Turtle Trip, Day 3 (Monday): The sad effects of climate change, plus eyes at night.

We left for our morning beach patrol at 6:00am.  We checked the same nests as last night for signs of hatching, but we didn’t have any luck finding turtles this time around.  We only got to one of the three nests we were supposed to dig this morning before the bugs got so bad that we gave up.  I did at least get some cool pictures of animal tracks and awesome pictures of The Boneyard.

The nest was another depressing one.  It had been flooded by an unseasonably high tide, like a lot of the nests we’ve dug so far, unfortunately, so all the eggs drowned when they were maybe a week away from hatching.

It's really depressing digging up dozens of dead eggs like this.  Some nests have twice this amount, over a hundred.

It is really sad to see this.  I know that in nature, the majority of turtles don’t make it to adulthood, but most of them should have at least hatched.  Climate change is messing with the beaches these turtles lay their eggs on, making it harder to find a safe place to nest.  There’s not much we can do about the tides, but at least the nests here have a modicum of protection against predators.  The foxes, crabs, raccoons, and birds would just eat all of them if left alone.  Due to poaching, fishing bycatch, and habitat loss, there aren’t enough eggs being laid to let the predators have their fill and still have some leftover, nevermind enough to support the next generation.

Pink spoonbills.

After our morning patrol, we had breakfast, and some of us then took naps, including me. Then there was a small contingent going to the beach to swim before lunch, so I joined them. We wound up digging up three dead and depressing nests instead, including one where we had to collect samples of the dead babies to be sent back to a researcher for analysis. It’s weird to be watching someone cut a flipper off a dead sea turtle and stick embryos into vials, but it’s good to know that the data being collected will be used to help further protect the species.

Digger, counter, and recorder.

Dead turtle sample plus flipper and goo in vials for a DNA study.

Kris was headed back to the beach after lunch to look for nests we couldn’t find in the dark the last two days, using their GPS coordinates instead of just markers and paces.  Me, Bobby, and JoBeth hitched a ride to the beach, and Bobby and I went swimming and JoBeth went off looking for shells and to practice yoga while Kris and Darnice looked for the lost nests.  Neither nest was found, even with the GPS. One of them was way up into the woods, so it’s possible that someone copied the coordinates wrong.  The other one was close enough to the water that it was likely washed away, marker, protection, and all.  Swimming, at least, was fun.  The water was warm and wonderful and the waves were pretty strong.  Eventually the current got too strong for it to be safe, though, and we came out, pretty much just in time to hitch a ride back to camp.

You can see a plover kind of shore bird and a shrimp trawler in the background. 

Back at camp, I decided it was time to brave the shower. The shower here is an outdoor wooden stall with only cold running water and seems to be the place where mosquitoes most love to congregate. There was a solar shower bag that someone had brought if you wanted hot water, but after the sun on the beach, the cold water felt pretty nice. I just rinsed the sand off and washed my hair because I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. I kept my bathing suit and sandals on too, just as an extra protection against the bugs. After changing into dry clothes and dousing myself in bug spray, I hung my wet stuff on the line outside to dry. I think I am tired enough to try to nap again before supper and night patrols.

Supper was really good tonight. Chicken with sweet potatoes and yeast rolls and salad with walnuts and apples. We’ve been kind of eating like crap lately at home, so maybe when we get back home all this good eating will have inspired us to cook and meal prep and all that healthy jazz.

Alligator in the swamp.  They also sometimes wander the beaches

Our patrol tonight was back on the south end of the beach this time. Bobby spotted a nearly flat tire on the mule before we left, and it’s a good thing too. We went down the whole south side of the beach and back again. We were out for almost three hours, and getting a flat would have sucked. There’s no real-time communication between teams once they are out on patrol, so I don’t know whence assistance would have come had we gotten stuck. Anyway, tonight’s patrol was rather difficult. We not only checked all the nests for signs of hatching (and came up empty), but we dug out a few nests and counted a lot of almost-baby turtles dead in their eggs. There is one nest that we thought was going to be completely dead but actually did hatch about half of it, so that’s good. I much prefer counting egg shells to breaking open unhatched eggs to reveal the state of development at nest death. Nobody found any live hatchlings tonight.

Some hatched eggs and a data collector that measured temperature and humidity levels throughout the nesting period, which we'll send back to the researcher studying the impact these have on success rates and sex ratios of the hatchlings.

The mosquitoes were also as bad as I have ever seen them on the beach tonight. I learned that they can’t bite through latex gloves, but boy, will they try. We also learned to look for eyes at night. Red reflections are reptilian (or human), blue are mammal, and gold/green are spiders. If you ever want to freak yourself out, go outside at night and shine a flashlight on the ground. All the cool little sparkles are spider eyes. They are everywhere here. Clearly there aren’t enough of them, though, with the mosquitoes being as bad as they are. I have only seen one bat here so far, and this island can certainly support more. There is no shortage of food for spiders, bats, and dragonflies. I’ve only seen a few alligators in the swamps around here during the day, but at night, you can see probably a dozen red eyes on the water’s surface. I’ve seen deer around here, which I presume are the main food source for the gators. We have been told there are also wild boars here, and that they get big and tend to be pretty mean, but I haven’t seen one yet.

So far, I have only tried to take pictures of pretty or fun things that happen here, but I think I may start taking pictures of some of the sad things that I find, so that I can share the reality of climate change. I know it’s a little macabre, but I think I want to document the whole experience here, good and bad. On the list of bad things, a new development is that I think I may be coming down with something. I’ve started a little with the coughing and the sneezing. Not a lot, and it could just be allergies, but still. I don’t have any cough/cold medicine with me. I am going to try to get some more rest and maybe beat whatever this thing is.

Ghost crab tracks.  After they've been washed over or at night, it's hard to tell the difference between these and turtle tracks leaving the nest (below).

Turtle tracks.

Tracks leading away from the nest.

Turtle Trip, Day 2 (Sunday): Beach Cleanup & The Boneyard

We woke up at 5:00am so we could head to the beach for patrol at 5:30. We checked nests from a list to see if they had hatched or not yet, marking down which ones would need to be dug up later. Kris, the woman heading up the Project, drove the atv and me, Bobby, and another volunteer, Christine, took turns doing the other three jobs. The note taker’s job was to call out coordinates and nest numbers and record findings. The spotter’s job was to look for marked nests (not an easy task because it was still dark out for most of the trip) and tell the driver when to pull over. The runner’s job was to jump out and physically check the nest for signs of hatching or predation and report back. 

Turtle tracks from a recently hatched nest, partially washed away by the tide.

To make it easier to find the nests next time, Kris drove the mule in a circle while the runner was out checking nests. This way, the next time we come out, we just look for circles in the sand. We checked around 50 nests this morning. One weird thing we found was a dolphin skull.

Dolphin remains.

A lot of us napped after morning patrols, and then at around 10:30am we left to meet up with a coastal cleanup crew who happen to do a beach cleanup of our turtle beach once a year. Between all of us, a lot of trash was picked up, including a bunch of big and/or weird trash, like in tact plastic deck chairs with mussels and barnacles growing on them, a TV, and crab traps. A lot of what we picked up was plastic, though. Bottle caps, wrappers, balloons, you name it. Quite a few glass jars and completely unopened bottled waters, too.  The odd thing about this trash cleanup is how clean the beach looks at a first glance, but then you go looking for trash, and you find a lot of it.  It makes me wonder how much trash is on the beach near my house that you just don't notice, because it's not a super nice beach and you can see trash all over it just at a glance.  I pick some of it up almost every time I go there with my dog, but usually just one or two big, obvious things.  Someone really ought to organize a full-scale cleanup back home.

We also found quite a few more animal bones: dolphin (a different one from yesterday, fox, deer, and bird. We found a lot of alligator tracks too. 

Bird bones with feathers still attached.

One rather sad thing we found was a dead turtle under the protective mesh from a nest we checked this morning. It looked like maybe a bird had gotten to it through the mesh but couldn’t get it out to eat it. 

Poor dead baby turtle under the mesh.  Probably the victim of a bird pecking through the mesh or a ghost crab digging under it.  The mesh protects against large predators, but nothing can really be done to keep the ghost crabs out.

Ghost crab coming out of his hole.

Ghost crab looking the other way while we try to get a picture of it with Platymoose.

When it did finally turn around, it freaked the fuck out to see this big, strange animal staring at it silently.  It was pretty funny to watch it try to threaten a stuffed animal and then run away.

Kris, the coordinator, said we will check that one again tonight. (Update: the other crew was assigned that nest and turns out the one we saw was a straggler and the rest of the nest had already hatched. There were no more babies to rescue from that clutch.)

Gator tracks on the beach.

There were a lot of cool plants on the beach that I'd never seen before which I'm sure don't grow where I'm from.  Some of them were spiky and to be avoided.

Everyone had pb&j for lunch and then some of us went back to the beach for a quick walk.  It's pretty and nice to walk along, and has quite a few nice shells you don't find back home.  Bobby went in the water, but I will wait until we have more time another day.  I dipped my toes in, and the water was really nice and warm.  There are a lot of different shore birds on this beach.  I didn't get pictures of all of them, but it was cool to see them undisturbed, acting like birds on the beach instead of going after people's snacks.

I napped again back at the cabin until supper time, which was homemade oven pizza and it was really good. All the volunteers here seem really nice. All of them this week seem to be middle-aged to retired ladies who all know each other and have been doing this for years. Some are semi-local (from Georgia), most from other southern states like Alabama, Arkansas, or the Carolinas.  It's a bit surprising how liberal-minded and environmentally-conscious people can actually be found in the Deep South.

On our way to and from the beach, we pass a little swamp, which sometimes has an alligator in it.  My photos from today are blurry, but I wasn't getting any closer to snap a picture, because this guy was BIG.

You can kind of see the gator through the trees here.

That thing that looks like a floating log with an eyeball right in the middle there is a huge alligator.

On our beach patrol this evening Darnice and Bobby chased away a fox and we saved four turtles. Two others we couldn’t save because ghost crabs had already gotten to them. Again, worth getting our feet wet. We basically combined this morning’s nest checks with last night’s post-hatch inventory digs. 

The big mesh on bottom has holes big enough to let baby turtle through, but too small to let raccoons and foxes through.  It keeps them from digging up the nest.  The small mesh on top keeps birds from getting the babies from above during a boil, while they're vulnerable and not fully out of the nest yet.  It's hard to see it, but there is a turtle-sized "door" on the side facing the ocean.  On our nest checks, we sometimes have to dig away sand that has blown over it so that turtles can find the exit once they hatch.  Platymoose is standing guard.

Yesterday we went south on the beach. Today we went north. The north side of the beach has a lot more hurricane damage and there is this section with massive dead trees in all states of falling over, which is called The Boneyard. The name is definitely fitting. It looks spooky and crazy and is a little bit dangerous to drive through, especially at night. There are all of these new tidal pools/salt ponds forming around the branches of fallen trees, trunk spikes sticking straight out of the ground, and lots of debris to get in your way.  It was dark, so I didn't get any good pictures of the boneyard on patrol, but I know there are some good ones from later in the week, which I'll share when I get to them in a future post.

The Boneyard in the dark.

A few of the nests we had to check were in the boneyard, and there was one that had just hatched. The main exodus had already happened, but we rescued the stragglers, some of which were caught or tangled up in plant debris. This is the nest the fox was trying to get into. Again, I think we helped them more than we strictly are supposed to, but I did not come all this way and put up with all these mosquitoes to just hope that a hatchling I saw made it. Especially after counting over a hundred dead eggs in a previous nest we checked, I was not going to stand idly by.

One of the turtles we saved, stuck in plant debris, right next to my foot.  You have to be careful when walking around on the beach at night so you don't step on any babies.  You have to shuffle your feet slowly if you know there may be babies nearby so that you just brush them out of the way instead of crushing them by accident.

Newly freed turtle scurrying to the ocean. 

Run, baby, run!  You have to use only red lights when looking at and photographing turtles at night, because white lights will disorient them and lead them away from the ocean.

Speaking of mosquitoes, they are awful here. Worse than the Appalachian trail I think, which is saying something. They swarm you, bug spray or no. You begin to question if it’s even working, but then you wash it off your hands so you can touch the turtles if there are some to rescue later, and within seconds of exposing your bare hands, you have dozens of mosquitoes trying to bite just your hands, then you realize how good your bug spray actually is. Thank God for DEET.

Anyway, it’s time to try and sleep because we are up at dawn again tomorrow for more patrols. I say try because I have bug bites that are already super annoying. We shall see.