Turtle Trip, Day 7 (Friday): Sand and turtles and hurricane on its way

Turtles going into the Atlantic Ocean at sunset.

On one of our patrols this week, we kept driving by flocks of birds, some kind of plover I think, and the noise of the mule kept startling them.  Usually, this would mean they fly off a ways and settle down again.  However, some groups of birds flew in the same direction we were going, and they happened to be going the same speed as us, so it looked like they were hanging stationary in the air next to us as the background blurred past.  I felt a little bad that we were disturbing them, but eventually the bird brains figured out that they could turn around and actually fly away from us.  Plus, it did look really cool.

See how the line of birds extends all the way down the beach.

Taking flight.

I slept until just about 9:00 this morning and our digs started at 9:30.  Bobby, Nawdane, and I went with Kris’s group to the south side and dug the remaining six nests we had to dig, and most of them had decent hatch rates.  We also found a lot of live babies, some still partially in eggs, and quite a few still viable unhatched eggs.  These all would rot or not hatch fully or not be able to dig their way out without the help of their siblings if left in the nest.  Most of these guys we will release at dusk.  We also took down all the markers that divided and numbered the beach into sections to make nests easier to locate.  I guess they have to do this every year on the last week anyway.

When we got back for lunch, we got a hurricane Dorian update.  It has shifted course and will actually hit this area, though not until next week.  What this means, though, is that we have to pull up the protection from all the unhatched nests so it doesn’t get washed away in the storm surge.  Putting plastic into the ocean is kind of the opposite of what we do here.  It does mean that the nests will be fair game for predators on the island, which is a bummer.  Kris keeps reminding everyone (and herself) that their reproductive strategy of laying so many over the course of the summer ensures that one storm won’t wipe out their whole population.

I just liked the pattern the grass made in the sand from the wind.

Ghost crab tracks.

Mostly ghost crab tracks and some turtle ones leading from a nest hole.

I just liked how the sand here was all wavy from the wind.

Nawdane and I took one mule, Bobby and Kris in another, and the others also split into teams of two per atv.  We took up all the corrals of the unhatched nests, and Bobby and Kris dug the remaining hatched or old ones, finding one more baby to release tonight.  The other teams were doing the same on the north side of the beach.

The horseshoe crabs here get much bigger than the ones back home.

Storm's a brewin'.

Bobby and I with the marker that leads back to camp.

Turtles from morning patrols to be released when it's cooler at sunset.

Our mules had never been so full of equipment.  I took a picture of three of them which happened to be heading back to base at the same time because the caravan of atvs was funny to me.  When we all got back, we had to unload and take apart the corrals, and apparently none of the blades on this island are sharp enough to efficiently cut zip ties.  I asked about using reusable ones, but Kris said they tried that one year and they couldn’t undo most of them and had to cut them anyway.  I know they can be finicky, but still, there has got to be a better way.  Maybe sand got stuck in all the release tabs.  I wouldn’t be surprised.

Each reflector had a tag on it with the nest's assigned number, which we had to cut off as we put things away.

Reflectors to mark nests, a bucket of stakes that kept the mesh down, and some corrals.

Getting windy.

This is how most of the nests are corralled when it's close to hatching time.

Nawdane driving the mule.

Me pretending to drive the mule.

Caravan of mules.

The sand here is pervasive.  It permeates everything.  The grains are so fine that they get through the weave of pretty much any kind of material, so it gets everywhere.  The most annoying thing is when you think you’ve brushed it off your bed, but then you lift the sheet to get in and there is more, because it has fallen through the sheet.  Then you brush off between the sheets and somehow there is still more, as if it escaped to the mattress cover and then came bubbling back up.  Sleeping on top of the sheets invites mosquitoes who seem to come and go in the cabin as they please.  Almost every night, I have doused myself in bug spray before hitting the hay, which makes you feel hotter because your skin can’t breathe, but that’s the trade-off for no, or at least fewer, bug bites.  It was particularly windy on the beach today, so after we finished with the corrals, I braved the shower again.  This time, in addition to being mosquito central, there were a number of small brown crabs hanging around.  I saw one climbing right up the wall of the shower stall and freaked out for a second because I thought it was a huge spider, so I started to exclaim but realized in the middle of it what I was looking at, so what came out was a very surprised and genuine, “Holy crab!”

The finished tile with the rest of the group's signatures and flair.

I didn't get any pictures of the shower crab, but here are some lovely pictures of butterflies on some of the island's vegetation.  When you conserve habitat for one species, everything else in their ecosystem benefits.

I know they're not monarchs, though they do look similar.  Don't know what they are, though.

Then I read for a little while, did some more packing, and joined everyone for supper, which was spaghetti with meat and mushroom sauce.  Afterward, we went to the ocean with the hatchlings we had collected earlier who were ready to go.  They were moving around in such a frenzy in the bucket, it actually sounded like water boiling.

We went to the coast and let them all go.  The pre-hurricane surf brought in a lot of rack, or, ocean debris (mostly plant matter).  This was an extra barrier for the hatchlings, and many of them got stuck and tangled up in it, so we helped them get through it (probably more than we strictly are supposed to interfere, but I wasn’t going to let a baby turtle get stranded on my watch).  Seeing these babies skitter and scurry into the surf with such energy and enthusiasm, especially when there are so many of them (over a hundred in some nests) really is something else.

I think anyone who experiences this, especially after witnessing first hand the destruction that a changing climate, rising seas, and higher tides can bring, will be motivated even more to try to save the planet.  It is possible for nature to recover if we actively help and stop destroying it.  This island is a case in point.  Loggerheads take 30-40 years to reach sexual maturity (a.k.a. being able to start reproducing).  This island started protecting and researching loggerheads in the 1970s.  The last few years have seen a significant jump in numbers of nests laid, as well as previously untagged mother turtles.  This year was a record year, with 480 nests, each with anywhere from 50 to 150 eggs.  What this means is that the conservation efforts happening here are really working.  The turtles that the researchers and volunteers protected from predators before I was born have grown up and returned home to breed.

If every nesting site was protected like this, sea turtles most likely wouldn’t be endangered.  The unfortunate truth is that people with money would rather have private beach resorts and their own personal islands than protect endangered species.  People would rather harvest turtles for voodoo nonsense, unnecessary black market meat (is fish and chicken and all the other domesticated animals that we are not running out of really not good enough?), and status symbols, than make half an effort to stop doing harm to our planet’s longest-living animal family.

How is this not worth protecting?

Anyway, that’s enough of my soap box for now.  I packed everything I am not wearing or using for tomorrow and I am going to try to go to sleep, despite the record number of bug bites I got from being outside pretty much all day and sweating the bug spray off repeatedly.  Tomorrow at dawn we are doing another release, of any that weren’t ready to break out of their shell and go charging down the beach earlier tonight.

Then we have to help clean and pack up the whole island because this is the final week for volunteers on this project.  Our boats will be waiting at the docks at 9:30am.  Bobby and I have a bit of time to kill before our plane leaves tomorrow, so we plan on renting a car and finding touristy things to do in Savannah.  This trip has been difficult and frustrating, both physically and emotionally, but I think it has all been worth it.  And a release of hatchlings is the perfect way to end the week.

Sunset.

Turtle tracks.