Biology and Conservation of Marine Turtles

life on the island is so rough.
(this is a joke)

what a great may session! gosh I do love me some turtles. and I sure did get to see and play with a lot of them.
I just finished a 2 week course on the Biology and Conservation of Marine Turtles. our first week we were at the Sea Lab and the second week we drove alllllll around Florida. seriously. but it was fantastic.

this was the route around Florida that we took.

and spent sooooooo much time in the car.

my friend derek. haha :)

on our first Monday at the Sea Lab we went to Cedar Point Marsh which is just over the big bridge. our goal was to build new drift fences to catch female turtles. basically a drift fence is the black construction tarp stuff on stakes with buckets at each end and a few along the middle.

I did a little drawing for y'all:

females that are exiting the water or exiting the marsh to lay eggs are intercepted by the drift fence and when they try to go around it they fall into the buckets. pretty nifty.
we caught a female ready to lay eggs in the existing drift fence, built 4 more drift fences, and set out a terrapin-friendly crab trap.

on Tuesday we learned how to identify the 7 different species of sea turtles. there are quite a few differences among species other than size and coloring, such as number of scutes (scales on shell) and the shape of their shell. we then went to collect data loggers that had been buried on DISL beach for the past year and buried 3 more. we then got to get out of the hot sun and learn how to take measurements and blood samples from turtles. we also caught another female in the drift fence.

on Wednesday we injected Oxytocin, a synthetic hormone to start the process of egg laying, into our 2 female turtles. we then did ultrasound and looked at the eggs inside of them! it was pretty cool. I wanted to keep one of the ultrasounds for my fridge/wallet. haha.
we then got to go back out to Cedar Point Marsh to bury red ear slider eggs and data loggers to perform an experiment regarding nest predation. we covered the nests with a mesh screen to try to prevent raccoons and other predators out of the nest. we made 14 nests with 10 eggs in each nest. with this experiment we were asking 3 questions:
1) do the screens protect the nest?
2) what sex ratios does the Cedar Point Marsh produce? (warmer conditions produce females, cooler conditions produce males and the differences between warm and cool vary by a few degrees centigrade)
3) how do the natural fluctuations effect the sex ratio?
last I heard the mesh screens were successful in protecting the nests.

Thursday started as an exciting day! one turtle laid 10 eggs the other laid 2. then we did the Sea Turtle Genetics Lab, which was slightly less exciting.

on Friday we had our test!

Saturday I drove around the bay to Fairhope to do some laundry and pick up a few things and then headed down to Orange Beach to hang out with the kiddos in town for the Hangout Festival. I hung out and spent the night with Brooke, Stub, Hannah and Sara in Orange Beach, and then woke up and took Brooke and Stub to Slightly Stoopid (so they could make it on time) and got a call from Will to come hang out at their condo (almost perfect timing!). I got to see Peter and Will and Tyler and some more of the fun Huntsville gang and finally got to meet Lydia! shes great, I'm so happy for Will. I'm dying to go visit them soon (preferably not when its cold)

there were awesome hats everywhere in the condo in Orange Beach! :)

I made it back to the sea lab finally on Saturday evening and we left on Sunday at 6am headed for Sarasota, Florida. so excited!

on Monday we woke up and went to Mote Marine Lab to meet Tony Tucker, a well know sea turtle biologist.

Dr. Wibbels and Tony Tucker

we got to tour Mote and learn about their turtle rehab facility and behavior training of the turtles. then we had a lecture on loggerhead nesting from Tony Tucker and got to look at the tracking equipment that they use on their turtles. and finally we of course got to have our fun in the Mote Aquarium.

behavior training to get them to hold still while they are given their weekly check.

an adorable little Kemp's Ridley in the rehab facility
Dr. Wibbels and the Kemp's

the cuttlefish in the Mote Aquarium
the sweet ray touch tank
this prehistoric Megladon could have swallowed me and all of my frands! :)pretty pretty Sarasota

after our fun at Mote on Monday, we left and made the drive down to Key Largo. on Tuesday we woke up and went snorkeling in Key Largo at the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. our class saw 2 Hawksbill turtles and lots of barracuda and schooling fish. one of the barracuda was at least 5 feet! I immediately regretted not taking off my ring before snorkeling haha. thankfully everyone made it out with all 10 fingers and toes.

Dr. Wibbels and the boat captain in Key Largo

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, about 4 miles offshore

me and my new friend Bridget

we left Key Largo and made a stop at the Turtle Hospital in Marathon, which was great. I would love to work somewhere very similar someday.

Carson the sick Loggerhead at the Turtle Hospital. he had been brought in about 30 minutes prior to this and had 2 hooks in his throat. turtles aren't extremely intelligent and Loggerheads pretty much eat anything they can find.

:) hi there!

cute little Kemp's at the Turtle Hospital

what a mischievous grin

most injuries are from boat props

our class checking out the turtles

we left Marathon and headed to Looe Key, where we would be staying that night in this "dive hotel" as Wibbles kept referring to it as. it was literally a SCUBA diving hotel and was a total dive also. buuuut there was an awesome biker bar right outside of our hotel room, and it was Taco Tuesday. my friend Bridget and I ate dinner and had a few beverages for a total of $11. it was great! haha. and then we enjoyed the $2 beverages for the rest of the night. talk about some good people watching. we made some interesting friends for sure. including the badass bartender.
lets go back to Looe Key. :)
Wednesday we woke up (quite early might I add) and went snorkeling in Looe Key. it was beautiful! and very large. we saw a nurse shark, more barracuda, lots and lots of schooling fish, and a Loggerhead on the boat ride in.

Looe Key National Marine Sanctuary

on Monday evening while we were all hanging out in the hot tub at the hotel, a few businessmen had told us about some whales that had beached themselves in Key Largo. on our drive back in from Looe Key we decided to stop at the rehab location associated with the Marine Mammal Conservancy where these Pilot Whales were. they had been beached for long enough to put the pod in critical condition and there was only 1 female and 2 calves remaining. when whales begin to starve their body feeds off their muscle instead of their fat reserves. this is an adaptation to allow them to live in cold water. these whales had so little strength left that their blowholes had to be held out of the water by a team of volunteers. it was pretty cool, I wish we could have stayed to volunteer.

the Pilot Whales

we left Key Largo and traveled up to Juno Beach, a well known beach for sea turtle nesting. we finally got to stay in a hotel for more than one night! which means little van time. and whew, we were getting pretty tired of that van by midweek.

our plan for Wednesday night was to just hang out and wait for a phone call from Kelly Martin and Chris Johnson at the Loggerhead Marine Life Center telling us that there was a nesting turtle on the beach! at 2:27 am Taylor, our TA, finally calls! I answered my phone still pretty much asleep and wondering if it was all a dream. I woke up the other girls in my hotel room with a "GUYS!!! turtle turtle turtle!" lets just say that I was prettttty stoked for sure.

we got to watch a nesting Leatherback! she was actually a very small Leatherback, she was 131 cm long and 93 cm wide and about 600 lbs. she was covering her nest when we arrived, but we got to hang out around her and take pictures (with no flash) and watch her go back in the water. it was such an awesome experience. unforgettable.

the nesting Leatherback

this video starts getting good at 0:28 seconds. sorry about the darkness up until then :)

we got to sleep in a little on Thursday. it was much needed and very nice.
our first thing of the day was to go to Loggerhead Marine Life Center in Juno Beach, Florida. we checked out educational section in the Marine Life Center. they had a hawksbill mislabeled as a juvenile loggerhead but it was still very cool. we then got to look at all of their resident injured turtles, and talked to Melissa, the head Vet Tech, who was great and gave us lots of information and answered so may of our questions.
we then traveled about an hour away to Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute for a lecture on Sea Turtle Threats by Dr. Jeanette Wyneken. while Dr. Wibbels was giving his Kemp's Ridley lecture to her class, we got to go check out their educational center. they had a cool touch tank with a very interactive conch. it was pretty sweet.
later that night we went back to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center to meet up with Kelly Martin and Chris Johnson in their office. we learned about their tracking devices, talked about their research and got to listen to the recordings of a Leatherback dive, which was really really reallllly cool. we left there and walked up the section of Juno Beach in front of the Marine Life Center looking for more nesting turtles. we saw 2 false crawls and one turtle that was just finishing up her nest. it was pretty cool, and a really nice night on the beach.

at Loggerhead Marine Life Center

a Hawksbill at the Loggerhead Marine Life Center

Friday morning we got up early and went out on the boat in Indian River Lagoon with Doc and his class from Florida Atlantic University to catch turtles in a net for research. this net doesn't hurt them and pretty much constantly checked. we caught a sub-adult Loggerhead within 10 minutes of the net being down. it was pretty cool. his/her (it was probably a her but we aren't sure if it had gone through puberty yet) back fin was bitten almost half off, most likely by a shark attack. Doc gave us a lecture on his experiences with turtles, including the life history trends and his interactions with Archie Carr, the father of Sea Turtle Conservation, that Doc "had the pleasure to call amigo."

the class waiting to catch turtles

the sub-adult Loggerhead
this might be slightly illegal of me.

Doc. he was great.

I started new semester on Monday. I'm taking Coastal Wetlands Ecology and Coastal Geomorphology. we get to go out in the field a lot, on Wednesday we walked up and back on Sand-Pelican Island/Peninsula with Coastal Geomorphology, 4 miles in the hot sand in the middle of the day, jokingly called the "death march". it was great, but whew, I was tired! today we went to Grand Bay Marsh and Port au Pines Marsh with Coastal Wetlands Ecology.

lots of sunshine!