The world according to me....

Each spring and fall, several of the patients of the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center on Topsail Island are given a final and thorough assessment in anticipation of release back into the ocean. This spring is no exception: last week we all converged in Topsail to help get ready for the release planned for early June. Wildlife veterinarians from North Carolina State University regularly make this trip to help with the assessments. In this case, Dr. Pam Govett (in red) is going over a small loggerhead that was admitted less than a year ago with cracks in its carapace. To her right, Wendy Cluse (in white) is waiting for the chance to measure and tag this turtle prior to release. As is often the case, this is an example of the intersection of various aspects of sea turtle conservation: rehabilitation, wildlife medicine and research, education (many students and interns help with the turtles in the rehabilitation center), public awareness (hundreds of tourists visit the rehabilitation center each summer, and hundreds more watch the releases), and more.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 06:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The North Carolina Sea Turtle Project is a complex network of various participants. The majority of them are volunteers: people concerned with sea turtles and interested in collaborating in the sea turtle project. Volunteers donate their hours in various ways, from looking for tracks of nesting females in the morning, to "nest-sitting" of soon-to-emerge clutches of eggs, to reporting stranded turtles, to helping out at the two rehabilitation centers in North Carolina. The volunteers keep track of their hours and report them to us, and using a standard conversion factor for the cash value of volunteerism, we calculate that volunteers contribute about $400,000 a year in work. The contributions of the volunteers don't stop there. They also function as educators, raising awareness of the general public on issues concerning sea turtles. They are also excellent advocates for sea turtle conservation and management. They are one of the key reasons why the North Carolina Sea Turtle Project is vibrant and active.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 10:39 AM | Permalink

It all started out as a nice day. Wendy and I went to Swansboro to meet with Park Ranger Sean Mcelhone at Hammocks Beach State Park. He took us out to Bear Island, an undeveloped barrier island in between Bogue Banks and Onslow Beach, so we could bury some temperature dataloggers. It was a beautiful day and when we finished, we wistfully wondered if there was some way that we could stay longer. As we were going back to the boat dock, we had an excuse: we came across a dead stranded loggerhead. Just before we started to take measurements and open up the body cavity, some tourists came by to ask abotu the turtle (photo above). After we finished investigating the turtle and taking the eyeballs/flippers for Larisa, we headed back to Swansboro and eventually our offices. After dropping off Wendy at her home, I stopped by Radio Island to look for another reported stranding (no luck), but then got a call from Kristin: there was a live sick loggerhead in the surf on Atlantic Beach. I called Wendy and told her that I could meet her over there after dropping off the samples at the NOAA lab freezer. She called me back to say that the turtle was further out off the beach than she expected, and she could use some help to get the turtle out of the breakers. I met her and Kristin on the beach and we could see the turtle bobbing in the waves about 50 m out. We swam out to it and it was covered with barnacles, an indication that it was not doing well. I touched its front flippers, and it dove away slowly. We returned to the beach and asked Kristin if she had any rope. She found some and again Wendy and I swam out, this time about 100m from shore. I grabbed the end of her carapace and she wasn't strong enough to pull away. Slowly, Wendy and I steered her back to shore as we both gulped a fair share of seawater. Once we got there, Wendy and I agreed to meet over at CMAST in order that Craig Harms, a wildlife vet, could take a look at it before heading down to the Karen Beasley Turtle Rehabilitation Center on Topsail Island. Craig said the turtle looked sick but probably would recover with proper treatment.

Wendy made the trip to Topsail (one of her many trips there this week). I returned home to receive a message that there was a leatheback stranded on an inshore shoal just inside Cape Lookout bight. It was late afternoon and the NPS Park Rangers were already dealing with it. It was just a question about how we could possibly get out there to get samples, but more on that later.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 06:15 PM | Permalink

Turtles, crocodiles, lizards, birds... they are all reptilomorphs. Therefore, participating in a bird nest count on Battery Island in the Cape Fear estuary system is nearly the same as working on sea turtles. We counted thousands of White Ibis nests, plus some made by egrets and herons. The survey required walking through areas thick with nests, causing many of the birds to flush and fly about for a few minutes before they returned to their nests. We also saw rabbits and snakes, not to mention oystercatchers and willets that also nest on the island. It was also a good chance to look for possible stranded sea turtles along the edges of the island. Fortunately, we didn't find any.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 12:38 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

In 1981, Nicholas Mrosovsky published a short paper in the MTN that highlighted the relatively high occurrence of plastic found in the stomach or intestines of leatherbacks. At that time, he suggested that about half of all adult leatherbacks have plastic in their stomachs, probably due to the turtles' inability to distinguish between pieces of plastic and their normal gelatinous prey (jellyfish, salps, etc.).

Alas, the occurrence of plastic in our oceans has not abated. A recent study reports that plastic that has been discarded in the ocean breaks down into small pieces that are nevertheless present on seemingly "clean" beaches and coastal waters and these pieces are being ingested by small invertebrates.

Nor has the impact of discarded plastics on leatherbacks abated. In January 2004 in North Carolina, a debilitated leatherback was found stranded and under advice of wildlife veterinarians was euthanized. Following this, we conducted a necropsy and collected different samples for various researchers around the country. We saved the entire gastro-intestinal tract for Niki Desjardin at Florida Atlantic University. Recently, she was able to investigate the GI tract from this leatherback, and what she found was disheartening: a large piece of green plastic (the photo above). She found it balled up in the stomach, effectively blocking the passage of any food to the intestines:

This is not an exceptional occurrence. Just a few days ago, a dead leatherback found in Holden Beach also contained plastic in its stomach. Worse still, certain types of plastics are believed to slowly leach estrogen-mimics, which can disrupt various physiological and behavioural processes of many different species.

What can we do about this? Cut down on our plastic waste. Each of us is responsible for our his or her ecological footprint, and each of us must take responsibility for his or her plastic waste. Don't buy anything with excessive packaging. Reuse containers. Bring your own canvas or other reusable bags to the grocery store. Resist buying things that are packaged in small qualities (i.e. no small plastic bottles, etc.). Buy in bulk. Reducing the occurence in plastics in the environment will not only benefit leatherbacks, but all organisms that share the ecosystem with us.

*Thanks to Niki Desjardin for these photos

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 10:37 AM | Permalink