Bubbles in the Bathtub

In the intern house at the Bald Head Island Conservancy they have a board on the wall where they keep track of the nests laid so far. They have the usual:

Nests: 61

and False Crawls: 74

and Hatched Nests: 0 (still early in the season yet)

There are however a few other interesting stats they are keeping track of.

Tailless racoons: 1

Intern Traps: 13 (sand pits left behind by inconsiderate beach-goers, some of which the interns have fallen in while patrolling at night)

Naked people: 2 (I'll have to get the story on that one)

Tags: 2 (I presume this refers to the two satellite tags we have deployed so far this season)

And finally...

# of times Kat has catapulted out of golf cart: 2 (Kat being one of the interns)

Posted by Michael Coyne at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a really great story featuring Bev the sea turtle.

See her track here:
http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?tag_id=80060

And more info here:
http://gstc.blogspot.com/2008/04/bevs-back.html

Zoom in with this super cool track in google maps.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day 2 - The Gathering (Day 1)

Arrive at Paris Charles de Gaul Airport with a few hours to to kill before the flight to Libreville and before colleagues arrive. So I pay way too much for internet access and complete final edits to MTN 119.


Brendan and Matthew arrive about threes hours later and we enjoy a quick coffee before boarding the next flight.


Board Air France flight to Libreville, Gabon. Arrive in Libreville. Fight off people wanting to carry our bags at the airport and try to find a taxi to Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Case de Passage.


We get settled in at the Case de Passage and enjoy a nice dinner with some folks from the Zoological Society of London that Brendan met on the plane.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently traveled to Gabon as part of a project to study the spatial ecology of sea turtles in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, funded by the Large Pelagics Research Center. The following provides highlights of the logistics required to make such a trip happen.

Photos and videos for this post were taken by myself, Matthew Witt, Angela Formia and Brendan Godley.

I had started to write up the whole trip at once, but the sheer volume of it all is proving daunting. I'd probably never finish if I tried to do it all at once. So, here we go, one day at a time...

Continue reading "How to satellite tag a leatherback in Mayumba National Park" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A special treat for Buzztown inhabitants (you know who you are). More photos and video of JaMoTo!

Continue reading "JaMoTo" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm off to Gabon to tag leatherbacks with a surly crew. I'm going to try posting regular updates during the trip. Not here, but sort of a mini-blog. I'm not sure how good the connectivity will be, but if you'd like to follow along try these spots:

http://twitter.com/seaturtle

or

http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=555716684

Mobile photo uploads from the trip:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12144&id=555716684

Wish us luck!

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not that I have embarrassed myself... it's time to share what was probably the highlight of the entire symposium.

Continue reading "Ruby" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It was actually the other way round. For the record, I am posting my own embarrassing pictures to 1) beat everyone else to it, and 2) free me up to post all of the embarrassing pictures I have of everyone else :)

Continue reading "Shave and a haircut" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Continuing my experiences from Cabo Verde this summer...

Unfortunately I have let the story sit for too long and some of the details are already starting to escape my memory. My last post was about my arrival on Boa Vista. One thing that I forgot to mention in my last post; although my luggage did finally arrive in Boa Vista there were a couple of items missing. My bag was loaded with clothes, electronic accessories, personal items, and the only thing missing was a pair of field pants I had just bought (the kind with the zip-off legs) and a bathing suit (so I ended up having to swim in my shorts or birthday suit :). I also lost one of those key ring/luggage tag coins from the Orlando symposium attached to my bag (very handy for identifying my bag in a crowd) that must have broken off and another that my daughter made.

Anyways, on with the story...

Continue reading "Ervatao" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is something that I meant to post back in July when it first happened, but it somehow got away from me. I originally submitted it to the Animal Crazy blog at the Orlando Sentinel.

A little background first...

I wrote this in early July while we were on Bald Head Island, North Carolina attaching satellite tags to sea turtles nesting there. You can follow the progress of these animals and find out more about the project on the tracking web site. To set the stage or the following missive, we had been on call each night while interns at the Bald Head Island Conservancy patrolled the beach looking for nesting sea turtles. They would notify us when they found one and we would come out and tag it. Turtle nesting season in North Carolina extends from approximately late May through August, with scattered nesting before and after, and peaking in July. This is a time when adult female sea turtles are obviously coming very close to shore.

Continue reading "Gill Nets" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my last post, I mentioned a recent trip to the Cape Verde Islands. My final destination was the island of Boa Vista (below). The red arrow indicates Ervatao beach, where the research camp is located on Boa Vista, and my final final destination.

Continue reading "Boa Vista" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently had the opportunity to travel to the Cape Verde Islands as part of a research project I am involved in with the Marine Turtle Research Group (Brendan Godley, Lucy Hawkes and Annette Broderick), Luis Felipe Lopez Jurado from the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the team from Natura 2000, a Canary and Cape Verde Islands based NGO, and Matthew Godfrey of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

The project is a study of the spatial ecology of sea turtles in the eastern Atlantic. To date this has included 10 adult female loggerhead turtles satellite tagged in 2004, and another three during 2005. The early results of this work were presented in an article in Current Biology.

The major finding presented in the paper is that the population of adult female loggerheads nesting on Boa Vista in the Cape Verde Islands appear to utilize two distinct foraging strategies, with smaller adults feeding pelagically and larger adults feeding neritically near the African coast.

To refine the distinction between these two groups we sought and received funding from the Large Pelagics Research Center competitive grants program. With this funding we are tagging a wide size range of adult female loggerheads this year and will also we tagging 10 leatherback turtles from Gabon in January.

If you are not familiar with the Cape Verde Islands, they are located 400-500 km off the coast of West Africa (see map below).

The Republic of Cape Verde is comprised of eight main islands and a number of smaller islands.

Natura 2000 has an office and field camp on the island of Boa Vista, the easternmost island in the archipelago. This is where our work has been carried out.

There is additional background info about Cape Verde's turtles in a WWF article entitled "Cape Verde: Tourism or Turtles?" that is mostly accurate.

Will turtles survive Cape Verde tourist invasion? - Afrol News

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They held a science day recently at my daughter's school and I volunteered to go in and talk to the kids. The teachers had gotten ahold of some animal parts and had a short outline for the volunteering parents to follow. They were excited to find that they had an actual marine biologist in their midst. I "borrowed" a couple of live animals from one of the classrooms and worked that in to my talk.

And as Matthew is so fond of recognizing, took advantage of the awesome network here in North Carolina. Matthew was kind enough to lend me some turtle parts, and seeing as he was still in Greece at the time, Wendy Cluse was even kinder and offered to collect the items and bring them to me halfway between Beaufort and Durham. All in all the day was a huge success, made all the better with a little help from my friends.

Note the fine Africa swag given to me by Angela Formia. This is the t-shirt that was designed for and sold at the recent African meeting at the start of the sea turtle symposium in Crete.

And of course I would not want to neglect the fine Oman swag that Manjula brought to the symposium for me.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The last full day of the symposium was marked by a vicious African sand storm. It came roaring in about midday and lasted until well in to the evening. I don't know what it really was, but winds must have been gusting to close to 50 mph.

Here's what it looked like the first day...

And during the sand storm...

Sorry, not quite the same shot, but there was no way I was taking my camera out in to the storm.

The symposium has officially ended, but I'm hoping to post some wrap-up stories over the next few days...

Posted by Michael Coyne at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An interesting side effect of the sand storm experienced on the Friday of the Symposium were some intermittent power problems. It started in the morning with a power outage at the beginning of Matthew Witt's talk on LEATHERBACK TURTLES, JELLYFISH AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE NORTHWEST ATLANTIC: CURRENT SITUATION AND POSSIBLE FUTURE SCENARIOS. Of course that meant everything shut down and the computer system had to be rebooted, etc. But Matthew handled the interruption without problem.

During the plenary in the afternoon the power went out a couple of times, leaving the session in complete darkness and leading to several comic situations.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night was the third night since we received our satellite tags. The first night after the tags arrived no turtles nested. The second night we had one turtle and put a satellite tag on her. You can follow her movements here.

Last night we got a call from Melissa at the BHIC at about 1:30am. They had a turtle on East Beach on Bald Head Island. Matthew and I headed out in our golf cart. When we got there the turtle had just finished nesting and was making her way down from behind some dead vegetation. The BHIC interns built a box around her when she got to the softer sand.

It was a fairly normal attachment, if you don't count the rain and raging thunder storm that broke out right in the middle. I would have taken pictures, but I had to put my camera in a plastic bag. And of course I forgot to bring a raincoat (as did Matthew), so we ended up huddling behind Melissa and an intern from the Conservancy who did have raincoats.

Below, I thought I'd share Matthew's patented technique for flaring out the epoxy used to attach the satellite transmitters using a simple piece of cardboard.

He says he prefers to use cardboard from Dr. Pepper 12-pack cases.

In any case, the turtle is away and you can follow her progress here.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We had no luck the first night after our satellite tags showed up. A turtle did nest, but there was a huge storm in the middle of the night and the beach patrol did not find the nest until morning.

So we broke out the big guns last night. Wendy settled down with a book that had only a few pages left and the rest of us started to watch a movie. It didn't take long before we got a call from the Conservancy that they had found a turtle.

It was a good ways up the beach, about 10 miles, near Fort Fisher, North Carolina, not actually on Bald Head Island. So we had to take an ATV and only a couple of us would fit. So Wendy and myself went and Matthew stayed behind.

By the time we arrived the conservancy interns had already put a box around the turtle and cleaned the barnacles off the carapace.

Everyone helped prep the turtle the rest of the way: sanding down the area where the tag was to be attached; cleaning the area with a bit of acetone; then put down a layer of Power-Fast epoxy and placed the tag, a Kiwisat 101, in the epoxy.

The epoxy was a little runnier than we are used to, and we had to give it extra time to harden. We put on a total of three layers of epoxy. Once the last layer had mostly hardened, we applied marine anti-fouling paint to half of the attachment area. We are hoping that this turtle will re-nest this season and we will be able to get a follow-up photo to see if the anti-fouling paint helps reduce bio-fouling (barnacles, algae, etc). Growth on and around the tag can cover the salt water switch and prevent the satellite tag from transmitting when it is at the surface. We are hoping to find a way to slow down the accumulation of epibionts and hopefully get a little more time out of the tags.

Once the paint was dry enough that it did not come off when touched, we lifted the boards and off she went!!!

The turtle track is already online and you can follow her progress here.

I also made an audio recording of the proceedings which will hopefully go online next week. There is no way I am going to upload it (24+ MB) from the dial-up connection I have here.

Audio Blog (8.2 MB mp3 file)

Posted by Michael Coyne at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I received notice earlier today that our tags had arrived at the Bald Head Island ferry landing. I let Melissa Hedges, the island naturalist at the Bald Head Island Conservancy, know so that she could help guide them the rest of the way in.

Unfortunately, when she called to check on the package later in the day they said they couldn't find it!!! Argh!

Fortunately everything turned out ok. Apparently, despite the fact that I received a tracking number from DHL, there was an Airborne Express sticker on the box. So there was a bit of confusion as to whether it was the right box. I have no idea which company really delivered it (Just don't use TNT!).

In any case, we quickly set to work getting the tags ready for deployment. The first thing we did was put some anti-fouling paint on the tags (being careful not to paint over the contact label, LED and salt-water switches). I say we, but it was Matthew that painted the tags:

I just checked the satellite pass predictor to see when we will have satellites overhead. Looks like NOAA-14 will be overhead between 9 and 10pm, so we'll turn the tags on then so the Argos system knows the tags aren't in New Zealand anymore.

With any luck we will have at least one turtle nest tonight and can deploy our first tag.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received a report a few hours ago that our satellite tags were signed for at the ferry landing. So they apparently have arrived, although I have not seen them yet.

Bald Head Island is an interesting place. There are no proper roads on the island. Everyone gets around on golf carts. And you have to take a ferry to get to the island. So you can see the obvious complications associated with getting packages delivered.

We have folks keeping an eye out for the package and hopefully we will have it in hand within the next few hours...

Keep your fingers crossed!

Posted by Michael Coyne at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, after a series of delays it looks like the satellite tags are nearly here. I mentioned before that TNT passed delivery to DHL. The tags were in Maryland at the time, and it was very disheartening to then see them taken to the DHL sort facility in Wilmington, Ohio. IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!!

But everything seems to be working out now. The package just arrived in Wilmington, NC, about 30 minutes away from Bald Head Island. And only two days later than we were hoping to get them.

Woo-hoo!

Posted by Michael Coyne at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, don't use TNT to ship things internationally. We've not had good luck so far.

The first big issue is that apparently they don't work on weekends. We really need the satellite tags that they are shipping for us (by yesterday). They arrived at JFK last Friday and just sat there all weekend.

Then despite two attempt to update the delivery address, they still attempted to deliver it to my old address!

After realizing that they attempted to deliver the package to the wrong address, they have now handed it off to DHL. Yesterday they told me it would delivered today. Just a few minutes ago they told me it will be delivered tomorrow.

sigh

Posted by Michael Coyne at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's the start of a new turtle season in the northern hemisphere and time to put more satellite tags on sea turtles for the various projects that I am involved in. This week we (myself and Matthew Godfrey and Wendy Cluse of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission) are on Bald Head Island, North Carolina to continue our investigation of the migratory movements of adult loggerhead turtles. We have deployed 8 tags to date, four in 2003 and another four in 2004. Those projects can be found here:
http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/index.shtml?project_id=1
and here:
http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/index.shtml?project_id=25

The 2003 deployment was the very first project on the SEATURTLE.ORG satellite tracking web site.

This year we were able to raise enough funds to deploy four more tags, thanks to the Bald Head Island Conservancy and the Newport Aquarium in Kentucky. There are some folks from the aquarium here to help with and take part in the tag deployment, and we will be counting on the BHIC staff and interns to track down turtles for us to put tags on and also help with the deployment. And Brendan Godley and company of the Marine Turtle Research Group, who are also partners on the project, are with us here in spirit. Lucy Hawkes, one of Brendan's graduate students, is the one that does such a great job keeping the project text and descriptions up to date on the website.

We have not had a great start so far. Everyone is here on the island and ready to go, but we are still waiting for the actual satellite tags. They were manufactured by Sirtrack and shipped from New Zealand. Sirtrack still had my old mailing address, so the tags were shipped to Silver Spring, MD instead of North Carolina. That on top of massive customs delays because of all the new US "security" measures equals no tags. The shipping company assures me that the tags will arrive on Bald Head tomorrow. We'll see happens :)

I hate to make promises about all the cool reporting I am going to do this week in relation to the deployment, mostly because every time I've made similar promises in the past I've not been able to find the time to fulfill them. Suffice to say that I am going to TRY to do some cool things this week. So, keep an eye on this space for a few days and we'll see if I can follow through!

At the very least we will have a new project available online by the end of the week.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 01:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had a bit of fun with the camera last night, taking extreme close-up of people I chatted with before, during and after the opening social of the symposium.

Only first names are provided to protect the innocent (or guilty)...

Continue reading "Extreme Close-ups" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Registration opened at 7am this morning and as usual things did not go as smoothly as one would hope. I was roused out of bed because they couldn't get credit cards to process at the registration desk. A quick bit of programming and we got the problems worked out. There are already a lot of folks on hand as the Widecast and Latin American meetings started today.

Registration line during the first Widecast break

Gray beards solving all the world's problems

Registration desk gets to take a breath

I think that I forgot to mention earlier that there is WiFi in all the rooms, just $10/day from the hotel. So if you have a WiFi laptop bring it along. We also have a wireless network set up at the registration desk that people can log in to and we plan to have an internet cafe set-up after registration dies down.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

OK, so now I remember that I left the USB cable for my camera at home on purpose. That's because I got a new card reader for Christmas. So here are the pictures I wanted to attach to the earlier message...

The packet stuffing room

The Hyatt atrium... the escalators lead up to the doors of the main presentation hall.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 08:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day zero of the symposium. Arrived at the hotel last night and helped stuff packets today. Not much else going on. Registration opens tomorrow and the official events begin.

I was hoping to do a better job of photo-documenting things this time, but of course I forgot the USB cable for my digital camera once again.

The hotel is nice, pretty standard rooms. Very nice atrium (pictured) except that they are currently working on the tile floor. The conference rooms have not been prepped yet so not sure how they look yet.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My vacation wasn't just a vacation. I also got a chance to get together with three well-known North Carolina turtler's. From left to right are Wendy Cluse, Assistant Sea Turtle Biologist, NC Wildlife Resources Commission, Matthew Godfrey, Sea Turtle Coordinator, NC Wildlife Resources Commission, and Jean Beasley, Executive Director, Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.

Continue reading "Meeting the triumvirate" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We are in between homes with the move from Maryland to North Carolina, so what better time to take a vacation. There was about a two week period between closing on our old house and new house (which happens tomorrow) and we (the family) thought that checking out the NC beaches would be a perfect way to spend some of that time.

Continue reading "Turtle Vacations" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, carrying on from my last message...

Continue reading "Migration continued..." »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A big migration is set to begin. Not the migration of a turtle, but a turtler. I thought I would use this space to document the process and everything that is involved in moving a turtler from here to there...

Continue reading "The big migration" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Name all of the turtlers in this picture...

Continue reading "Name that Turtler" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One night during the symposium in Costa Rica a bunch of us went out for dinner in San Jose. When we got there I needed to go to the little turtler's room and discovered that the urinals (troughs actually) were packed with crushed ice.

Continue reading "Urinal Ice" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 08:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Excellent opening ceremony this year. Things started off with a piano presentation by Costan Rican pianist Manuel Obregon. He performed a piece that the program says was "inspired by sea turtles, and created especially for the gathering's participants and guests".

Continue reading "Opening Ceremony" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I arrived in Costa Rica a couple of days ago for the 24th Sea Turtle Symposium. So far so good.

Best of all there are wireless hot spots all over the hotel!

Continue reading "Let the show begin!" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Continue reading "Shark!" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I promised some pics from my St. John trip in a post long ago, one problem after the other and I finally got the images off the camera yesterday (nobody could find the USB cable to connect the camera to the computer).

Continue reading "Better late than never" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally! I saw a turtle.

Continue reading "Turtle Ho!" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meetings were in LA and the first one ran long, so I had to blow off the second meeting (two of my colleagues are staying until tomorrow and went on to the meeting). So just mosied to LAX to wait for my late flight. Four hours to kill. Maybe I can find a beer and get some work done.

All of the driving around LA reminds me why I hate it here. The smog is horrible, the traffic is worse. LA's sprawl is beginning to border on the farsicle (if that's not a word it is now)!

No turtles on this trip, unless you count all of the stuffed turtles in the tourist shops. Found that strange since not a lot of turtles occur in California waters.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I'm in the middle of what is turning out to be a busy summer of travel.

Continue reading "Summer road trip" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I was extremely pleased to see that Maptool had been used to create maps for several of the presenations at the symposium. In particular, ALan Reese and Dimitris Margaritoulis had three posters with Maptool maps. Brendan had a bunch of very nice maps of turtle satellite tracks from West Africa. And Randall Arauz had some maps in a talk about TEDs which I missed unfortunately. Also saw a poster from Barbados that may have had a Maptool map (not sure because it wasn't cited). There may have been others that I missed. I'll try to provide links to these examples of how Maptool is being used when I get home so people can get some idea of what you can do with it.

In general I received good feedback from people. I was disappointed to see a variety of sub-standard maps in many posters and presentations. With Maptool freely available to all there's just no excuse.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sorry, we've gotten a bit behind. I always forget how busy things get once the symposium proper starts. No one has had time to blog. Here are some pics from the opening night social. I'd have to say the best entertainment I've seen yet at a symposium. The dragon dancers were fantastic and very entertaining.

Continue reading "Fantastic!" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Solving the world's problems over breakfast

Arrived safely in Kuala Lumpur without issues. There tunred out to be about 8 or 9 turtleres on my flight. An added bonus was that we were able to put together a carpool from the airport to the hotel.

Continue reading "Safe and Sound" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 05:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Five hours down, 20 to go.

I am safely ensconced at LAX waiting for my flight to KL via Taiwan. Actually, I'm waiting for a 1.5 MB file to finish sending over my laptop modem. Could be a while. I'd much rather be in the bar next door having a beer. Soon, soon...

Trip has been completely uneventful so far. I have to say that I like the new TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) employees much better than the old airport security. They are much more professional and courteous. It's the small things.

The next flight is still a couple of hours away, so the crowd is sparse in the waiting area. But it looks like there are already a couple of turtlers on this flight. Nobody I recognize as yet, they just "look" like turtlers...

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Packing and waiting for the taxi that will take me to the airport and then on to the symposium. And I am exhausted. All of the usual last minute items have cropped, plus a few extras. The short of it, I stayed up until 2am last night to finish a few things up using the logic that I can sleep on the plane. I leave today (wednesday) at 5pm and don't get to KL until 11am on Friday.

I'll need the first couple of days just to rest up for the symposium.

Continue reading "Zero Hour" »

Posted by Michael Coyne at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)