The end of nights

We're officially done with the nightly turtle patrols, which is both a happy and sad occasion.  I think we'll all miss the sometimes exciting, sometimes exhausting nights with the girls.  But it will be good to move on to something new.  For our last two weeks on island we'll be checking that Buck has remained rat-free since the successful eradication program several years ago.  Then there's the usual data entry, reporting, and gear organization.  Before we know it, we'll all be off on our next adventures.  In the interest of nostalgia, check out some photos of the pretty ladies.

Hawksbill--check out that beak!

That beautiful shell is why they're endangered

Hawksbill laying eggs

Data, always data

Lady Green on her way to the water

Fin

Hatchlings!

Baby Hawksbills heading to the open ocean

There’s something almost magical about walking along the beach on patrol and stumbling across dozens and dozens of turtle hatchlings making their way together to the ocean.  They disappear into the water so quickly.  Where do they go?  How do they get there?  And better yet, how do they make their way back to their natal beach after 15 years and traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles?  The life of a turtle holds so many mysteries beyond what we see when they come up on land.

So far, we’ve had green, hawksbill, and leatherback nests hatch.  We’ve got hatchlings in every size, shape and color…brown ones, black ones, grey and white.  And let me tell you, those baby turtleys are cuuuuuuute! But don’t take my word for it.  Check out the pictures!

Hawksbill

Leatherback

I’m still holding out for the loggerhead babies!

Turtle tales

So what’s a turtle all about?  I thought I would share a couple special stories from our first few weeks of nights on the beach.  We’ve been getting hawksbills and greens almost exclusively, but there is one loggerhead female hanging around Buck Island and nesting every few weeks.  I’ve included a picture of her here—check out that head!  They eat large mollusks and so need a huge, thick beak and heavy jaw muscles, resulting in a much broader head than other turtle species.  It’s rare for loggerheads to nest in the Caribbean, making this lady’s visits that much more special.

Loggerhead

Green

As I think I’ve mentioned before, hawksbill turtles are very quick animals, both in their nesting habits and in their movements on land.  They can emerge from the ocean, nest and leave the beach in as little as 45 minutes, making it a challenge for us to get to them in time and get everything done.  There are, of course, anomalies such as the hawksbill that spent 3 hours searching for a suitable nesting site!  One member of our team waited patiently for this girl while she body pitted here and there and actually ended up in the first spot she abandoned several hours before.   Who knows what goes on in a turtle’s brain?

Then there was the hawksbill that was already finishing nesting when we found her.  Remember, they're fast!  There are several main stages to a nesting activity.  First, a turtle emerges from the ocean and crawls up the beach until it levels out.  She settles on a spot when she realizes that her body is horizontal and no longer climbing upslope.  Then she clears the area of vegetation and the surface layer of sand with her front and hind flippers, creating a body pit (relatively small for hawksbills, much larger for greens).  If she likes the area, she will start to dig her nest hole with just her hind flippers, which is an incredible process.  She reaches into the hole with a flipper and cups out the sand, flings it out of the way, and does the same thing with her other flipper until the hole is of sufficient depth.  But if she hits roots or rocks she’ll likely abandon the nest hole.  This is something we call ENL – Emerge No Lay.  Sometimes a turtle will move and try her hand at digging a nest hole in a new spot.  Sometimes she’ll head straight back to the ocean.  Often, a turtle will ENL several times a night, or for several nights in a row, before laying.  If a turtle ENL’ed the night before, you can almost certainly expect her back the nest night.  If she does decide to lay her eggs, which usually takes about 15-20 minutes, then she’ll carefully cover the hole and camouflage the whole area so predators don’t find her nest.

Getting back to the story, this little hawksbill was camouflaging by the time we got to her and buried underneath a big grove of sea grape, a woody tree-shrub that’s relatively friendly compared to some other Buck Island vegetation.  The major goal of our project is to give every turtle that comes on the beach an identity and we do this with flipper tags with unique numbers.  We couldn’t find a tag on either of her hind flippers and needed to check her front ones, but she was ready to head back to the ocean.  I crawled deep under the sea grape and was trying to get her turned around enough to check her flippers but she wasn’t having it!  When a 150-pound turtle decides she’s going somewhere, there’s not a lot you can do to stop her.  So we modified the plan and decided to get between her and the ocean and intercept her when she left the sea grape.  This worked like a charm but it wasn’t easy.  She burst from the vegetation, and I had to grab her by the front and back of her shell and try to flip her around so she faced away from the ocean, then sit on her and attempt to hold her down while my crewmate read her tag.  We got it done and emerged with just a few scrapes and bruises, which is really nothing.  One of my crewmates was literally run over by a turtle!  If a turtle ENL’s and is heading back to the water, you can sometimes lie down in front of her and pretend to be a log.  If you can get her turned around she might go back up the beach and try to lay again.  So he tried this, but instead of going around him she decided to go right over, even pausing on top to take a deep breath before continuing on her way!

Stay tuned for more exciting turtle stories from the next night on the beach!

"She's not a green, she's just big-boned"

One of our larger lady greens

Sometime around 7:00 tonight, as we were headed over to Buck in the boat, the sea turtles must have had a meeting and plotted to all come ashore to nest at the exact same time, because around 8:30 we had no fewer than 5 turtles on the beaches.  They kept us scrambling to keep up until almost midnight.  Not all nested, which was unfortunate but helpful for our sanity.  After that deluge, we had no more turtles the rest of the night.  I’m thinking a conspiracy…

Just in case some of you were under any misconceptions about the life of a wildlife biologist, let me try to clear them up.  Sure, we get to see every Caribbean sunset and sunrise and, believe me, they are beautiful.  But while we might be living at a beach resort and working on a secluded tropical island, our nights aren’t all fun and games.  That said, we’re all here for a reason—because we believe in conservation and we like what we do.  But it’s a very physical job, and we have to bring in all our equipment by boat and then haul it around on our backs.  When you’re walking up to 10 miles a night in deep sand with a heavy pack; when it’s 3am and you’re bored because you haven’t had a single turtle all night; when you’re tired enough to sleep sitting propped against your pack or curled up on the oh-so-soft concrete dock; when you’re bitten by mosquitoes, gnats, and fire ants (sometimes all at the same time); when you’re hot and sweaty and covered in sand or sitting in the pouring rain waiting for a turtle to lay; when some or all of these happen in a night and you’re still not miserable, then you know you’re in the right line of work.  And as physically demanding as the work is on your body, as difficult as the hours are on your mind, I’ve definitely come to this conclusion.

Turtles, turtles, everywhere

Since my last post we’ve had two full nights on Buck and figured out how we’re going to handle working all night.  Our first night we had just one hawksbill, but on Monday night we were crazy busy with 5 turtles!!  It all started with a hawksbill and green at the same time and the ladies continued to come onshore to nest until about 1am, often overlapping with one we were already working on.  The first green I had came ashore around 8:30pm and dug a body pit (a big hole in the sand about twice her body size), but the nest hole she tried to dig collapsed in on itself.  She moved on down the beach and we followed her as she tested site after site.  Before they start nesting, they’re very alert and you have to turn off all your lights and stay out of sight.  We were on a berm above and behind her, where we could observe without being seen.  She continued body pitting until about 11:30pm, when she finally decided to nest.  We had to relocate her eggs since she nested too close to the water, and I got to “catch” the eggs as she laid them.  She laid over 100!  They’re a little bigger than golf balls and leathery, with a slight “give” to them.  We moved the whole lot further inshore and dug a new nest.  The funny thing is, she had no idea and meticulously covered and disguised her nest, when I had moved them over an hour ago!  She was up on land over 3 hours in total; hawksbills are definitely quicker layers, but the greens are still my favorite.  They’re just so elegant and have such beautiful faces.

The rest of the night was pretty quiet compared to the first few hours.  We were all drowsy by the end.  A typical night goes something like this: We have dinner at our hotel around 4pm then head over to the marina by 6:00.  We take a quick boat ride over to Buck Island and start our first beach patrol by 7:00.  The pier where we dock the boat lies in the middle between the north and south sides of the island, and one person heads north and another south at the top of each hour.  Each patrol is about a mile, and we continue this until about 4am.  If you find a turtle you work her up, taking data on her species, size, etc and relocating her eggs, if necessary.  Someone still has to continue the patrol, though, in order to find every turtle that comes ashore to nest.  It gets interesting when you have 3 or more turtles on the beach at once – that’s when you have to juggle!  By about 4:30am, if we don’t have any new turtles, we head back to St. Croix, breakfast, and then bed.  It’s such a weird thing, working all night and sleeping during the day.  It won’t be long before we all become vampires, never seeing the sun.

And so it begins...

Drum roll please!  We have our first turtle…a green!  On our second night on the island we came across a green female nesting on the beach.  She dug several huge body pits before settling down to lay her eggs.  The whole group was out there – nine in all – and we got to watch the whole process.  It was downright amazing.  To begin with, she was huge: about 4 feet long and so powerful.  She effortlessly flung sand and bits of shrubs ten feet behind her.  That night we had a nearly full moon and pretty clear skies.  If the summer goes anything like this, it’s going to be pretty special.

I don’t know if I’ve explained what we do on the island, but we’re basically out there walking along the beach, searching for turtle tracks by flashlight and listening for one rustling around in the bushes.  When we find one, we take a bunch of data on her size and species and tag her so she can be identified later.  So far we’ve had two “half nights” on Buck, just working until midnight or so.  Tonight will be our first full night, working from 6pm to 6am.  Hopefully, we’ll see some more turtles.  One thing I’ve come to realize about this job in the week or so we’ve been here is that you spend a lot of time on the beach by yourself.  I think I knew that before coming down here, but it’s another thing to actually experience it.  If it’s a clear night, the stars are amazing, and sitting on the pier under a full moon with nothing but the sounds of the waves to interrupt your thoughts is something everyone should experience. 

Saturday was our first day off and we took full advantage of it, borrowing a car and touring the island.  We swung around to the East End first, taking the North Side Rd to Point Udall.  This is a beautiful winding drive along the coast with a lot of switchback turns and sweeping views of the coast.  The scenery reminds me a lot of Belize: lush and hilly with scattered houses and goats and horses grazing on the side of the road.  Point Udall is a really cool little monument marking the easternmost point in the United States and also a great overlook spot.  We’re determined to make it out there at sunrise to be the first people to greet the sun! 

We headed back west from there on the Southshore Rd and visited the St George Botanical Garden.  If you’re ever in St. Croix, stop at this place!  It’s a beautiful place to spend a peaceful, relaxing afternoon.  From there, we headed to Frederiksted on the west coast, a sleepy little town that I guess gets pretty touristy in the high season.  There was a huge cruise liner docked when we got there, but it was gone again before we left by dark.  Most of the restaurants along the boardwalk were either closed or outrageously expensive, so we headed back to Christiansted for dinner.  We drove back by way of Carambola, through the rain forest area, but it was dark and we couldn’t see much.  We had a super full day and got to know the island a lot better, but there’s still so much we want to see.  But with almost 11 weeks left, I think we have time.  Soon come…

Buck Island of Adventure

Rain, rain and more rain…that seems to be the theme for this week.  There’s a baby tropical storm brewing just off the coast and it’s dumping buckets of rain on us constantly.  Hope it doesn't hit you guys in Florida as hard as it's hitting us!! 

Luckily, we still got out to Buck Island today!  We had a break in the weather this morning when we were clearing a path of rocks and coral rubble along the beach.  We definitely don't want to be twisting an ankle on a rock while we’re stumbling around at night!  Thunder rumbled intermittently in the distance and you could see rain falling back towards Christiansted, but we were dry and cool on the island.  There must have been an awesome storm brewing offshore, though, because just around midday it showed up in force.  We made it back to the shelter just in time and had lunch amidst driving rain and wind.  There was one gigantic thunder clap that made us all jump it was so close.  You really know the storm is right on top of you when the thunder vibrates in your bones.

After much hype from my coworkers back in Miami, I finally got to meet the “killer plants” on Buck Island.  They don’t mess around – almost all plants are either full of burrs, spines, or thorns, or are “highly toxic”.  We watched out especially for Christmas bush and Manchineel, which are prevalent and give you crazy rashes.  Christmas bush was described to us as “poison ivy on steroids”.  We hiked up to the observation deck on the top of the island and met all of these plant enemies up close and personal…sometimes right above your head!  On the way back down to the beach, we shared the trail with a rushing torrent of rainwater, something Ian, our boss, had never seen on the island before.  The view from the top was great – ocean met the green hills of the island in a narrow, rocky coast then stretched as far as you could see on the horizon.

Once we got back down to the beach we had a crash course on turtle nesting habits.  There are 7 turtle species throughout the world and 4 nest here in the Virgin Islands: green, hawksbill, loggerhead, and leatherback. Hawksbills, especially, like to nest further inland under the vegetation.  That could make things interesting if we’re following turtles in and around our plant enemies in the dark!

More thunderstorms brought our afternoon on the island to an abrupt end and we high-tailed it back to St. Croix amid big swells.  Back at the Buccaneer we had a relaxing dinner accompanied by…guess what…more rain!  Luckily there was a really talented guy playing the steel drums which lightened the mood, along with some tasty Cruzan rum punch.  Tomorrow, looking for more turtle nests in the rain :)