Shellby

Bald Head Island 2003: Loggerhead Turtles

A project of Marine Turtle Research Group.

click map for full-size version Shellby’s transmitter has run out of battery life, like the other transmitters in this years batch of satellite tracked turtles. It is worth noting that these turtles were deployed with their transmitters in July 2003 and continued to send messages until April 2005 which is an amazingly long time for a turtles’ transmitter to function. Shellby may return to nest on Bald Head Island again this year – keep watching this page to see whether she does!

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Species: Loggerhead
Life Stage: Adult
Gender: Female
Release Date: 2003-07-03 00:00:00
Release Location: Bald Head Island, North Carolina
Last Location: 2005-04-08 07:41:14

Adoptive Parents:
Jim Kreider
Laura Simpson
Brooke and Tatum Skladany
Morgan Wright
Don Kuhns
Elizabeth Potter
Shelby Wilson
Paula Stauf
Katie Spanke
Mike Elliott
Heather Johnston
Caroline and Shelby Rohlfing
Kerry Binder
Hart Hatchett
Ryan Novzen
Adam, Amy, Cameron, Jack, Jaclyn, & Priscilla
Bill, Mary, Ben, Katie and Maggie Stock
Torri Lawson
Jessica Armer
Josh & Ali Birnbaum
Heather Lawrence
Melissa Bernhard
Victoria Scanlon
Andrew Burnside
Kelly Cunneen

Background

“Shellby" was the second adult female loggerhead to be satellite tracked from Bald Head Island. She was named by supporters of the Newport Aquarium, Kentucky, USA. She had a Telonics ST-18 transmitter attached on night of 2nd July. Our records show that Shellby nested last year, 2002, and that her shell is 92cm long and 72cm wide. That is quite small for turtles at Bald Head and suggests that Shellby may be a younger turtle. Shellby re-entered the water and almost immediately headed north, crossing the Stateline into Virginia 2 weeks later. When she reached the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay she made an interesting move towards more open oceanic waters before returning to inshore waters of the northern outer banks by the 25th July. She then appeared to move in and around the coastal waters around the Pamlico-Albermarle Sound complex and settled around the NC/VA State line for 15 weeks. She was within 100km of Hurricane Isabel when it made landfall at Drum inlet, North Carolina, but Shellby weathered the storm with no apparent problems. On the 13th November, Shellby turned south and started heading down the outer banks. She travelled there in 13 days from the NC/VA Stateline (a distance of 153 miles) swimming at an average speed of 0.94 mph. She stopped on the 27 November approximately 100km due south of Cape Lookout and remained there feeding through Christmas and the New Year. However, after 18 weeks, the water temperatures rose and Shellby was heading north by the 31st March, 2004. Afterwards, she remained close to the Outerbanks coastline, between Cape Hatteras and the border of North Carolina and Virginia and has now started to head south as water temperatures fall.