's only moved slightly to the north. the jellyfish must be good there this time of year. we'll keep a close eye on her movements and keep you updated.....

a quick update on Beatrice. Unfortunately we have not received any data from her since June 29th - where she was holding steady off South Carolina. we are trying to find out what may have happened, it may just be a satellite data issue. we'll post as soon as we know anything more...

our last survey night tonight - it was wild and stormy tonight for our last night of the season. the wind has been straight out of the east for 2 days now and the waves are really pounding the beach. scarps are starting to show up again, but the turtles seem to be dealing with them ok. it's not too much of a climb..yet. unfortunately we've not had a leatherback tonight, we were hoping to finish off with one or two. but perhaps we will do a few hours next week - we'll see how we feel. tomorrow night will be the first night we've all been off together - think we are going to a party! at least we'll be able to stay up late. tonight we had most of our friends hanging out at the picnic table waiting for us to come back and report what we'd seen. Chris and Lisa were here from NMFS - Sandy came by, also Shana and Niki, Joe, Kirstin and Gary.

Please keep checking in - we'll be doing updates on Beatrice every day and we'll also do some more writing...