Larisa Avens

In the past, my turtle work has mainly involved live turtles, which has generally elicited a great deal of interest from family and friends. Live turtles are a source of fascination and amazement. Dead turtles, although they provide a great deal of information about these difficult-to-study animals, are (for most people) quite the opposite. Over the past few weeks I've started working more with dead turtles and, because of cold and inclement weather, have been confined to cutting up dead turtle pieces/parts in an indoor lab. This has occurred to the disgust of many co-workers and comments have been varied, including 'I guess you have to get used to that smell' to 'Oh, it's you causing that horrible smell' to the ubiquitous 'That's the worst smell ever'. My favorite, however, came from the elderly father of a friend who was touring the lab. He, like so many before him, thought that dead sea turtle smelled worse than anything he'd ever smelled before. However, his main concern was whether, after working with dead turtles all day and being saturated with the smell, I would shower before cooking dinner at home for my husband. Go figure.

Posted by Once upon a blog... at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wow – battle lines are being drawn between the beach and the water. It seems that when it comes to being a turtler, no matter which environment you work in, there can be many different levels of experience. Although I wrestle with turtles on the water now (and they often win), I started out doing turtle work on the beach. But compared to Michael Frick’s experiences, I was definitely doing turtle work as the ‘hairless ape’ type…I didn’t even have to walk the 10 km long beach I worked on, I drove an ATV! Not that the work wasn’t hard – we were relocating hundreds of nests that were threatened with tidal inundation – but it definitely wasn’t comparable to a dangerous slog through maritime forest in the dead of night with waves crashing around you. Maybe we can just say that any turtler that braves uncomfortable or hazardous conditions to collect sea turtle data deserves respect, whether on the water or on the beach? (Plus, those crazy conditions make for such great stories...)

Posted by Once upon a blog... at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As this is my first time blogging, I wasn’t quite sure what to write about, but Matthew has been bugging me about posting something, so here goes....
Reading people’s stories about nesting turtles on tropical beaches makes me long for a change in season. Here in North Carolina, we’re at the heart of a particularly cold, dank winter and all but the most foolhardy turtles (that end up on the beaches for Matthew and Wendy to deal with) have taken off for warmer climes. I have to remember that it’s only a few more months until the turtles return and it’ll be time to work with local pound net fishermen again to assess our juvenile turtle population. There’s nothing quite like getting up well before dawn to meet the fishermen and to ride in a tiny wooden skiff out into Core or Pamlico Sound while watching the sun rise. When you start to fish the pound nets, it’s always a surprise. You never know what you’ll see in a pound net…fish, stingrays, crabs, octopus, and if you’re lucky – turtles!

Posted by Once upon a blog... at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)