Trunkback Luths in Dixie

Rachel Spruance, a volunteer for the Caretta Research Project, thought she was coming to Wassaw Island, Georgia to see nesting loggerheads - boy did she get a surprise.

The first leatherback sea turtle I ever saw was on Juno Beach, Florida - sometime around 1982. My grandmother, a rabid Atlanta Braves fan, lives in nearby Jupiter, where she can be close to all the spring training a Braves fan can handle. I used to stay with her every summer and, unbeknownst to my relatives, I would sneak out every night to see sea turtles. I would walk several miles, through neighborhoods to reach the beach. On the way I'd see cane toads, coquis, Cuban tree frogs, Mediterranean geckos and, my favorite, Tokay geckos.

As I've mentioned before, the beach at Juno is crawling with loggerheads, literally, but leatherbacks were, and I'm sure still are, a treat to see amongst the droves of loggerheads.

When I became active with sea turtles in my home state, Georgia, I was surprised to learn that, although they didn't frequently nest here, leatherbacks can be found year-round in Georgia waters.

We'd see many during our aerial surveys throughout the winter and some are even lucky enough to see one nest in the summer.

A paticular day in December, of 2000 I believe, strikes me at the moment. I was working on a shrimp trawler catching sea turtles during a dredging operation in Charleston for my buddy Chris Slay. The vessel I was on was called the 'Winds of Fortune', captained by Wayne Magwood. It was two days before Christmas ('Krimmus' as it is pronounced down here) and Molas (ocean sunfish) and leatherbacks were everywhere - munching on large flotillas of cannonball jellyfish. We prayed we wouldn't accidentally capture one of beasts, as it would be a pain in th a$@ to get it out of the net and Peter Eliazar had told me horror stories about what leatherback flippers could do to your face when such large turtles were brought aboard a trawler.

Luckily we did not catch one. Instead, we got to watch the monoliths, paying us no mind, gulping jellies and swimming subsurface in the cold, cloudy water. Jim Dickey, one of the funniest good 'ol boys alive and an excellent turtler/shrimper, and I were talking on the back of the trawler while the nets were being pulled. As Wayne stuck his head out of the window to announce that the nets needed to come up, a leatherback popped up next to him. After exclaiming several four-lettered words at once, the turtle had startled him, he said, "Shee! Jus' a luth!". I laughed because I had heard of the term 'luth' being applied to leatherbacks before but just not in such normal context. That's when Jim informed that 'luth' was just a shortened term for 'trunkback luth'. Later that day Wayne informed us to keep our eyes open, someone on the radio had spotted a 'rotwil' (right whale).