My First Blogging

Luckily I've had the opportunity to see the bloggings of others before having to construct my first blog. One interesting thing that I noticed in the letter that I had received, asking me to participate in this blogging endeavor, was the term "turtler". We've all heard it before and unconciously accept it as a real term to identify an individual as "one who turtles" ('turtle' now acting as an adjective and later a verb). That is, a person who works with sea turtles is a turtler and the act of working with turtles (i.e. beach surveys, in-water captures, aerial surveys, etc.) is called turtling. Here are some examples in sentences of these words and their usage:

"Mike couldn't make it tonight because he went out turtling. Nothing could pull Mike away from the beach tonight anyways, he loves to turtle. He feels his best when he turtles. Yep, that boy is sure one turtling fool. Some folks call boys like that 'turtlers'."

Anyways, I just thought for a second there that the word 'turtle' is really not just a noun. Now it is an adjective, verb and a noun. Someone should notify Websters.

Yesterday, some comrades of mine, especially one gent named Michael Newcomer, went down in the Atlantic off of Fernandina Beach, Florida while doing aerial surveys for N. Atlantic Right Whales. Due to the current temperatures it is likely that all four are dead. I worked for two years doing the same surveys and such a demise always haunted me when I went up.

Our surveys were along the Georgia and Florida coast out to twenty miles. We flew a ladder transect from Little St. Simons Island south to Jax Beach every day from Dec 1 to Mar 31. Often it was very cold and on some days extremely hot. The plane rides were cramped and relatively bumpy, occasionally very bumpy.

Upon sighting a whale or in some cases courting loggerheads, basking sharks, mola molas, etc., the plane breaks the track line and circles the whale from about 700 feet, give or take a 100 ft or so. The right wing of the plane is turned down and the entire plane turns clockwise in a tight spin. During this time the plane flies into its own backwash and the pilot struggles to keep the plane right over the whale(s) so that someone on the right side of the plane can hang out of the window and photograph the whales - the callous patterns on the head serve as a living tag of sorts. Meanwhile, another person is viewing the whales through field glasses and drawing the callous patterns and listing all of the locality information concerning the sighting. Also, another person is on the radio reporting the sighting to the U.S. Navy to alert local vessels of the whereabouts of the sighted whale. As you can see, a day can be very 'busy' if you seen many whales in one day and it takes an iron stomach to work on an aerial survey.

Amazingly, the hawk-eyes at the the New England Aquarium in Boston, Mass., particularly Amy Knowlton as well as others, are capable of matching the slides taken during the aforementioned photo shoots to those taken at breeding grounds in the Bay of Fundy, Maine. At times, there are up to three generations of right whales present off of the Florida and Georgia coasts during the winter. And, from these photos they also know that there are approximately 300 individual whales left. However, some whales seen at the breeding grounds are never seen at the calving grounds and vice versa. This means that there may be either 'secret' calving grounds or secret breeding grounds elsewhere, perhaps both.

Aside from the science, the aerial surveys are also an awesome opportunity to see animals that you've only read about or seen on television. I've seen basking sharks breach like whales, turtles sitting in an ocean of rays and eating the migrating fish as they swim by, I've seen a leatherback and a loggerhead literally bumping elbows while eating jellyfish.

One day, when we were in our plane flying just over the surface of the water in front of Cumberland Island, a leatherback popped out of the water and grabbed a gulp of air, less than 20 feet away from my window. That second is etched into my mind and I can still see the perfect face of the turtle, its size and its dark color. I can see the tan water explode into white when the turtle breaks the surface of the water; and I can see the majectic beauty of a Georgia Barrier Island and its green canopy off in the distance. Most importantly, I can see the billow of smoke come from the turtle's nose as it exhales in the frigid cold of that gray February afternoon.

I am sad to hear that some of my field-mates are presumbed dead after their plane crash, and I'll always worry in the back of my head when I fly; but the experience of soaring over the oceanic realm and peering into it will always supercede notions of fear. Best to all who knew the departed.