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.

Tour de Turtles

The second annual Tour de Turtles: A Sea Turtle Migration Marathon, has begun. The actual race will begin after the last of 10 turtles is let go. Sea turtles are equipped with a satellite-transmitter so that they can be tracked. The marathon is to raise awareness about sea turtle conservation and to learn more about their migration patterns so that biologists know how best to protect the species. You can follow along to see which turtle travels 2,620 kilometers first, at http://www.tourdeturtles.org/ .


A Loggerhead sea turtle named Bree Varda was released this morning at the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge .

Turtle Walk #13

This was the 13th turtle walk of this nesting season. We arrived at the Buttonwood Lane Access, just after first light. The eastern sky was pink from the approaching sunrise. There was a nice breeze which is always a good thing, keeping bugs away and protecting us from a meltdown.

As soon as I started walking, I came across another pvc fishing rod holder that had been driven into the sand and left behind. There are usually 3 or 4 of these within our one mile walk. This eastern end of the beach has become a real obstacle course. Walking through this area is not very pleasant, at all, due to a growing number of sand holes, trash, abandoned broken beach chairs, & sand toys. Plus the sea weed from weeks ago is still on the beach, repeatedly getting wet, and is smelling rather bad.

This hole is about 2 feet deep.

Very nice, but not turtle friendly, when left behind.

This one had piles of sand on each side and the hole was about a foot and a half deep.

This is who we can thank for that contribution. Sand holes are a real danger to people and wildlife and should be filled in before leaving the beach.





Someone had gone away and left their chicken roasting, unattended.

Yes, it's a beached boat !

AND.....A frog; belly up!

Not a prize winner today.

Oh please! Let me carry this broken chair away for you.

Your guess is probably as good as mine, on this one.

Ok, so I think it's safe to say that this shovel isn't being used by children. Especially when there were two men and one woman just a short distance away, watching as I was taking photos of their things. They probably thought I was going to make off with a camera that was left on top of this pile of chairs. Which, by the way, are not supposed to be out on the beach. I believe that shovel would be considered an excavation tool and excavation isn't legal on the beach. I looked back after walking away and one of the men had gone up to the chairs to get the camera. None of the three went back there until we had passed that area on our way back. I saw the lady looking at us when we went by, she said something to one of the men and he looked toward us too.

I'm sure they went back to their digging. There was already a 3 ft high pile of sand there.

This made me wonder if a Captain had thrown his First Mate overboard.

I noticed a few small shells, that I had to pick up. :-) These were certainly more fun picking up than the two heavy bags of trash we carried away today.



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


We had no new turtle activity and the remaining nests in our zone aren't due to hatch until August.