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30 July Hatchling Emergence - 7/25The photo album from this week shows scooping out the remaining hatchlings from a nest. These turtles were at the bottom, and when the sun comes up, they stop just under the surface of the sand to wait until nightfall to come out and make their way to the ocean. The only problem with this approach is that they're likely to cook in the hot sand. Therefore, when we see a nest that has little turtle tracks emanating from it, we scoop our fingers a few inches under the surface to make sure there's nobody there waiting for nightfall. A couple of days after an emergence, the nest is excavated and the empty shells counted. Some of these shots show the turtles as they're scooped out and all sandy as they begin their scamper to the sea. I brought my underwater housing for my camera so I could take pictures of them in the water, but there were two problems: (1) I forgot my facemask, and (2) once they hit the water, these hatchlings can really motor. They don't hang around posing, waiting for you to take their picture. I was amazed at how fast these little guys can swim as they head out to the Sargasso. The females won't return for at least 20-25 years until they sexually mature; the males will spend the rest of their lives at sea. 23 July Greed Trumps TurtlesThis last week I was away, so I don't have any pictures of turtles or hatchlings to share. However, the political battle over the fate of Singer Island continues. On one side are the government of Riviera Beach and the developers putting up million-dollar condos, and on the other are Singer Island residents who would like to halt the rampant redevelopment efforts. The Citizens for Responsible Growth for Riviera Beach (http://www.rg4rb.org/) has spearheaded the effort to halt over-development already in progress and has found a valuable ally in County Commissioner Karen Marcus (see "Singer Island balks at redevelopment" http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/local_news/epaper/2006/07/23/c1c_SINGER_0723.html), but the battle is far from over. There are many ugly elements in the back story of this conflict, with charges of racism and incompetence abounding (see "Riviera Beach struggles to overcome decades of divisiveness" http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/local_news/epaper/2006/07/02/m1a_RBnew1_0702.html), but what is indisputable is that densely populated beaches do not support large colonies of nesting sea turtles. Also indisputable is the fact that Mayor Brown views Singer Island as Riviera Beach's cash cow, to be milked for every last tax dollar that can be wrung out of it. When all you care about is putting up hotel-resort high rises for millionaires (who legally reside elsewhere and won't be able to vote no matter what their opinions are on preserving the environment), then you can't expect sea turtles to count for much. Every simpleton knows that politicians get reelected based on corporate donations, which in South Florida means real estate. Corporations, and therefore politicians, are interested in profits, not stewardship of environmental resources or the protection of endangered sea turtles. This slide show illustrates the issues condo owners face on the beach. The Ocean Mall, where they want to put up a hotel and shopping complex, is shown immediately after Wilma (it was torn down this week). The dune you see immediately in front of it would be covered by the new development. The photos of hurricane damage show how much the beach and the dunes are eroded. However bad it looks, many sea turtle nests can survive with as little as 6 inches of sand on them. However, once a sea wall is erected, the nesting beach is gone forever. The sea wall shown here popped up last winter without having gone through the required formal permit process. What happened is they got an emergency permit after Wilma and now the condo next door wants one, which is understandable given that their next door neighbors have put them at even greater risk when the water erodes the dune behind the sea wall. However, once the beach is armored like this, no sea turtles will nest. There are plans to put in groins to stop the beach erosion, but they won't be in place until 2008. In the meantime, luxury condos sprout up all around (the cheapest unit goes for $1.3 million). The question that needs to be asked is, when you've paid over a million dollars for your condo, do you let prime sea turtle nesting beach stand in the way of erecting a sea wall in front of your condo, or do you just use your money to purchase the necessary political clout to get it done? You can't blame people for wanting to protect their property regardless of whether it should ever have been built in the first place. The bottom line is that you don't have to be unduly pessimistic to say that the future doesn't look too bright for the Singer Island sea turtles.
11 July The Devil Wears FlipflopsEarly this morning we had a poacher who raided some of our nests. I got some clear shots of his handprints, footprints, and the violated nests, which Debbie will pass along to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
There's a lot of construction work going on, so it might have been one of the workers. They can look down and see the turtles nesting on the beach. However, most of the poachers are crackheads who dig up the nests to buy drugs. They caught a guy last year who was duly convicted and is doing hard time. Hopefully they'll catch this one too. I felt like a crime scene reporter with the camera, snapping away, cataloging the evidence...
Not all the news is bad -- we had a Leatherback emergence down by the Ocean Mall. You can see two of the little critters here -- note how big their front flippers are. They were at the bottom of the nest, so their backs (or shells, if they weren't leatherbacks) were collapsed. If they had been left alone, they would have slept all day, their bodies have filled out, and they would have emerged this evening. However, since they're so endangered, Debbie didn't want to take a chance of leaving them, so she collected them in a bucket and drove them to the Marine Life Center, where they'll be released into the ocean this evening. 09 July A Feast for CrowsThis morning I looked over the balcony and saw a couple of major excavations from some very large turtles, so I went down to take a look. You can see one of them, at the MacArthur Park border. The non-turtle treads are from the vehicle the park rangers use to monitor turtle nests -- it turns around at the boundary. This particular nest is on our side, and goes on on our count.
We've had some storms and high tides the last few days, which swept a lot of our (renourished) sand away, exposing some nests. The crows shown here are breakfasting on turtle eggs. When I walked over to investigate, they retreated to the top of the crossover. As I walked farther down the beach, a little hatchling squirted out from the side of the sandbank and scuttled off towards the water. You can see from the photos how well camouflaged the little guy is--exactly the color of the wet sand. If he wasn't moving, I would never have spotted him. I looked for more hatchlings to ward on their way to the sea, but eventually gave up. You can't rescue every little turtle. At least my being there means one less for the crows, one more for the waves. 07 July Leatherback NestingAndrea Lueghausen took these marvelous and rare photos of a Leatherback turtle nesting in broad daylight near the Ocean Mall on Singer Island. Usually sea turtles wait for nightfall to nest, so this is quite an occasion! The last photo in the slide show is of a leatherback hatchling, although not from this particular nest. Leatherbacks are the largest of all living turtles, weighing an average of 800 pounds up to a record-setting 2000 pounds. They have a flexible leather carapace instead of a rigid shell (a handy adaptation for deep-water diving) and can migrate 6,000 miles in a single year. Leatherbacks have several unique features that set them apart. They have more red blood cells than other reptiles (in a range similar to mammals). This allows them to carry more oxygen in their circulatory systems, enabling them to stay underwater for more than an hour and dive deeper than sperm whales, down to 3,900 feet. Their hearts are designed to shunt partially deoxygenated blood directly back to the muscles, bypassing the lungs, so that the muscles can get more use out of it during deep dives. The core body temperature of adults in cold water is several degrees Centigrade above that of the surrounding water, enabling them to prosper in ocean regions where other marine reptiles cannot. Leatherbacks can migrate 6,000 miles in a year, and that record-breaking 2,000 pound leatherback ended up off the not-so-balmy West coast of Wales, far away from the tropical beach where he hatched. I've never seen a leatherback scuba diving on our local reefs, although I've seen all of our other native species (hawksbills, loggerheads, and greens). Leatherbacks must come here only to nest, and then head back out to deeper waters. Leatherbacks are critically endangered world wide. The planned (over) development here on Singer Island seems likely to further grease the skids towards their extinction on this fragile stretch of barrier island beach. 04 July Born on the Fourth of JulyFor the last couple of months I've been working as a volunteer for the Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island monitoring nests and hatchlings. We've had a couple of nests so far and today I saw my first live hatchlings of the year. Debbie is holding one of the little guys -- a baby Loggerhead.
We saw several hatches from last night. They emerge and spread out, heading for the water. You have to look for ones who are disoriented and head in the other direction, towards the lighted buildings. They need to be rescued and put in the water so that they don't get dehydrated and die.
Debbie and Chris are digging up the nest and counting the hatched eggs. This nest had over eighty turtles who made it out, hopefully all the way to the Sargasso sea, where they will live for several years until they mature. Only the females will ever come back to land again, returning to the beach where they were hatched in order to lay their eggs.
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