Satellite Tracking
Grace
A project of Seaturtle.org/NCWRC/DUML.
click map for full-size version
Grace's satellite tag has been transmitting intermittently, making it difficult to follow her exact movements. Nevertheless, she did make a foray out into deeper waters off the continental shelf, and subsequently moved back into coastal waters off of Carteret County.
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Species: Loggerhead
Life Stage: Adult
Gender: Female
Release Date: 2010-07-07 09:00:00
Release Location: Emerald Isle, North Carolina
Last Location: 2010-08-26 18:42:13
Adoptive Parents:
Colin, Graham, and Duncan Rex
Chris and Linda Gaal
Debbie Williams
Edward Paul Zigrino
Background
 Volunteers working in Emerald Isle on the island of Bogue Banks have been monitoring and protecting sea turtle nests since the mid-1980s. In the early morning hours of July 7th 2010, volunteers in Emerald Isle were notified of a turtle nesting near East Landing Road in Emerald Isle. After verifying that the turtle was indeed nesting, the volunteers alerted the tagging team, who immediately headed over to the location for tag deployment. Grace was allowed to finish her nesting and covering behavior, and as she was crawling back to the ocean, the team detained her temporarily by placing the end of two broom handles in the sand, where front flippers meet the body. This allowed the team to clear the turtle's carapace and attach a satellite tag with special epoxy, after which Grace was allowed to crawl to the ocean. The entire process took <90 minutes.
The Read Lab at the Duke University Marine Lab (in partnership with the University of North Carolina Wilmington and the University of St. Andrews) conducts shipboard and aerial visual surveys for sea turtles, marine mammals and seabirds in the waters offshore North Carolina. To better understand and estimate the abundance of sea turtles in this area we need to gather more information about the amount of time sea turtles spend at the surface (where visual observers can spot them) and beneath the surface (diving and foraging, where they are invisible!). The satellite transmitter on Grace is a Wildlife Computer’s SPLASH tag and will give us information on her location as well as how much time she spends at different depths and temperatures. From the information we receive about the length and depth of Grace’s dives we’ll be able to calculate how much time she spends visible and invisible to our observers and we’ll be able to use these data (as well as data collected from other satellite tagged sea turtles) to calculate estimates of the number of sea turtles in the waters offshore North Carolina. Our research is funded by the U.S. Navy.
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