The world according to me....

Experience Number 1:
“Excuse me, but have you seen any turtles?” I looked up and saw a group of tourists who had been walking in the opposite direction. I was on a tagging patrol and had encountered about a dozen leatherback turtles in the previous 500 meters. “Sure,” I said, pointing behind me. “There are lots of turtles just down there.” Then came the unexpected question. “Are they only leatherbacks? We have already seen some, and now we want to see a green turtle.” I explained that there were none, as it was the near the end of the green turtle nesting season. Disappointed, they turned around and headed to their rented bungalow.

Experience Number 2:
A crowd of about 50 people materialized from the distance. Most of the people arrived out of breath from running. Each question was the same: “Are there any hatchlings?” A loggerhead nest was being excavated 72 hours after its natural emergence, and indeed there were 3 or 4 straggler hatchlings left at the bottom of the nest. The volunteers carefully placed them in the “runway” between protective lines of tape, and slowly the turtles made their way to the ocean. All the tourists were transfixed and I heard someone whisper with excitement, “I never imagined that they would be so small….”

These two experiences occurred on two different beaches and in two different countries. But in my mind the most important difference was the relative density of sea turtles on each beach: more than 50 nests per night in first case, and less than 20 nests per season in the second. My personal view is that public interest generally is inversely proportional to nesting sea turtle abundance. After all, it is all relative.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I admit it: I have a turtle tattoo.

I was young, I was cold (it was the dead of winter in Toronto), and I clearly hadn't thought it through carefully. For starters, I put it on my back, so I have never really seen it. At the very least, this meant that I had to get one (or more) tattoos, in places where I could see them. But in the case of the my first tattoo, the design was a stylized turtle, brazenly lifted from a picture book of turtles. One thing that I have always wondered is why so many people who work with chelonians are driven to be tattooed with a turtle motif. I guess this is a two part question: why do we get tattooed? & why turtles? There have been many attempts to answer the first question (for example, look here), but the second answer remains elusive, at least to me. Interestingly, shark motifs also seem to be popular. I wonder if people who work with them tend to get tattoos.

For the curious, here are some examples of sea turtle tattoos (this is what I came up with in a random search on Google):

Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4

And a tattoo artist named "Turtle" (not for those with weak hearts)

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (1)

As the saying goes, “the squeaky wheel gets all the grease.” But what about those who go about their business noiselessly? Quiet, unassuming, and brimming with experience, Larisa Avens (seen here with a dogfish) demands little attention. But do not let her quiet demeanor fool you: Larisa has accomplished many things. If you are not familiar with her by now, you will soon see more of her name being bandied around, as her excellent research continues to be published and she expands her research activities. I am lucky that she is based in a NOAA laboratory close by, for she is kind enough to always let me interrupt her workday to ask her opinions, to seek her advice, or simply to pester her for information. And interrupt her I do, almost daily. Larisa has been working on turtles and fisheries in the region for many years, she is a wealth of knowledge, and she has been a guiding light for me in my job since I arrived here almost 7 months ago. Of all the things Larisa has introduced me to so far, my favorite has been going out to check for turtles in the poundnets off of Cedar Island, North Carolina. It is no coincidence that everyone likes her, from local fishermen to the big brass: she is one of those rare examples of a good person who works hard and who always goes out of her way for others. She recently completed her doctorate at UNC, and she will continue to work in the NOAA lab here at least for a while. Of course, I am really happy not only for Larisa, but also for me, since it means I get to learn even more from her.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several cell phone calls. Three-way negotiating. A late-night meeting at the parking lot of McDonald’s in Plymouth. An exchange.

No, this is not drug deal or information espionage. It is just another chapter in the long history of rehabilitation of cold-stunned turtles in North Carolina. In the current case, five turtles needed to be moved on short notice from Manteo (where they were treated) to Beaufort (where they will board a ship to be released into the Gulf Stream). As often happens, the volunteer organization N.E.S.T. stepped in and helped out, and Don was tapped to make the drive and meet Wendy and me halfway. The following morning, we will collect the other four rehabilitated turtles from Pine Knoll Shores, and bring all nine turtles to the boat that will take them out to the Gulf Stream. This is but a small part of the larger picture. There are dozens of folks in the North Carolina sea turtle stranding network who work tirelessly to ensure that turtles are successfully treated, rehabilitated and released. Our success is really their success. And once we finish with this release, we will start thinking about the next round of rehabilitated turtles to be released, most likely from the beach…

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have spent time on a sea turtle nesting beach, you have seen a similar situation: a clutch deposited so close to the ocean that it is likely to be washed away or destroyed by high tides. Referred to as “doomed eggs” in the laboratory of my graduate school supervisor Nicholas Mrosovsky (FRSC), nests in this category were crucial in my research. I had always assumed that everyone called them doomed eggs. But when I first went to work with Projeto TAMAR in Brazil, I learned that a clutch laid too close to the high tide line there is called a ninho suicida, which means “suicide nest” in Portuguese. I immediately preferred this more visceral description. When I later worked in French Guiana (this photo was taken in Awala-Yalimapo beach), I decided to use the term nid suicidé (suicide nest) for clutches laid too close to the high tide line, rather than “nid condamné” (doomed nest). This was my vain attempt in establishing some sort of legacy there (and most likely unsuccessful).

In the meantime, I have tried to pin down the earliest published use of the adjective “doomed” for eggs laid too close to the high tide line. Interestingly, the earliest mention I have found so far is 1983, but I am still working on it…..

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Being sea turtle biologists in North Carolina means we see a lot of dead stranded turtles. Dead turtles mean, among other things, necropsies! After all, we have to try to figure out what killed the turtle (or more precisely, what DIDN'T kill the turtle), whether it was a male or female, and other physiological characteristics. Fortunately, I get to work with Wendy Cluse, who never fails to amaze me with her energy and enthusiasm, not to mention her continual smile even in the face of smelly dead-turtle innards.

We try to get to the carcasses before the midday sun starts cooking them, but invariably we sometimes have to open up a hissing, bloated loggerhead carcass. Necropsies always mean we get to have dead turtle smell impregnated in our skin and clothes for at least several hours.

And don't forget to open the brain case to see if there are signs of a hemorrhage (indication of head trauma prior to death)! Thanks to Dr. Craig Harms for that tip.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Johan Chevalier (second from left): Bad-boy extraordinaire and the arguably the greatest living sea turtle conservation worker from France. He has spread his influence in many places, including Cameroon, Greece, French Guiana, Suriname, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and greater Bezons. He has taught many how to inject PIT tags into leatherbacks, how to hitchhike, and why one should always wear footwear on beaches. He is not a particularly good player of Belote and he gives Georges Brassens far too much credit, but all of his other attributes make up for these failings.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My favourite beach is Çirali, near Antalya in Turkey. I went in 1997 at the behest of the Turkish NGO DKHD, to help set up a monitoring program for sea turtle activities at Belek beach. Actually, they originally invited Clare Whitmore, but she had too much going on, so she kindly recommended me. Anyway, the objective was to assess the impact of tourists and tourist development in Belek on loggerhead sea turtle reproduction. Belek beach traditionally been used as a summer holiday area for local Turkish families who generally camp out in wagon-style cabanas, but since the early 1990s, Belek has seen increased development of hotel complexes aimed at Northern European visitors. There was concern that increased pressures from tourism development on Belek (artificial lighting at night, more people on the beach, etc.) might adversely affect the nesting activities of sea turtles. One obstacle for this monitoring project was that since much development had already occurred, it was difficult to have pre-development baseline with which to compare current observations. The solution was to use as a baseline the loggerhead nesting behaviour on a nearby but under-developed beach. This turned out to be Çirali, a small beautiful beach in the shadow of several mountains, including Olympos. The data collected in 1997 suggested that the presence of hotels on Belek was impacting sea turtles, mainly the artificial lights at night were keeping females from nesting on all parts of the beach, and affecting the seafinding of emergent hatchlings. Note that since the late 1990s, a sea turtle research group from a nearby Turkish university is now regularly monitoring Belek each nesting season.

When I was there in 1997, I never saw a nesting turtle, but saw many tracks and hatchlings from recently emerged nests. The turtle aspect of the trip was all well and good, but it was the non-turtle part that really made an impact on me.

The food (olives for breakfast, a restaurant sitting IN a river, Turkish coffee, etc.), the warmth of the local Turkish people, the natural beauty, and related things all made me fall in love with the place. But the place that really stole my heart and soul was Chimera, a rocky shield on the side of a mountain where fires spontaneously spring to life from natural gas jets. Feza Toker, a local biologist, led me there and insisted that we sit for a while and drink chamomile tea with a man selling bottled water to visitors. I watched the flames dance from the rocks and felt I must have been in the place where Prometheus had first brought the fire that he had stolen from Mt. Olympos. I have no idea how long I was transfixed by Chimera, but when Feza told me it was time to go back, the sun was getting low on the horizon; we must have passed several hours there, but it only seemed like minutes.

Chimera is as close to the gods I have ever been.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes, working on tropical nesting beaches is not all milk and honey. Accidental capture of sea turtles are common in the coastal waters near the French Guiana and Suriname border, and occasionally dead turtles end up washing up onto the nesting beach. Decomposing leatherback carcasses on the nesting beach create amazingly powerful and noxious smells, hence everyone in the area, including local villagers, tourists and fieldworkers wanted the turtles to be disposed of. In 2001, while working on Awala-Yalimapo beach in the Réserve Naturelle de l'Amana in French Guiana, I somehow ended up helping out with the dead leatherbacks that occasionally washed ashore. The most direct method was to use a boat to pull them off the beach and out to the middle of the Mana/Maroni estuary. It was always a team effort, with several people putting the ropes around the turtles on the beach, and a few others on the boat taking out individual turtles to be released to the currents. I was lucky to be out in the boat with Thierry Henri (nicknamed Bara), who was one of the guards of the réserve naturelle and best boat pilot I have ever met. Once in position in the estuary, I would drag the turtle as close as possible before cutting the rope, and it was always an acrobatic exercise with the boat, since nobody wanted to be downwind of the floating turtle. With the ropes cut, we all hoped that the outbound current would take them out to sea where they would continue to decompose and be eaten by other organisms.

Only later did I learn that sometimes the currents did mischievous things with the dead turtles. At least once (and probably more often than that), a dead turtle we released went straight across the estuary and ended up on Baboensanti beach, in Suriname, where Edo Goverse and Maartje Hilterman were monitoring nesting turtles. Unfortunately for them, they did not have an easily accessible boat to drag the turtle away, so they had to endure the smell of the decomposing turtle for several weeks. I promised myself to always buy Edo and Maartje a beer whenever I saw in the future. So far, I have only had once chance to do this (in Cayenne), but more opportunities are on the horizon (in Malaysia).

By the way, Bara is also an excellent cook. In fact, all the guards of the Réserve Naturelle de l'Amana are excellent cooks (even Marion!).

Thanks to Stephanie Kamel for taking this picture.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 12:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)