Pati

North Carolina Long-Term Sea Turtle Monitoring Project

A project of Seaturtle.org/NCWRC/DUML.

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click map for full-size version We attached a satellite tag to Pati on the night of 23/24 July, when she was observed heading back to the water. She had not laid eggs yet. On the night of 24/25, it appears that she crawled up on to Brown's Island, to lay her eggs there. In recent weeks, Pati has been heading south along the coast, passing through waters off South Carolina, Georgia and now Florida

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Species: Loggerhead
Life Stage: Adult
Gender: Female
Release Date: 2010-07-21 00:00:00
Release Location: Hammocks Beach State Park, Bear Island, NC
Last Location: 2010-09-07 18:16:53

Adoptive Parents:
Sarah Bouknight
Friends of the Hammocks and Bear Island
Kimberly Humphrey

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Background

On 23 July, the Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles class at the Duke University Marine Laboratory spent the evening on Bear Island in Hammocks Beach State Park, North Carolina monitoring for nesting sea turtles. Hammocks Beach State Park in Onslow County has one of the longest sea turtle nest monitoring projects in North Carolina. The earliest record of nesting on the island comes from 1975, and nightly patrols to measure and tag nesting females have been conducted since the late 1970s. Park staff monitor and protect all sea turtle nests laid on the island and are also active in the NC sea turtle stranding and salvage network. With the help of Hammocks Beach State Park personnel and interns, we spotted Pati around 22:00. The tagging team detained her temporarily on her approach back to the ocean 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 Pati was allowed to crawl to the ocean. The entire process took <60 minutes and was completed before a passing summer thunderstorm. Pati was named by the class after a class member in celebration of her birthday!

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 Pati 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 Pati’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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