LONG JOURNEY ENDS

This sea turtle's long journey (and life) has ended. He/she was found about a month ago on our stretch of beach and may have succumbed to a shark, old age, or a combination thereof. It's shell markings were severely washed out by the elements and death, but this writer's best guess is that it was a Loggerhead - probably a good bet, since they are the most common in this area. The shell seems to be more elongated than what I remember a Loggerhead's shell to usually be, but it is hard to tell without better markings on the shell. Unfortunately, this sea turtle - which may have been a female that returned after 20 or 30 years to her original beaches to lay her eggs, will no longer be a part of the several million year-old cycle of sea turtles' lives that we are privileged to observe from time to time on our beach.

This writer was away on vacation in Michigan for a vacation, so my many readers of this blog may have noticed a lapse in the coverage. I hope that you are now back in the "blog mode" with me for the duration of the turtle nesting season.

CURRENT TURTLE NEST STATUS MAP

The map included with this blog shows the approximate locations of sea turtle nests to date that we have strong suspicions are actual nests with eggs (red pins). The green pins represent the locations of nests that were documented by us as having been hatched. We documented these by either observing multiple tracks leading from the nest or actually seeing some straglers who were still in the process of traveling to the water from the nest.

Also, after seeing a report that a green sea turtle was being transferred from the Loggerhead Marinelife Center (LMC) in Juno Beach, FL to the Florida Oceanographic Society in Stuart, FL, I e-mailed the LMC to adopt a sea turtle under their care. I actually adopted "hatchlings" rather than one of the named adult turtles, since I am partial to hatchlings. I also asked if I could post their link in my post, so that readers of my blog (yes- there are people who actually read my blog!) could hook up with their link and see the many interesting things that they are doing in support of sea turtles. Their link is www.marinelife.org. Why not adopt a Loggerhead today? It's a great cause!

CRIME ON THE BEACH

It really was a "crime on the beach" that was found this morning when a marked sea turtle nest was found to have been dug up by someone after pulling up the marking stakes and ribbon from the nest. This nest even had a yellow warning card advising beach goers that it is against the law to disturb these nests (see photo).

I guess we need a "Crime Watch" for the beach, as well, now that some ignorant individual, or group, has blatantly broken the law and destroyed an endangered sea turtle nest.

These egg "shells" were found a few yards down the beach near the water and appear to be all that remain of the dug-up nest. It never ceases to amaze me as to how irresponsible some people's behavior can be.

If you ever observe someone purposely destroying a sea turtle nest, or digging up the eggs from a sea turtle nest, please call 911 to report them. The only ones with authority to dig in such nests in our area are the biologists/employees of EAI, Inc.

A NON-NEST!

There were tracks leading from the ocean ............
and tracks leading to the ocean ........

but only an empty nest was dug and left by the turtle without any eggs being laid. It maay have been a late start by the female sea turtle and/or she was disturbed by early morning light, dogs on the loose on the beach (against the law), other predators or even humans. Hopefully, she will come back to this area of the beach another day and lay her eggs.

LEATHERBACK HATCHLING

This Leatherback hatchling was found on his way to the beach several days ago. He/she came from a nest that we found hatched on 7/21/10, so we subtracted the number of days that it took the average nest to incubate last year, resulting in our guestimate of when the nest was laid. We had to resort to that guesstimate, since this was one of the nests not staked out by EAI, Inc., nor initially recorded by us. We added a few days to the average because this was a Leatherback nest and they take, on the average, more days than do the Loggerhead nests to incubate. Our estimate of when that Loggerhead nest was laid is 5/23/10.

If you compare this hatchling to the Loggerhead hatchling on a previous blog post, you may be able to see the difference in size (the Leatherback hatchling is about twice the size of the Loggerhead hatchling).

With the northern fringes of Tropical Storm Bonnie hitting our beaches today, we will keep our fingers crossed that the wave action generated by the storm will not damage or destroy those nests located on our beaches.

SLOW STARTER!

Some hatchlings need to warm up their engines before they can make any forward progress! Included in this blog entry is a video of one that needed a few more seconds of "excercise" before he got down to business.

Several more hatchlings were saved today (as were two Leatherback hatchlings yesterday), as there continue to be some that don't make their exit from the nest during the night and get caught in the heat of the day or by predators such as birds, crabs, or racoons.

SCAMPER TO THE SEA

Several more hatchlings were "assisted" in their efforts to get to the ocean from their nest. It's a long haul for some of them, especially when they get a late start after the sun has risen.