The world according to me....

It's not fear in their eyes, rather it is resignation. That pile of bags looks reminiscent of a similar pile from last year. That's right. Those are bags of flippers collected from dead turtles found in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia and sent to the NOAA-Beaufort lab for preparation and use in the ongoing turtle ageing study. Lisa, Wendy and I were working on "flensing" the flippers; that is, we were stripping skin and flesh to get the humeri. Larisa was also there, in a supporting role (she is not allowed to flense for a while). She didn't complain about the smell too much. Surprisingly, it didn't seem too bad, although at one point Wendy had to open on of the lab doors for air - it seemed as if she always picked those bags with flippers in the nastiest state to work on. I had to leave early so I missed some excitement: when checking all the Kemp's ridley flippers with the magentometer, Lisa found one that read positive. It wasn't a PIT tag so it is likely a coded wire tag inserted way back when the turtle was just a hatchling at the NMFS-Galveston lab.

At least now there is more room in the freezer for new turtle flippers!