January 8, 2013

What a day yesterday was! At 3:00 p.m. we met in groups to conduct the “beach work” that needs to be done on the existing nests. I went with the group that measures temperatures of the nests. The scientists are able to record the temperatures of the nests because they insert a temperature-detecting wire device when the turtle lays her eggs. After the turtle finishes nesting and covers up her eggs with sand, the biologist then records the location in a log book and places several sticks in the sand in order to know that a nest is at the particular location. 

The scientists keep records of the temperatures in a log book. From this information, they can tell several important items, including: when the eggs will approximately hatch, if the eggs have been overtaken by bacteria and will not hatch, and whether the hatchlings will be females or males. Yes, whether a turtle will be a female or a male depends on the temperature of the eggs during a certain point during development. Students, can you guess if the warmer eggs will be either females or males?

 

After we finished the temperature recordings at 5:30 p.m., I witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.  I told the biologists that they work in one of the coolest “offices” possible.

 

After dinner, we again separated into groups of three for our nightly turtle walk. We left a bit later this night; I learned that the precise time of nightly walks are dependent upon when high tide is. The turtles like to come out of the water around high tide. This makes sense. The last time the leatherback sea turtles were on land were when they were hatchlings; now weighing more than a ton when they come to nest, it cannot be easy to flip their way out of the water to nest. They have to get to dry sand to dig a nest, and they have a shorter distance when it is high tide.

No leatherbacks came to the beach last night. My team, however, did see 2 olive ridley turtles! Students, do you know of other types of sea turtles there are?

Olive ridleys are not nearly as large as leatherbacks. Nonetheless they were magnificent to watch. These particular beauties were about three feet long and weighed about 150 pounds. Once these turtles found their way to the dry sand, they dug sand with their flippers to form a nest and laid about 100 eggs. We helped count these eggs and marked them for later observation. The biologists also placed a temperature wire during the nesting process so that they could monitor the nests during incubation. After thirty minutes, each of these olive ridley turtles scampered back to the sea, not to return to the beach until next year.

Unfortunately, we are not allowed to take pictures during the night walks, due to the disturbance the flashes cause to the turtles. We returned to the Marine Biology Field Station at 2:00 a.m., exhausted. My feet ached from the constant patrolling. Blisters sprouted from the six-mile treck tonight. Nevertheless, I went to bed peacefully.