Last friday, when the official meeting ended, we caught the RER commuter rail to downtown Paris in the early afternoon in order to see the Exposition on Sea Turtles at the Palais de la Decouverte. Not only did we want to see the expo, but we wanted to meet up with Johan Chevalier who was scheduled to leave the following morning for French Guiana. It turned out that we were early and Johan was running a little behind, but at least I got a chance to see the cool exhibits on sea turtles. Of course, I forgot my camera but the ticket above is proof positive that I actually went. Afterwards, Johan found us and we had a nice afternoon chat over coffee at a brasserrie in Paris. As usual, he regaled us with stories about working with leatherbacks in French Guiana, and I started to feel fieldwork envy all over again. Fortunately, the nesting season starts soon here in North Carolina.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 05:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photo by Kelly Stewart

This is the Crepe Bus restaurante in Orsay where I spent a leisurely lunch with Peter Pritchard, Jacky Mitro, Edo Goverse, and Kelly Stewart, discussing turtle conservation issues. We also talked about French food, which is a world apart.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 05:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the second meeting of the NMFS Leatherback Turtle Expert Meeting Group, taking place in the outskirts of Paris, France, with Marc Girondot as local host. At the moment this photo was taken, the different members and participants were discussing different ways to divide up the different "stocks" of leatherbacks in the Atlantic basin. Right now there some debate about whether there are 7 assemblages and (perhaps more difficult to decide) what the boundaries are among the assemblages. Note the presence of Johan Chevalier at the back left corner of the seminar room. Although he claims to be no longer involved with sea turtles for about two years, he couldn't resist participating in the meeting. It is great to see him, as it's been nearly two three years since I last saw him in French Guiana. Stay tuned to find out how many different stocks we come up with in the next few days or months.

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My friend Johan recently asked me if I had any photos of a loggerhead skull. He wanted one to show his colleagues who were preparing an exhibit on sea turtles at the Palais de Decouverte in Paris, France:

I realized that I didn't have any photos of turtle skulls, so I took several and sent them to Johan. Of course, he wasn't satisfied with the angle of the photos -"just a little bit more from the side and back, so you can see the brain case in relation to the skull," he wrote. As I took more shots, I realized that it was a good opportunity to take photos of all the skulls and upload some into the seaturtle.org image library:

http://www.seaturtle.org/cgi-bin/imagelib/index.pl?photo=1694
http://www.seaturtle.org/cgi-bin/imagelib/index.pl?photo=1693

For those of you lucky enough to visit Paris between now and June 26, be sure to visit the sea turtle expo, presented by Garef Océanographique.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's April in North Carolina, and we are starting to think about the beginning of our nesting season that begins in May. It's funny to think that in other places around the world, nesting beach fieldwork has already begun. For instance, I just heard word from Kelly Stewart who has started her fieldwork with nesting leatherbacks in Florida. She and her collaborators recently outfitted a leatherback with a fancy GPS satellite tag - check out the story and photos here. On Ascension Island, Brendan Godley tells me that the green turtle nesting season is well under way. It is the same for Suriname and French Guiana, where not only green turtles are nesting but the leatherbacks are starting to nest more frequently on the same beaches (there are five nesting leatherbacks in the photo above, although you might have to really hunt to see them all). And on the other side of the world, the turtle nesting seasons are ending or have recently ended. In Bahia, Brazil, hawksbill and loggerheads have pretty much finished their nesting, although hatchlings will still be produced from their nests for several more weeks.
Therefore, a carefully prepared travel itinerary could allow one to participate in nesting turtle fieldwork each month of the entire year.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)