Last Patrol of the Season

This morning was my last sea turtle patrol of the season. It turned out to be in the Santa Rosa area instead of Ft. Pickens, my usual patrol area. I was treated to another spectacular sunrise as I neared the eastern end, which stops at Navarre Beach.

It was a bit sad, but it has been a fantastic year for us. We had over 80 sea turtle nests in our entire area which includes Perdido Key, Ft. Pickens, Pensacola Beach, and Santa Rosa. As usual, we mostly had Loggerhead nests, but this year we also had a few Greens and a couple of Kemps ridleys. Outstanding!!!

The Sea Turtle Nest

If you look closely, you can see a sea turtle nest discretely tucked away in the dunes and the tracks of a UTV going past it. Each morning the patroler on duty will stop at every nest in their area to check for signs of predation. It's fairly common to find ghost crab holes around or near nests and a patroler will quickly fill them in. Ghost crabs are one of the worst predators of our sea turtle nests.

After 50 days or so gestation, patrolers will begin listening to a nest for sounds of scratching by placing their ear to the sand near the egg chamber.  Don't worry, we put a towel or sheet down first!  It can be a bit funny when tourists happen by and are concerned we've passed out or gone to sleep on the job.  Believe me, nearly every patroler has such a story.

It's hard to miss the sound of hatchlings digging their way to the surface!   And, as the sound gets louder, we know the hatchlings are close to emerging.  Once they become active, the nest starts being screened and supervised during the night. 

Several hours before hatchlings emerge we will see evidence of a 'cone' - a small depression in the sand immediately above the egg chamber.  When we see coning, we go on high alert.   Bio-techs and volunteers are almost always present to help the hatchlings make their way into the Gulf of Mexico and protect them from disorientation (heading away from the water and toward areas of light pollution) and predators.

This is turning out to be a record breaking year for sea turtles nests in our area of Gulf Islands National Seashore. After years during which the numbers of nests have steadily dwindled, and especially coming on the heels of the oil spill which was devastating to us last year, this has generated so much excitement for the Park and for all those who have a passion for these endangered marine creatures.

Breakfast with the Black Skimmers

There are all kinds of captions one could use for this video clip I took during sea turtle patrol this morning, starting with "I can't believe I ate the whole thing".   Poor little Black Skimmer fledgling finally just sidled away behind the dune to finish his fish in peace.

Turtle Alert!

Look what a beauty awaited me at Ft. Pickens this morning!


Yes indeed, a female Loggerhead came ashore to nest sometime during the night. On the right side of the photo above you can see the indentation of her body. Her crawl width was 37" wide, so she was fairly large. An adult Loggerhead can weigh 250-300 lbs or more. Behind the indentation of her body, see the fluffy sand piled up? That is the location of the nest which she covered with sand using her flippers. The eggs are approximately 18" below the surface.


Unfortunately, someone on a UTV -- someone obviously not familiar enough to identify a turtle crawl or nest -- ran over her tracks before dawn. Luckily they were not riding higher on the beach or they could have crushed the eggs.


Once I discovered the nest, I called Monica Hardin, the Bio-tech on duty; staked and flagged the nest to prevent any clean-up crews from disturbing the site; completed the remainder of my patrol; and returned to the nest to write up my report and wait for Monica's arrival.


Monica arrived with our new Bio-tech, Toby Stapleton, and is pointing at the outline of the body pit.


See how large the body pit is!!! If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you will also see a couple of ghost crab holes which had already begun digging near the nest. You can also see the crab tracks all over the fluffy sand of the nest itself. Ghost crabs are natural predators of sea turtle eggs and hatchlings.


Monica and Toby begin carefully searching for the exact location of the egg chamber. The stakes will then be precisely placed to identify the location. They will later GPS the nest.


Ah ha! There it is, the entrance to the egg chamber.


Toby begins placing stakes, while Monica fills in the egg chamber again and smooths over the nest area.

Life is good!!!

More good turtle news!

We received more good news this morning regarding our sea turtles! A loggerhead came ashore on Pensacola Beach during the night and nested.

Keep up those prayers, good thoughts, and visualization practices! Even though it is difficult to be positive right now, we cannot give in to depression which so often tries to envelope us (at least me!) in a dark cloud.

Mahatma Ghandi said, "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." This surely applies to us during this eco-disaster when we feel so helpless and frustrated.

On your good days, be there for a friend who is struggling. On your bad days, know that however many generations it takes we will fight to reclaim and restore our beautiful Gulf water.

It's a beautiful day!

"It's a beautiful day-uh-ay..." I sang out loud during my morning patrol of Ft. Pickens (and heartily apologize to U2).


This gorgeous sight -- an oil-free beach despite wind from southwest -- is what made it seem so appropriate. There was no harsh odor of oil in the air. The surf was up and life seemed normal for at least a while.


Nearing the point I noticed some new material resembling pom-poms had been staked in at the high tide level.


It all looked clean and oil free also.

That's not to say that there weren't oiled objects on the beach occasionally...

I came across single items such as this debris which had been well-coated at some point.

But this was the best sight of all...our first and only sea turtle nest of the season! It is a Kemp's ridley nest and hopefully we will see hatchlings sometime in August.

Let's just hope and pray our hatchlings will have an environment -- the Gulf of Mexico -- in which they can survive.

Passing by the palm

There is one area of my Ft. Pickens patrol that has always intrigued me and that is the where the Sabal Palm grows outside the old fort...about halfway between the southwest fort wall to the beach.

Everyone I've asked has said it's been there "forever", so the origin of this lone palm remains a mystery. Sabals (also called Cabbage Palms) don't produce 'coconuts', so it didn't start from a coconut that washed ashore one day. It stands tall and straight, so I doubt it escaped from a decades-old landscaping project on the mainland. Hmmmm...where did it come from?

Sabal Palms left on their own usually have a cross-hatch of old leaf stems going up the trunk, but considering the number of hurricanes this palm has gone through, it no surprise they have been torn away, leaving the trunk smooth.

If anyone has any speculation or old stories you've heard about it, feel free to weigh in. I love a good mystery story, but I'm that irritating person who has to check the last couple of pages to see how the story is going to end. In this case, I want to know the beginning!

Injured Great Blue Heron

I was very sad this morning to discover that one of our Great Blue Herons had a wing injury.


I reported it to the Park so that they could try to help it out. These birds are so magnificent that it is frustrating when someone like me can't do anything to help other than report the injury and location.


Another photo of a smaller Great Blue Heron from earlier in my patrol.

Alfalfa

I had to smile when I saw this heron during my patrol.


Click on the photo to enlarge it and you'll see why I dubbed him 'Alfalfa'

Turtle Patrol!!!

Sea turtle patrol time has finally arrived! We had our meeting last night at Naval Live Oaks and schedules are being finalized. Patrols start on May 1!


For those of you who are new to my blog, we begin our beach patrol before sunrise scouting for tracks like those above which I photographed last year. If we are lucky, we find a nest.

Can you imagine the energy expended by a 250 lb. sea turtle, suddenly weighed down by gravity as she comes ashore, pulling her body forward inches at a time by her flippers, digging a nest, disguising it by throwing sand over it with her flippers...then crawling back to the sea!


Sometimes it turns out to be a false crawl, sometimes we do find a nest, and sometimes the poor mama turtles pulls herself halfway across the island before finding the perfect spot to lay her eggs.

My patrols are a magical experience indeed and I can't wait to share them with all my blog followers again this year!

Beyond the Thunderdome

I was a bit skittish driving along under the 'thunderdome' this morning as I patrolled for sea turtles in the Ft. Pickens area of Gulf Islands National Seashore. I had waited until 5:45 a.m., when the cloud-to-ground lightning subsided, before heading out, but still heard an occasional rumble. Luckily the rain was light.

This photo was taken about 6:45 a.m. I rounded the western tip of the island and discovered the heavy band of clouds which had hovered over me all morning stretched back over the Port of Pensacola and far beyond. I was quite impressed!

My first nest!!!

It finally happened! I finally found my very own sea turtle nest this morning!

This is what it looked like as I came upon the loggerhead crawl about half a mile east of Opal Beach around 6:00 a.m. The photo above is her trail from the nest, back to the spot where she re-entered the Gulf of Mexico.

The loggerhead came ashore sometime during the overnight hours and circled over the nesting area a couple of times before being satisfied it was the right place for her. After laying her eggs and covering them with sand, she headed west, back into the Gulf of Mexico.

If you click on the photo above to enlarge it, you will see an area of tossed sand at the top of the circle of tracks. That is the loggerhead nest.

A closer angle of the nest and the loggerhead's tracks. The nest was slightly over 70 feet from the water and the distance from where she came ashore to the spot she returned to the Gulf of Mexico was over 200 feet. Just imagine how much energy it took a 200+ lb. sea turtle to pull herself across that much sand with her flippers!

Aren't they splendid tracks!

I immediately called Monica Cain, a Bio-Tech with the Gulf Islands National Seashore. She arrived to mark the nest, GPS its location, and make sure I did the report and measurements properly. She even got to see me do the joy-dance! Hopefully I can be a bit more subdued and professional next time.


A closer look at the loggerhead's tracks.


The very first 'DZ' nest!

Just after sunrise

I wish this photograph was one-tenth as beautiful as the sight itself just after sunrise at Ft. Pickens this morning. The sky was a delicate rosy-mauve shade as the sun peeped over the horizon. The Gulf of Mexico was calm and clear with ribbons of color - turquoise, sapphire. Dolphin were playing; herons strolled along the shore; black skimmers flew by with their lower beak slicing through the water; and snowy plovers performed incredible dives as they caught breakfast for their tiny chicks.

This morning I was reminded of an Amelia Earhart's 1928 logbook comment, "I'm getting housemaid's knee kneeling here gulping beauty" -- except as a member of the Gulf Islands National Seashore Sea Turtle Patrol I'm driving along the shoreline in a Kawasaki Mule before sunrise.

To learn more about the Gulf Islands National Seashore volunteer sea turtle patrol, you may click HERE to read a 2005 article from the Gulf Breeze News.