Walk #16

Today was our 16th turtle walk of this season, at first light we were on our way to the beach. The hatch date for the only sea turtle nest left in our zone, was yesterday. I went off with high hopes that there might be hatchlings on their way out of that nest.

This photo looks very dark, but if you will click on it to enlarge it, you will see why I took it.

The temperature during the night had gone down to 73, so it was still cool and a little windy. It was a nice change, but later in the day it was 89.


There was a big change in the amount of people walking on the beach when we first got there. As the sun came up, more people were coming out, but not anywhere near as many as there has been this summer. I've noticed that there is hardly any traffic on the streets and some of the business owners have already noticed a drop in their sales. The island will probably be pretty quiet for a while now, since kids have gone back to school and summer vacations are over. This is a great time to plan a visit. :-)


This ghost crab hole caught my attention because the sand that it dug out was a pile of little sand balls. It doesn't usually look that way; I guess it is because the sand there was wet.


Three Men In a Tub, came to mind. So, what do you think this was; Three Babes In a Bowl?


King?


This one is self-explanatory.

Very artsy, I think.





An example of 'The Sanibel Stoop'.



Viewable in HD on YouTube.


This was laying all alone. Diver down! ???


Sea Anemones , I think. I saw about 10 of these mixed in with the sea weed at the tide line.





The Snowy Plovers were busy running around as they gathered their breakfast. There was a large group of them again this week.


Now, I had a problem here. I knew someone who used to leave something at the walkway of the condo they were staying in, so that when his wife got up and walked out to the beach, she would know which way he went. This was laying about half way up on the beach and looked like sand had washed over it......but it was pointing. I looked in that direction and didn't see anyone, so that and the plastic bag, went in with the other trash I had picked up.


There wasn't great shelling here this morning. This is the way it looked through much of the one mile strip.


Somebody definitely blew out a flip flop. I just hope they didn't step on a pop top.


This group of laughing gulls didn't seem too happy, they were all just standing very still as I walked by.


Some small shells were scattered here. I saw a couple of very small paper figs, but they were broken.


I spotted this little sandman taking it easy, next to a sea horse.


I just happened to notice two Bubble shells and as I reached for them, I saw a lady walking pretty close to me. I asked her if she had found any Bubble shells this morning. She looked at them and said that she hadn't. She thought all the shells that were on the beach were called Tulips. I told her that there are many different kinds and gave her the Bubble shells. She thanked me and went away happily looking for more shells. Just after that, I found one more; that being the only one I carried away.


Someone I know has a real thing about feathers. So, this photo is for you. :-) I've also heard a discussion about whether it is illegal to pick up bird feathers and take them. In the US, it is illegal to collect bird feathers. All native migratory bird species are protected by federal law and it is illegal to have in your possession any protected bird, its nest, its eggs, or even its feathers, without the required federal and state permits. Penalties upon conviction can be severe. Even if a sympathetic jury finds that you meant no harm in picking up and taking a feather. There are legal fees and there is no way to prove how you got it. Seems to me that it is best to take a hands off approach...look but don't collect.

What's left of the big whale shark, sand masterpiece, is still there. :-( The tide hadn't been high enough to wash any of it away yet. But, it served a purpose during the last couple of days. There was a pile of small shells that got caught there.


This walk was uneventful. The sea turtle nest still looked perfectly intact. There were no surprises today.

Next stop was the Sanibel Cafe. I mentioned before about the island being a quiet place now. As we drove in to Tahitian Gardens and walked toward the Cafe, there sat the owner waiting to welcome us. Yes, they know this is a ritual for us on Tuesday mornings. :-) If you have plans to come to Sanibel, don't forget to drop by the Sanibel Cafe for one of the best breakfasts or lunch, you will find here. Be sure to say 'Hi' to Richard and Bonnie, who will no doubt be there to personally take care of you.

Walk #15

This morning, the humidity seemed very high, and there was no breeze at all. I was afraid it was going to be one of those turtle walks that makes you feel like you might melt into a puddle in the sand. And of course without any breeze, I always have a fear the noseeums might eat me alive.

After arriving at the Buttonwood Lane beach access,just before sunrise, I was met by a chorus of tree frogs singing. This is the first time I've heard them in that particular place. It was really kind of comical and got me started off with a smile.

After walking to the end of the boardwalk, I was happy to feel a nice sea breeze from the southeast. The temperature was near 80, but it didn't feel too warm until a few minutes before finishing the walk.

The approaching sunrise was making a pretty pink reflection on the water in a tidal pool, as two fishermen standing in waist deep water, were busy trying to make a great catch.

I'll have to say, I was amazed to see only one new hole in the sand today. It was a little over a foot deep.

I was surprised to spy an octopus trying to crawl back into the water. :-) Especially a pink one.

There were some small shells ,but mostly small white arks.





Best viewed in HD on YouTube by clicking on screen below.


I saw this small juvenile horse conch as I was walking, and that made it a 'Good Day', of course.

My plastic grocery bag was getting full of small pieces of plastic, paper, straws, cups, plastic water bottles, a pair of flip flops that were mostly buried in the sand, a beer can full of sand, a broken sand toy, and the prize of the day.....a stuffed pamper. On the way back there was another bag full.

There was one more little horse conch! Woo~Hoo!

I've mentioned Sanibel's Snowy Plovers before. The snowy plover is a state-listed, threatened species. The SCCF is working to preserve an important nesting population of Southeastern Snowy Plovers with a monitoring program here on the island.

The stakes around the nesting areas in our zone have now been taken down. I noticed last week, that all of the Plovers in our zone seem to be hanging out together. They had been in separate little family groups of the parents and their babies. I tried to count them, but they scamper around so fast, making that difficult. My count was l6, so it's safe to say there was just under 20. One of them has only one leg and I always watch for it. :-) It is on record as nesting here during a previous year. So, it seems that it is not an easy catch for a predator. I watched it hop along on one leg, for quite a while and it kept up with the others pretty well. When it seemed to be having a little trouble, it would flap it's wings to help. I tried to get a photo, but it doesn't show up very well.
A long tidal pool was full of water.


The water had made a trench almost a foot deep, from the pool, back to the Gulf. There was a strong, stream of water running through it, moving sand and shells along the way.

At the speed the water was moving, it shouldn't take long to drain the pool.

I had to laugh when I started hearing the frog noises again, just before reaching the Buttonwood board walk again.

The frog chorus seemed to be rehearsing in the Sea Hibiscus. :-)

It was a pleasant beach walk, but there was no sea turtle activity to report.

A nest that was dug a few days ago, produced 17 baby Loggerheads. We went to the beach that night, to watch them as they were released. Our St Louis visitors had just got to the island that day and they were happy to be a part of their send-off. It was the first time they had seen sea turtle hatchlings.

Leatherback Sea Turtles

After the excitement of finding new Leatherback Sea Turtle hatchlings on Sanibel Island, you might be as interested as I was to read more about the biggest, deepest-diving, widest-ranging of all turtles.

Just thinking about 94 of these little turtles leaving this island, is so promising. Surely some of them will return here in 30 years or so, to make nests, which will help the ancient creatures to survive another hundred million years.

Turtle Walk #14

Before going into today's turtle walk, I want to share information I found in a news article today, concerning the Leatherback hatchlings. A few leatherback hatchlings from the east coast were released on Sanibel in the '70s as part of an experiment. They now think that it's possible one of those may have come back to nest here. That certainly helps give my curiosity a rest. :-)

I found another very nice blog called 'Two Turtle Trackers', that offers information and photos of the Leatherback hatchling release. I'm so happy I ran across it! Now I will also know what a morning turtle walk is like on their section of Bonita Beach in Florida. This is their fourth year of searching for new sea turtle nests on Bonita Beach as volunteers for Turtle Time.

Today was our 14th turtle walk of the season. The beach was quite busy you could see shellers, walkers and the people out just to watch the sunrise. It wasn't too hot this morning and on the beach, there was enough breeze to keep the noseeums away. Thank goodness!

Was this an alien visitor?

This tidal pool is still a stinky one.

We didn't have any new turtle activity today, but one of our nests that is due to hatch has been invaded by ghost crabs. We know they got into the egg chamber because there was a broken egg shell on top of the nest.



This varmint is a ghost crab. You hardly notice them on the beach, unless they scamper across the beach in front of you.

We called our Permittee and he came over to check the nest. He was going to call to give SCCF a report on it. They would then decide what to do about it, if anything. The usual procedure is to let nature take it's course. You know.....that whole 'Circle of Life' thing. It was sure tough walking away, knowing that baby turtles were probably getting their tiny eyeballs ripped out. I really don't like this part of the volunteer job. Needless to say, the rest of the day didn't look to bright to me, even though there were beautiful rays coming up from the sun.









Best viewed in HD on YouTube by clicking on screen below.




Maybe a tug boat?

Very simple, but everyone knows what it means. :-)

I don't know if this board came in with a Pirate on it, or if it washed up all be itself and the Pirate was lost at sea.

?????

More ????? It appeared to be a big guy with long hair, beard, and swimming thong. This is what the BIG shovel built last week, that I had a photo of.

Looks to me like they put his legs on backwards.



In the video, you could see a young father holding a baby as he watched the sunrise. On our way back, we found this tiny little sandal. I know it belonged to that baby, since it was the only one on the beach during the time it took us to walk back. They were no where in sight, so I picked it up and placed it further from the water where I thought it would be found when they returned to the beach.

Just before the Buttonwood Lane beach access, I noticed this healthy looking bunch of sea oats.

Being raised on a farm, I always knew this was oats, but until several years ago, I didn't realize just how important sea oats is to coastal dune areas. It is considered so important that wild sea oats is a protected species. Picking or disturbing sea oats is against the law. Violating the law carries a hefty fine, even for harvesting the seeds. (Sea oats is grown and sold in nurseries that have permits to propagate protected plant species.)

Sea oats not only beautify beaches, but most importantly it preserves the beach from erosion by stabilizing the sand dunes with a deep root system. Sea oats is highly drought, salt and heat tolerant, so it thrives in coastal areas.

You can see in this photo how it is trapping more sand, making the dunes grow. The more the dunes grow, the larger the plants will grow; and so the cycle will continue year after year, if it is not disturbed.

Due to hurricane damage on Sanibel, there has been a large amount of sea oats seedlings planted in the dunes. There was a huge amount of them planted at Bowman's Beach and other places. Next time you visit the beach, take a little extra care, not to trample on what might appear to be just a useless sprig of grass. It just may have a very important purpose in life. :-)

To read more about sea oats......

Exciting Monday Event / Baby Leatherbacks

When I woke up today, I didn't realize that I was in for an exciting afternoon and evening. I just thought it was a Kenny Chesney, perfect kind of day, with no where to go and no where to be.

Then....an email came from our SCCF Sea Turtle Research and Monitoring Program coordinator, Amanda Bryant. It was to inform the sea turtle volunteers that a nest near the Tarpon Bay Rd beach access, had hatched. It was being watched very closely because when the nest was first found, the tracks left behind were not the usual Loggerhead turtle tracks. At that point, it was assumed that this was a nest of a Green Sea Turtle, which we do have a few of. This morning after seeing that this nest had hatched, it was also apparent that ghost crabs were digging into it. So, rather than wait the normal 3 days after the hatch to dig the nest, Amanda did it this morning. As she was digging into it, she realized that it was deeper than the usual nests, when she ended up lying flat on her stomach and reaching as deep as she could. Then she spotted 30 remaining eggs, that were the size of tennis balls. Yes.....There's your sign! It was a Leatherback Sea Turtle nest. There hasn't been a reported nest here on Sanibel before. But someone said that nearly 30 years ago, there was one instance when they thought there was a Leatherback nest, but a hatch wasn't reported. Anyway, this was VERY exciting!! Who knows? Perhaps a nest did hatch here all those years back and this is a hatchling from that nest, returning. There were 94 empty egg shells, and there were 4 live turtles still in the nest.

OK, now we know Amanda dug the nest and that she has four babies in her possession that are being kept in a warm, dark place until they would be released tonight from the area of their nest. Hmmm, well we had a reason to drive out to SCCF anyway, so we thought it would be a good idea to do that this afternoon. :-) What a thrill that trip turned out to be! We got to see the baby Leatherbacks and they were soooo cute! Much larger than the baby Loggerheads that I have seen. But, I guess I should have known they would be, since they grow to nearly the size of a Volkswagen when they are adults. Now I know why they have the name Leatherbacks. They looked like they were made of soft leather. You can see them for yourself.

This photo does not do Amanda justice, but this is her with one of the babies.


We quickly took a few photos, then the sand pail was covered again with a wet towel and placed in a warm room, where the little turtles would wait until the cover of darkness to make their way into the Gulf.



You can even see the underside of one of the little guys here.


Best watched in HD on YouTube by clicking the screen below.


Tonight just before 9:00 we went to the beach near the Tarpon Bay Rd access and Pointe Santo to watch the four baby Leatherback sea turtles make their way into the Gulf. There was a very large crowd there to wittiness this event. There were no lights or cameras, but the little turtles may have heard some oohs and awes and then applause as they disappeared from sight. They even made the Ft Myers news. This was a day I won't soon forget.