Hi campers and guests!

I know that many of you have been eagerly waiting for an update on Caretta Hope, one of our sub-adult loggerhead sea turtles. She/he was named by the first ever Sea Turtle campers at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.

To give you some background, Caretta Hope came in on June 11, 2009 with early stages of debilitated turtle syndrome. She was not eating very well, had lots of epibiota on her carapace - living creatures such as barnacles on top of her shell - and was very lethargic. Also, the turtle is missing both back flippers!

You’ll be happy to know that she is swimming, diving, and acting normally for a sea turtle, as well as eating very well. When she arrived, her red blood cell count was at about 5% - it is now at 25% and almost at normal levels! We are going to continue to monitor her red blood cell count, continue iron treatments, and see that she eats well.

That’s all for now and enjoy the photos!

Stephanie Chong

~Education Intern

Hello again!

If you do not remember me, my name is Amanda.  I am one of the six 2009 patrol interns, and I have a short story to tell you.

Once upon a time, there was a female loggerhead sea turtle that nested near the Jekyll Island Club Hotel’s Beach Pavilion (otherwise known as Edy’s ice cream bar) on Jekyll Island.  She was a beautiful adult of 30-35 years, who had a plethora of epibiota on her carapace.  The life on her shell included things like tunicates, barnacles, bryozoans, bioluminescing plankton, and more!

The three on-duty patrol interns, John, Ashley, and Amanda, were amazed by the loveliness of this particular turtle (whom they appropriately named, “Turtle”).  They admired her as she crawled from the ocean to the dunes, body pitted, and dug her upside-down light bulb shaped egg chamber.

While Turtle was laying her eggs, the patrol interns turned on their red headlamps and got to work.  They noted the time and location of Turtle’s emergence.  They measured the length and width of her carapace.  They scanned her shoulders for a microchip PIT tag and looked carefully at her front flippers to see if they were pierced with metal tags.

Luckily for the excited interns, this Turtle was tagged.  She was a returning nester from earlier in the summer!

The interns discussed the previous emergence (EM29) of Turtle (EM90) while they waited for her to drop all of her clutch and cover her nest.  It seemed that Turtle had visited Jekyll Island once before that summer, but she had not nested.  John, Ashley, and Amanda reviewed their saturation tagging data sheet and found that Turtle had been tagged by them on her last emergence.  This made the interns very happy; they had inserted her tags correctly the first time around!

When Turtle was finished laying, she covered her nest with her dexterous hind flippers.  Then, she used her front flippers to camouflage her nest.  She wouldn’t want any predators (such as raccoons) to easily find her precious eggs, now would she?

Turtle left the happy interns some time after 3:15 am.  The interns had to move on before Turtle left her body pit.  However, before they did, Amanda wrote a sand note to early-rising beach combers.  It read:

“Please, do not walk on turtle crawl :)”

Ironically, Turtle crawled right over Amanda’s note!  Did she plan it?

I hope you enjoyed my story! Until next time….

Sincerely,
Amanda Noble
Sea Turtle Patrol Intern

We received, within a week of each other in mid-February, two turtles from St. Augustine, Florida.

Augustine, a 10.5 lb green sea turtle, was covered in epibiota and was weak. She is fairly thin for her size, but she has already started to gain weight and is eating on her own.

Aussie, a 91 lb. loggerhead sea turtle, was also covered in epibiota and was very thin. We were able to remove 8 L of air from her body cavity and through blood work we have determined that she is anemic and has a low amount of glucose. We had to tube feed her at first, but she has started to eat on her own.