The world according to me....

Missing!

2007-01-05T15:56:11Z

]]> On a slightly overcast yet beautiful day last August, folks in Emerald Isle gathered around a loggerhead sea turtle nest on the beach. It was the first nest that had been laid in Emerald Isle in the 2006 nesting season, and although volunteers had been watching the nest each night from day 55 of incucation, nobody had seen hatchlings emerge. After 80 days, it was assumed that either the hatchlings emerged unobserved during a rainstorm or that the eggs had stopped incubating, and an excavation was scheduled for late afternoon. In addition to the volunteers, a crowd of visitors on the beach gathered on the chance to see a live hatchling or two that often remain at the bottom of emerged nests. The Emerald Isle Sea Turtle Project volunteers began to dig down slowly, looking for eggs, shells or hatchlings.

They continued to dig, and dig, and dig. After about an hour and excavating a wide pit, the volunteers had found nothing except a few scraps of old turtle egg shells. What could have happened? The presence of eggs had been confirmed by the volunteers the morning after the female laid her eggs. The nest site had been marked with a sturdy pole since the nest was first laid, and nobody observed any signs of tampering of the area during the incubation. There are several possibilities, including: a) somebody moved the pole as a joke (although the volunteers digging into the nest said that they found what seemed like the nest cavity, plus a few scraps of egg-shell); b) a dog, racoon or fox dug up the nest and destroyed the eggs (although there was no sign of disturbance observed in the area since the time the nest was first laid); c) somebody surreptitiously removed the eggs before day 55 of incubation and covered all signs of disturbance; d) something else? Regardless of the ultimate reason, the lack of eggs was a cause of huge disappointment on many fronts: to the people who had gathered to see something to do with sea turtles; to the volunteers who had expended dozens of hours unknowningly watching a nest that had no eggs; to everyone who donates their time and energy to protecting the sea turtles that come to nest on North Carolina beaches. Nevetheless, this experience has redoubled the resolve of the Emerald Isle volunteers who will even more carefully inspect each of their nest sites each day during the nesting season.

Fieldwork

2006-09-15T20:13:40Z

]]> Working on sea turtles in North Carolina represents a great opportunity to do collaborative and cooperative work. It also means that I rarely, if ever, get a chance to go out on the beach alone to see turtles or their nests. However, occasionally, things work out that way. In early August, I received a phone call from a local homeowner on Atlantic Beach who said he saw a fresh turtle crawl on the beach while he was out jogging. I went to check it out and sure enough, it was a nest (see above photo). As part of our ongoing beach nourishment impact assessment project, I put a datalogger in the middle of the cluth (see below photo). There was someone doing roofwork on a beach-side house nearby, and after watching me for 20 minutes, he yelled "Is that a turtle nest?" I yelled back that it was, and he waved and continued nailing tiles on the roof, apparently used to seeing turtle nests on the beach. For me, I was just happy to be out on the beach getting my hands sandy.

Dredges and Boosters III

2006-07-21T18:39:06Z

Photo by CP&E, 21 April 2006

]]> This is an update of a previous blog. The channel relocation project at Bogue Inlet, North Carolina, continues to evolve. The above photo taken in April shows that there has been a net accretion of sand in front of the southern half of the sand-bags that were erected to protect the houses. Here is an aerial photo (from Greg Rudolph) of the same area last March, showing the accretion of sand in front of the sand bags:

Contrast the above photo with a similar photo also taken by Greg Rudolph in September 2005 :

Currently, there is a dredge disposal project that is placing more material in front of these sand bags (see here for photos). Normally, dredging and nourishment projects are not allowed from April through November 15 in North Carolina, but a special exception was made for this and a few other disposal projects.

Thus, so far the channel relocation project combined with the dredge disposal project has resulted in a net sand gain in front of these threatened homes. It has also resulted in a net loss of sand from "Land's End" zone of Emerald Isle, which used to be preferred nesting habitat of sea turtles but is nearly entirely inaccessible to turtles due to the erosion cliffs that have appeared from the let loss of sand in the area. Stay tuned for photos.

Joint field work

2006-07-10T03:23:06Z

]]> Summertime in North Carolina means sea turtle nesting season, and that in turn means that there is a chance for me to see a nesting female somewhere along this state's 330+ miles of nesting beaches. In fact, since 2002 I have been lucky to have seen nesting female loggerheads on Bogue Banks, Bear Island, Onslow Beach and Bald Head Island (not to mention a nesting leatherback in Pine Knoll Shores in 2005). Even more exciting has been that all of these experiences were shared with others, which makes things more fun. Such is the case with last night, when I saw a large nesting loggerhead on Bald Head Island that we subsequently attached a satellite tag to. Michael Coyne and Amanda Southwood were there, as was Melissa Hedges, Nicole Saladin and many of the interns from Bald Head Island Conservancy. Even though it was late and the no-see-ums were out in full force, the shared experience was extremely positive. After we watched the turtle swim away in the water, we had a 20 minute brisk walk back to our carts and then a quick ten minute drive back to the house, with a setting moon that looked like a boat on fire over the water. Despite her 3:00am "dip" (see photo below), Amanda was electric during our post-deployment debriefing. Amanda suggested (and we all agreed) that turtle fieldwork on a beautiful island during the summer is something that should not be taken for granted.

Full spectrum

2006-06-09T18:51:38Z

]]> On Wednesday, twelve turtles that had been successfully rehabilitated at the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center were released back to the ocean. There were hundreds of people to witness the event, and as each turtle was carried down to the water, there were cheers and clapping. The turtle above is Corenetta, who was taken into rehab in late 2004, after being found in a pound net in Core Sound, NC: she had a fresh injury on her carapace. Everyone there was quite happy to see these turtles being returned to the ocean.

On Thursday, we had twelve dead sea turtles to deal with. They were all turtles that were found dead on the coast of NC at some point over the last two years, and had been placed in a large freezer for later use in training or education. The big freezer broke down a few weeks ago, and everything thawed. While the freezer was being fixed, there was an opportunity to take stock of what was in there and perhaps process any carcasses that were starting to decompose. We ended up pulling out over a dozen turtles to be processed. Fortunately, there were three of us (Wendy, Larisa and I) available to work on them so we were able to finish up by early afternoon. There were a few interesting things found, including a treble hook in the large intestine of a juvenile loggerhead and an index-card piece of plastic in the small intestine of another loggerhead. There were not hundreds of people there to cheer us on, although a few intrepid individuals braved the smell and came over to ask questions.

Less mud on the beach

2006-05-18T14:34:11Z

]]> Sometimes, it just takes a while for things to work through. Following the unintended appearance of poor-quality material on Atlantic Beach during a nourishment project over a year ago (see here), some large mudball outcrops persisted into this year (see here). Fortunately, the persistance of several individuals at the US Army Corps of Engineers in Wilmington and the town of Atlantic Beach eventually resulted in some of the worst parts of the muddy areas being removed. The photo above is a bulldozer working on breaking up and carrying away one of the muddy outcrops. Following this, the dozer then smoothed over the area, improving greatly the appearance of the beach (see below). Of course, it doesn't entirely solve the problem (there is still some muddy areas in this area of the beach) but it is a first step towards improving the situation.

Greece highlights

2006-04-21T20:01:23Z

]]> The most recent sea turtle symposium in Crete, Greece, was great, and Michael has already written some great blogs about it (see here). As always, I ended up spending most of my time during the symposium in the conference center, with little opportunity to see anything of Crete. Fortunately, our travel plans included an extra day in Crete after the symposium, when we joined Peter Richardson, Sue Ranger and family and made our way around the interior of central Crete. We even found snow on some of the mountains there. Despite the cold, Peter insisted that we stop regularly in search of griffon vultures:

This was followed by an extra day in Athens where we saw the Parthenon on the Acropolis both in the full blaze glory of a gorgeous spring morning (photo above) and also at night while sharing a drink on the hotel terrace (Kartik, Lisa and Meera):

It seemed ironic that while in Athens, we ran into several other post-symposium turtle people, despite the fact that Athens has a population of nearly 4 million!

Annual meeting

2006-03-29T02:44:30Z

]]> Last Friday, we had our annual state sea turtle meeting in Swansboro, at Hammocks Beach State Park. There were about 70 participants there throughout the day. Presenters included Keith Rittmaster, Carmel Zetts, Kelly Stewart, Dan Rittschof, Lisa Campbell, Amanda Southwood, Sue Cameron, Brian Shamblin, Wendy Cluse and yours truly. The day ended with a necropsy demonstration by Wendy and Lisa Goshe, using a small green turtle that had been frozen after it was found stranded dead in January. If you look carefully, you can see small icicles forming on Wendy's fingers. This is because the turtle was still largely frozen. It was my job to pull the turtle out of the freezer two days ahead of time, which I did. However, I should not have put it into a cooler until the necropsy itself. Usually, in the summer, frozen turtles thaw quite quickly, so had this been July, the green would have been fully thawed even though it had been kept in a small cooler. Alas, it is not July, but March and its normally cool weather. Still, Wendy was unperturbed and remained dedicated to her task. She only took a break when she lost all feeling in her fingers, yet the majority of the work had been done. Yet another example of Wendy putting everything she has into her job!

Yet still mud on the beach

2006-03-27T15:35:28Z

]]> Place: Atlantic Beach, NC Date: March 2006 Location: Between the Triple S and Oceana piers (map here) Issue: Poor quality material that was placed on the beach during a renourishment project in 2004/2005 resulted in large quantities of mud on this section of beach (see here and here for examples). Proposed solution: The town of Atlantic Beach is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to possibly do extensive tilling and bulldozing to grade/loosen the problem material. This will have to be done before 01 May, when the sea turtle nesting season begins and no beach construction activities are allowed. Predicted outcome: stay tuned for more details.

Halifax in March

2006-03-26T01:15:44Z

]]> Moving down the line, here are Tomo Eguchi, Melissa Snover, Selina Heppell, Mike James and just the arm of Maartje Hilterman. These are just some of a dozen or so diligently working people who recently met in Halifax, Canada for the fourth meeting of the Leatherback Turtle Expert Working Group. The same group has previously met in Paris and Trinidad. The venue of Halifax was suggested by Mike James, of the Nova Scotia Leatherback Turtle Working Group. Apart from our productive working days, we also had fun visiting Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia, near where leatherbacks are often found foraging on jellyfish in the late summer and fall. We also saw the NS Natural History Museum in Halifax, where some decent sea turtle replicas hang from the ceiling.

The highlight was Friday night, when Mike and Kathleen invited several of us who hadn't yet left Halifax over to dinner at their home. We got to view the box turtle collection, play with Aidan and Kate, and best of all, see Peter Pritchard sign Mike's original copy of the Encyclopedia of Turtles (that publication which inspired a young Mike James to want to work with reptiles):

Our last meeing will be next week in Crete, after the International Sea Turtle Symposium. Stay tuned for info on what the product of this group is going to be.

SPECIAL THANKS TO KELLY STEWART FOR TAKING ALL THESE PHOTOS!

Contacts

2006-03-04T21:39:42Z

]]> One of the nice things about being in North Carolina is that there are so many other great people here who work on turtles (for example: Larisa, Michael, Catherine, Kelly, just to name a few). Recently, Amanda Southwood took a position at UNC-Wilmington, adding to the list. She recently invited me down to share some turtle carcasses with the students in the class that she is teaching. Note above how far away that they are standing when we first started to work on the turtles. Their shyness mostly evaporated after a few minutes, and almost everyone jumped in to get a closer look at the internal anatomy (see below). Thanks to Heather Koopman and Amanda for the photos.
Oh yeah, the turtles were a juvenile Kemp's ridley and a juvenile green turtle - both had lots of food in their GI tracts and both were female.

Visiting a Hopper Dredge

2006-02-27T19:37:08Z

]]> Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the Eagle 1, a hopper dredge that was collecting sand from the Morehead City port channel here in North Carolina. Doug Piatkowski, a biologist at the Army Corps of Engineers, invited me to tag along while he conducted a regular site-visit. The photo above is of one of the dragheads. The pointed far end of the draghead allows it to plow below the surface of the ocean floor, making it less likely that it will accidentally suck up a sea turtle. The material (largely sand and water) that is sucked up is dumped into the hopper in the middle of the boat (hence the name "hopper dredge"). The following photo shows the sand/water mixture coming out of the pipes into the hopper (holding container):

The sand/water mixture is dark because there are pockets of mud and other organic debris in the channel that is being dredged. All the material passes through screens that traps solid objects; these screens are regularly checked many times a day for anything out of the ordinary, including any sea turtles. You can see here that some trash and large shells have been trapped by one of the screens:

There are trained observers aboard the dredger so that 24 hours a day, there is someone keeping watch for any signs of incidental take of protected species (turtles, marine mammals, birds, etc.). So far, there have been no signs of any incidental takes (the cool water temperatures in the area right now mean that there are relatively few sea turtles around). If any takes are observed, there is a protocol in place to alert various people and shut down dredging activities until the situation can be properly assessed. The strategy of constraining the window of dredging to months with cool water temperatures combined with protected species observers has helped minimize sea turtle takes in North Carolina. Unfortunately, it is not always 100% effective, particularly in places where water temperatures remain warm year round and turtle are present (for example, in Florida).

The most amazing thing I saw on this trip was what the hopper dredge did when its hopper was full of sand. It stopped dredging, retracted its dragheads, and moved to a designated disposal area off of Bogue Banks. Then, it split open and allowed the sand to pour out of the bottom of the hull (note the crack at the far bottom of the hopper):

Riding to the stream...

2006-02-01T00:38:19Z

A quasi-limo ride to the Gulf Stream.....

]]> As water temperatures are quite cool off of the North Carolina coast in these winter months (especially in the northern part of the state), it is a challenge to release rehabilitated turtles in suitable conditions. Fortunately, the crew-members of the R/V Cape Hatteras are willing and able to transport sea turtles out to the Gulf Stream for release into warmer waters (see previous blog here). Such was the case in mid January, when a large loggerhead (221 lbs) and a medium-large green turtle (100lbs) were ready to be released from the rehab center run by NEST and the Roanoke Island Aquarium. A day before the scheduled release, I drove to the rehab center to pick up the turtles and bring them back to Beaufort where the R/V Cape Hatteras is normally docked. The turtles spent the night in my truck - covered with dry towels and kept warm (but not hot) with a small space heater pointed to the ceiling of the cab. The following morning, Wendy and I met at the dock for transfer of the turtles to the boat a little bit before the 9am boat departure. John Ahern, one of the crew and prinicipal faciliatator for the turtle releases, met us there and helped move the turtles on-board. The boat's destination was Bermuda and the plan was to release the turtles in or close to the Gulf Stream. Here are photos of the turtles on-board, in their plastic tubs, awaiting the boats departure.

Now that they are happily swimming in the ocean, the NEST rehab center was able to rest a little bit and clean up in anticipation of future live stranded turtles. The break was short-lived: I just heard today that a new small green was recovered on Cape Hatteras and brought in for rehab. Soon it will be time to arrange a release for that turtle (and two other small turtles still there also).

Winter yearnings

2005-12-19T19:35:08Z

]]> 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.

Final frontier

2005-12-08T15:05:19Z

]]> 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.