Chris and I along with Carl (Safina) who amazed us and himself by staying up with us all night, had a really great night on the beach. I thought maybe we would have one turtle tonight but we actually saw 2 leatherbacks. they made us wait for them though, and showed up late - we'd been sitting in the office talking about what had inspired us to do work with nature and wildlife, when I realized I'd been off the beach for long enough and should be getting back down there. the loggerheads all nested early tonight and the beach was pretty clear of tracks. I was about a third of the way through MacArthur Park when I saw a short crawl, going up the scarp. Judging by where the tide was when I arrived, it looked like she might have been there a while. I scrambled up the scarp to take a look. the turtle was already covering her eggs and throwing sand with her front flippers. I took a quick look at her tags, then back to my ATV to check the sheet. Spica! she nested 11 days ago, also in the Park. when I went around her to look her over, I saw that the wounds I had noticed when I saw her last had opened up, and she was bleeding a lot from her front flipper. In the past, she has had rope or line around that flipper and there is a big raw cut around her shoulder. it looked terrible. I took a picture to document the injury and then attached a new right rear flipper tag. she's lost that one since 2002, and I was not able to re-tag her last week, but now we have new tagging pliers, so she's got a new number. I called up to Chris and Carl, but told them that Spica was covering and they would not likely get down the beach in time to see her before she left. I continued to the inlet, not expecting any more turtles. on my way back up the beach, I was going around a rocky point where the beach gets very narrow, and there was another turtle! This one was Caroli, and we saw her 10 days ago. As she had only started covering her eggs with her rear flippers, Chris and Carl decided to come down and see her - they had been busy up at the inlet rescuing an injured pelican... I had a few moments with Caroli before they arrived, and looked her over, checking for new wounds or scars - anything unusual. she looked pretty good. she was breathing very regularly so I thought maybe I would try to capture the sound of her breathing for our audioblog. Audblog works by dialing a number on your cell phone and then entering your passcode, then recording what you want. then all we have to do is press 1, and it posts our audio automatically to our website. I am sure it was a strange sight, me lying beside Caroli on the sand, holding the phone up to her ear (even though she doesn't have one). the audio below Carl's audio post, is a series of breaths that she took. leatherbacks hold their breath even on land, so that is the sound you hear, deep breath in... hold... loud exhale.. and little noises in between. chris and Carl arrived and we watched Caroli finish up her nest and head back to the water. We asked Carl if he would do an audioblog of Caroli's return to the water, and that is posted below also. it really was pretty out there at 4:40 am. we watched it get light in the east, and enjoyed the cool breeze as we drove slowly back to the office. It was already 5:30 - the night had flown by... turtles make it do that. more tonight...