So, the first part of the day was spent loading hundreds of pounds of stinky turtle and dolphin pieces onto a boat, driving offshore, and then trying to dump the still half-frozen parts overboard. Please note that when hundred-pound blocks of frozen muscle/blubber/bone hit the water after falling a few feet, they send up a bloody back-splash that has the capacity to coat not only the ‘dumpers’, but also the entire side of what was once a nice, clean, 25-foot boat. After the dumping was complete, we then transported two truck-loads of fragile, termite-ridden furniture that was falling apart to our laboratory and then spent a quite a bit of time trying to fit all of it into our already-full storage freezer. It was like a bizarre game of Tetris...turning furniture around and around to figure out how it could be stacked and packed most closely together. Check out the results:

About this time last year, Joanne McNeill, Craig Harms, Matthew, and I had an encounter with the turtle pictured above. Some fishermen in North Carolina coat their fishing nets with tar, to keep the nets from rotting while in the water. The loggerhead pictured here had apparently had a very close encounter with a net that wasn’t quite dry before it was set and, as a result, the turtle ended up with a much darker complexion than is usual for this species. The turtle was brought back to shore and we then began contemplating how to clean it up.

After consultation with the Marathon turtle hospital, two cleaning solutions were proposed. The first, Dawn dishwashing detergent, was a fairly familiar option; dish soap is apparently used quite often to clean up wildlife caught in oil slicks. The second option was mayonnaise, which was a bit more unusual. Still, using mayonnaise was definitely preferable to introducing more detergent into the environment, so we gave it a try…

As you can see from the next image, the mayonnaise did a splendid job of removing tar from this loggerhead, as well as from several other tarred turtles we encountered that fall. For those who attempt to use this technique to clean turtles, take care when restraining them…not surprisingly, the turtles didn’t seem to care too much for the mayonnaise treatment and, also not surprisingly, greased turtles are quite difficult to hang on to.

Thanks to Matthew and Craig for the great photos!

A few weeks ago, when Matthew and I were fishing for turtles out on Core Sound in North Carolina, this awe-inspiring squall line overtook us. None of us had ever seen a cloud formation quite like this one and fortunately, Matthew was able to take a picture of it. It has an ominous quality that makes it look like it could serve as a backdrop for the riders of the Apocalypse or some equally dread occurrence. As the squall hit, we tied off the boat to ride out the storm and during that time we had the chance to discuss the worst weather experiences we'd ever had. Going through my mental list - being in a trailer that was hit by lightning, witnessing a ball of lightning that burst through a friend's phone jack and briefly hovered in her living room, and excavating turtle nests on a beach as small funnel clouds occasionally appeared from the low clouds above and then were sucked back up - I started wondering how turtles (and, I guess, large aquatic animals in general) perceive such storm events. Can they sense the approach of a storm? Do they duck and cover when it hits, observing the light show from a secure location on or near the bottom? Or do they just continue to go about their turtle business, having their activities occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning?

Then, I met loggerhead XXN184.

From the time XXN184 came on board the fishing skiff, this mid-sized juvenile was on a rampage, tearing up everything in the bottom of the boat. Attempts to take blood samples were repeatedly thwarted as the turtle bucked like a bronco and crawled unceasingly around on the deck. Still, I needed loggerheads for my behavioral experiments, so I brought the turtle back to the lab.

The next day, while attempting to take XXN184 out of my experimental arena, I got the chance to test Leonard’s theory. Imagine the following scenario: The arena was 5 feet tall and filled with 2 and a half feet of water, so to get XXN184 out I had to lift the 33 kilo (74 pound) turtle up to shoulder-level, climb up on a step-stool, and place the turtle into a holding container just over the edge of the tank. As I was standing with one foot on the ladder and one leg over the side of the tank with XXN184 resting on the edge, the turtle suddenly pushed itself around and bit down hard on my inner thigh. For the next few minutes (although it seemed like much longer than that), the turtle squinched its eyes shut and chewed on my leg, never showing any sign of letting go. In fact, I was only able to get XXN184 off my leg by pulling the turtle away each time it readjusted its grip. Needless to say, by that point, I was praying for thunder but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

See below for the end result...thanks to a sturdy pair of waders, it was a lot better than it could have been!

Matthew’s reference to the imminent presence of hatchlings on the beaches makes me think of the remarkable programming present in each, individual hatchling that emerges from the nest. For me, the single-minded, ceaseless activity of hatchlings during the frenzy period is a constant source of amazement. When working for a few summers relocating hundreds of loggerhead nests to hatcheries and subsequently releasing the hatchlings during night work, the sounds of their constant activity even seemed to become part of my subconscious. When trying to get a few hours’ sleep between releases, it seemed I could still hear little hatchling claws continuously scraping up against the sides of the hatchery, or the sides of the buckets into which we placed them for transport to release sites. And when I closed my eyes to try to sleep, all I saw were little hatchlings marching in ceaseless motion across the inside of my eyelids. . .

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.

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!