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  • Tag Archives MOLLY

  • many more!

    Posted on by kelly stewart Comment
    just a quick update this morning. we had 4 turtles last night, all within about 2 km of each other, and within 2 hours. they were nicely spaced in time though so I was able to get to all of them in short order. Haedi was first, and then ten minutes later I found a leatherback that had just emerged from the surf, but there was already another track up the beach at the same place. So we had Molly and a 2002 turtle (Polaris) nesting right beside each other! Pyxis was the last turtle we found at around 3:30 am. she's a 2003 turtle. the beach was beautiful and bright and the seaweed has finally stopped coming in so it's easier to see tracks. we are also expecting our first loggerhead any day now. Chris and Sandy played a good trick on me last night - and it worked! they carefully constructed a crawl up the beach and then took the time to sculpt a turtle out of sand, in the nesting position. I even got off my bike to see what she was doing! it was a very good imitation loggerhead :) one final note on new turtle names. our last gps transmitter turtle is Amelie (more on that later), Chris got a new one the same night as Sara - named her Andrea, after our great friend Andy, I named one turtle from a few days ago Linden, and Dean's turtle from Melbourne beach is Surfer Girl.
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  • Found her!

    Posted on by chris Comment
    As we started the survey last night, Sandy and I sat at the ATV acces ramp and had to decide which direction to go first. We chose south (we usually go north first) and not more than 15 minutes later we came across a turtle as she was just starting to dig an egg chamber. It was Molly! We waited for a few minutes and removed her transmitter and harness.

    We were expecting Molly to nest on Saturday night and it seems that she tried. I offloaded the GPS data from her transmitter and found a GPS point that was collected at 10pm on on the beach a few miles north of our survey area near the Hobe Sound Wildlife Refuge. She likely crawled out of the water and encountered a scarp or something that made her turn around. A lot of the beaches here have been eroded quite a bit over the last two days with the crazy winds and swells we have been having. The Argos data show that she ventured south overnight and spent the day just off the beach here near the Marinelife Center. I had been hearing her signal all morning, and was a bit concerned she would nest sometime during the early evening hours. But, we found her and her transmitter is on it's way to be repaired.

    There was a turtle that nested in MacArthur Park last night, but we were unable to make it to the area due to the waves. Niki reported no turtles on Hutchinson.
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  • Chasing Molly!

    Posted on by chris Comment
    A whole mess of turtles! Last night was a busy one. Niki saw 3 turtles on Hutchinson and we had one new turtle down here on Juno Beach. We tagged a new leatherback at around 12:00am just outside of the office here in Juno Beach. Niki was visited by Snowflake and Ana and another that I cannot remember (maybe I need some sleep) I ran the beach with Sandy all night trying to find Molly. Molly was fitted 11 days ago with a satellite transmitter. Her transmitter is not functioning as designed and we hope to find it and reprogram it. I saw a leatherback in the surf at abround 1am last night and she apeared to have a trasnmitter on her back. She did not come back to the beach again though. Maybe tonight... UPDATE: Molly is swimming right off the beach in front of my office!!! I can hear her Argos messages being sent to the satellites on our police scanner tuned to the Argos frequency. When I first heard the signal about an hour ago, I freaked out and jumped back on the bike and went looking for her - no luck. She seems to be spending a lot of time near the surface fairly close to the beach. I can tell this by the amount of time between transmissions, the strength of the signal and because the transmitter only sends its data when out of the water. I wish I had a boat. Anybody want to donate a boat to the project??
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  • Icy shows up…

    Posted on by kelly stewart Comment
    We were all geared up for a busy night tonight, and we hoped Molly would make an appearance ? she?s been gone for 10 nights so she is due back ? the latest data points we?ve got from her transmitter put her just north of here, near Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge. I got started just before 10 and had stopped at the top of our ATV ramp to take a look through the night vision scope. I could already see a turtle! Just north of the bottom of the ramp. I called Chris to come and meet me. It turned out to be Icy ? and we?d been expecting her as we first saw her in late March 2003. She?d only lost one tag from one of her rear flippers. I hurried on, thinking with it being just past high tide, there was a good chance that another turtle would be on the beach. But all was quiet. When I got back to Icy, Chris and Sandy had given her a replacement tag and she was finishing up her nest. Niki had called from Hutchinson ? she?d had a new turtle up there tonight ? she?d tagged her and named her Taylor. From then, the tide just continued to go out and the night became quite cool. Hardly any waves now that the storm has passed so it was quiet and a bit spooky. But a 2 turtle night ? not bad! We?ve now identified 18 individual turtles on our 2 study areas ? for comparison last year we only saw 35 individuals all season. I think we are definitely in for a good one?.
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  • Another turtle

    Posted on by chris Comment
    Last night Kelly and I encountered a new turtle just as she was finishing up her nest near the Jupiter Reef Club. Interesting that she nested 10 meters from a nest that was laid 10 days ago. Maybe the same turtle?? A few folks from the Marinelife Center watched as she finished up and headed into the water. The turtle will be named "snowflake" I am not sure why Lance would admit that he wanted to be named snowflake as a young boy, but he did!

    We received the first set of data from Molly and will post a map in a few days. After nesting she headed straight offshore and then veered north. All of the turtles we have tracked off our beach have taken a similar path. We'll see where she ends up!
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  • Oh what a night

    Posted on by kelly stewart Comment

    we are exhausted! but really happy too. we had a pretty incredible night with 3 turtles spotted on our beach, all within1 km of each other, within 2 hours time. It started just at high tide, after a giant orange moon rose out of the ocean (that was really cool too). Chris and I had just covered the north end, accidentally scared some kids away from their beer, and headed south. We rounded some rocks near where I live and I saw the unmistakable smudge winding up from the surf. I hit chris?s arm. ?what?s that? what?s that? I said. ?well, that?s a leatherback,? chris said. My first one of the season and she was a new one. We just had time to tag her and measure her (named her Isabella) before she started moving then we felt we should get further down the beach.

    Nothing on that pass, but on our next one, nearly at the same place, Sandy and I came across a turtle we?ve seen now in 2001, 2003 and again tonight. It was Molly. She still had her tags, but chris arrived soon after that and we put a satellite transmitter on her! (I promise to write more about that later today). After we?d finished, I went on quickly and not ? km later there was another turtle! This one was Haedi, a turtle from 2002. that was it for us, but Niki had one of our 2003 turtles on Hutchinson Island too. She found Ana, and the cool thing is, when we first tagged Ana in 2003, she was seen on the same night as Molly. We?ll try to write more later on this week, but we?re really beat right now!
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  • no title entry linkThis entry has no title posted on June 4, 2003

    Posted on by chris Comment
    a gorgeous breeze on the beach last night - a welcome relief from mosquitoes and from the heat. the moon is coming back around, there was a tiny crescent in the west tonight; slowly it will make its way further east each night until the full moon in a week. it was all quiet out there until the moon had set and we had made a few passes. loggerheads were nesting heavily right around high tide, and the only leatherback we saw was Molly (on our south section of beach). we watched her slip back into the water and disappear by 116 am. as the tide fell for the rest of the night, nesting slowed and by 4 am, not much was going on. Matthew and I had been at the inlet for a while so we made our way up the beach. Chris met us at the turnaround with fresh (made late last night in west palm beach!) Krispy Kreme donuts - yum. we all watched a late loggerhead nesting, did one final pass of the beach and then turned in...
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  • subtropical storm Ana

    Posted on by chris Comment
    subtropical storm Ana has formed just 100 nautical miles south of Bermuda, and this is what has generated the swell from the northeast. the waves became unbelievable upon sunset. they were rolling in with such force and breaking hundreds of yards out. as a result, the overwash of the beach was far worse than last night, and we will have to double-check today, but it is likely that we lost several more of our nests tonight, as Chris said earlier. two hours before high tide the water was rushing up to the dunes, making it impossible for us to even survey at all. Chris and Niki were having the same problem on the north end as Jesse and I were on the south end. we left the beach and drove to Singer Island where we knew there would still be some dry sand up high - where we might be able to see a turtle. after the tide had receded a bit, Jesse and I returned to the gator and Chris to the ATV, and we all headed back out. just into MacArthur Park, we saw the tracks a leatherback had left (a false crawl), where she had come up and immediately turned around and gone back to the water. from where the tide was, we could see that it had happened probably 15-20 minutes before we came back onto the beach. we imagine she had just not found any dry sand and had gone back to try another spot. about half an hour later, we did spot a turtle making its way up the beach, this time just to the north of the park. she took some time to get comfortable, and even though the water had reached the dunes here too, the sand underneath was not soaking wet and must have still been acceptable to her. in any case, her rear end was tucked into the dune and she nested facing the ocean. she is our 5th recapture from the 2001 season; a turtle we saw only once on June 10th that year, and our 21st individual turtle this year. in two years, she has grown just a few cm in both length and width. for some reason, Chris and I neglected to name several of our turtles that year! so Jesse has given her the name Molly (for her sister). I guess nothing much stands in the way of these turtles when they need to nest, not even 7 foot waves.
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