This is Lisa Goshe, biologist with NMFS-NOAA in Beaufort, North Carolina, at the end of a long day of working with fishermen to retrieve turtles from pound nets. Up before 6am and having spent long cold hours on the water, she nevertheless was kind and amiable when she called to say that she had an injured loggerhead that she found in one of the poundnets. I headed over to the NOAA lab in order to get the injured turtle and take it down to the Topsail Turtle Hospital. Lo and behold, she also had a healthy little Kemp's ridley that she had brought back in order to scan for a coded wire tag (it didn't have one). I quickly offered to release the little Kemp's from the beach on my way down to Topsail Island. She started to say 'thank you,' but I just told her that it's better that we all help each other out. In fact, I think both she and Larisa have done far more for us than the other way around. Besides, who ever considered releasing healthy turtles on the beach to be "work"???

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This is Christy, a juvenile loggerhead turtle that originally stranded as a live cold stunned turtle and was rehabilitated at the NEST-NC Aquariume at Roanoke Rehabilitation Center in Manteo, North Carolina. After Christy returned to health, she was released with a satellite tag, so that we could follow her movements after release. A few months after she was released, we received no more transmissions from her, and we weren't sure what had happened to her. Then, on this past Tuesday, we recevied word from the NMFS biologists working in Core Sound that they had found Christy passively captured in one of the pound nets. She was alive and well, but the antenna on the transmitter looked pretty bad. In fact, it was nearly sheared off, and unable to stand straight up:

This could be the reason why it had stopped transmitting information. They brought Christy back to Beaufort where we were able to remove the transmitter and any extra epoxy on the carapace, and then we released her on the ocean side of Atlantic Beach (that's Noella Gray from Duke University watching Christy enter the ocean). Interestingly, despite the fact that Noella has had experience with turtle projects in the Caribbean, this was her first time seeing a loggerhead.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The work continues on Atlantic Beach here in North Carolina. Yesterday afternoon on the beach, as I looked west I could see pipe stretching down the coast, off into the horizon. The work of placing material on the beach has not made it to this point yet (they are moving westward from a point near the eastern end of Atlantic Beach), so this will serve as a "preconstruction" photograph. Stay tuned for the "postconstruction" photograph.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received a call last week, from a park ranger at Ft. Macon state park: he found a dead loggerhead on the beach. I met him a little while later, and we took the measurements and did the partial necropsy together, in an area set back from the beach with controlled access. We found that this was a juvenile female, with good muscle tone, no signs of acute injury from a boat strike, and with food (mostly crabs) in her stomach and intestines. We were not able to definitively categorize the cause of death.

This is the time of year when we usually see an increase in dead turtles show up on beaches and other coastal areas. More often than not, we are not able to definitively assign a cause of death. The possibilities include cold-stunning from decreasing water temperatures, accidental capture by fisheries, some kind of acute infection or other ailment that isn't overtly distinguishable.

We also see an increase in live-stranded turtles, usually rendered lethargic by decreasing water temperatures, especially in the shallow inshore waters of Core and Pamlico Sounds. For that reason, the different rehabilitation centers and aquariums are gearing up to receive and treat these turtles, with the objective to release them next spring when the local ocean water temperature increases.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In North Carolina, construction activities on ocean-facing beaches are not allowed during the sea turtle nesting and hatching seasons. However, each year from mid-November through the end of April, there are usually several beach-construction activities, usually in the form of nourishment. Nourishment is a contraversial management strategy, with both supporters and detractors. Regardless of what you think about it, nourishment is nevertheless an amazing engineering feat. This year there are at least five nourishment projects planned for North Carolina ocean-facing beaches, including one on the eastern half of Bogue Banks. The photo above shows the pipe on Bogue Banks that sends the material down the beach to where it will be deposited and graded. I plan on uploading more photos as the nourishment activities continue, and also post some before and after photographs of beach zones. Stay tuned....

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes, it's the little things that make a big impression. Last year, I helped run a hands-on necropsy session with some kids from a nearby nature camp. It was fun and great to be around younger people who were interested in nature and biology. I had forgotten about it until I was reorganizing my office and found this sheet of "Thank You" notes from the kids. Even now, it reminds me how important it is that we all give (and receive) positive reinforcement, even if it is simply to say "Thanks." After all, it is all too easy to give negative criticism while apparently more difficult to provide positive and constructive comments. In case you were interested in how to say "Thank you" in over 400 different languages, click here.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)