The world according to me....

It's the end of the year, when the weather turns wet and cold in North Carolina, and I seem to spend all my time working on reports or going to meetings. In years past, I have lucky enough to go out in early December on fishing trips with poundnet fishermen. This year, due to a new NC DMF moratorium on poundnet fishing in the month of December, there have been no such trips. My last trip was in October (see photo above), when we saw no turtles (but did see birds and dolphins). This year, for my winter turtle experience, I was looking forward to a trip to Caribbean Mexico over Christmas, where I might have seen some turtles in the water. Howver, plans have since changed and now I am headed north to Quebec for the holiday. There will be no sea turtles up there except for any snow sculptures that I make.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is Masonboro Island, a barrier island located just southeast of Wilmington, NC. It is also the only nesting beach in North Carolina that I hadn't been able to visit since first arriving in NC in 2002 (actually, that is not strictly true: I haven't visited Brown's Island off of Camp Lejeune as nobody is allowed there due to unexploded ordinance from test bombing runs - yet turtles do nest successfully on Brown's Island). We made the trip to Masonboro on a gorgeous November day:

from left to right are Anthony Snider (Southern Sites Manager for the NC National Estuarine Research Reserve of which Masonboro is a part); Doug Piatkowski (biologist with the Army Corps of Engineers in Wilmington), Amanda Southwood (professor at UNC-Wilmington) and Sue Cameron (NC Waterbird Biologist).
We walked from southern to northern end of the ocean side of the island, checking its suitability as turtle and bird reproductive habitat. We also discussed erosion and nourishment issues, human use, pollution, and the island's suitability as a surfing area (Doug's speciality). The island itself is beautiful and we counted ourselves lucky to be able to be on an undeveloped beach in NC. This was made all the more palpable when we drew close to the northern end of the island, and could see Wrightsville beach just across the inlet.

I look forward to going back again soon.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday was a blustery day in eastern North Carolina. I received a call from NC Marine Patrol: someone had reported a dead loggerhead underneath the Triple "S" Pier on Atlantic Beach. Atlantic Beach is not far from my house, so it was a quick drive over the causeway to Bogue Banks. The ocean was quite turbulent due to heavy winds and there was so much sand being blown around that I couldn't see the turtle until I ducked under the pier (the photo above is how it looked). This was a juvenile loggerhead that died relatively recently, although cooler water and air temperatures mean that decomposition is slower than in the summer, making it difficult to definitively pinpoint how long it had been dead. The turtle had neither flipper tags nor a PIT tag. I couldnt' tell what sex it was because the gonads and other internal organs were gone (likely eaten by other animals in the sea and/or on the beach). The carapace was severely damaged - it looked like the result of a boat strike to me (note the jagged cracks below the gaping hole on the carapace the photo below). Of course, it isn't known of the boat strike was before or after the turtle had died.

The final thing I did was spray-paint it (so it wouldn't be recounted if it was somehow seen again) and bury it further up the beach (about 4 feet below the surface of the sand). Now it is just another datapoint in our strandings database (350 observed stranded turtles to date in NC in 2005).

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)