“Please, do not walk on turtle crawl.”
Interns, Nesting Program, Research, Sea Turtle, barnacles, epibionts, turtles No Comments »
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
I was first introduced to the sea turtle world in the summer of 2000 and fell in love with it. It helped orient me to college where I received a B.S. in Organismal Biology from Adams State College in 2008. After I was done, I knew I wanted to work with turtles again, and was fortunate enough to land one of the Sea Turtle Patrol Internships with the Georgia Sea Turtle Center last summer. I loved it so much that I came back for another round this year. Chances are if you don’t see me on the beach (most likely covered in sand with a big smile on my face) you will see me in the rehabilitation pavilion at the Center helping the vet staff take care of some of our sea turtle patients, that you are welcome to come see your self! Check out the Center’s wonderful website to find out more!
