Today was yet another chilly hunting survey with all the smart hunters home in bed. The cold weather has been very good for the ducks!
I have a lot of random thoughts when riding down the beach on my ATV. My wandering mind helps me forget that I'm in danger of hypothermia... If the wind can have a color, today it was gray.
I had my camera out for random beach photos today and paused by a snow fence. The sound of the wind and blowing sand running along the length of the fence made me pause. The shucka-schuka-schuka of sand hitting the fresh wood and the wind rattling the slats and wire are impossible to replicate.
I don't carry a recorder with me, just my camera - I guess I could have filmed it for a few seconds, but the waves would have been louder than this gentle rhythm. Why can't we see sound? Certainly it would be visible if we could see the sound waves.
The road project is well underway at Opal Beach, which is why there's so much sand fence around. It's a symbolic fence placed at intervals to define the corridor for all the construction vehicles. The road should be open within the next few months. I wonder how the birds will react.
Someone sailing at the Santa Rosa area had a pretty bad day recently -- this boat is very firmly aground, and looks a bit worse for wear. Who do you call when you need to tow a boat? Does SeaTow handle things this well ashore? This boat is in far too fragile an area to reach it by land -- I can ride an ATV down this beach at low tide, but at high tide, it's all marsh. My ATV certainly is no match for this lovely boat anyway.
When I arrived back at the office to thaw for a few minutes, my sister called -- they're taking my uncle in for his bypass and carotid artery surgery as I write this. I thought it would be later this week, but my uncle is happy it's today -- waiting was really hard for him. I expect to have good news late this evening.
27 January 2008
Can the Wind be a Color? Can You Photograph a Sound?
Posted by
Turtle Girl
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9:05 AM
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Labels: Florida, Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Ivan, hurricane recovery, sand fence, sea turtle, shore birds, turtle, turtle girl
17 January 2008
Looking Up at the Gulf of Mexico
We finally finished the forest transects today, which was great! Yesterday, I thought I was going to get hypothermia, playing in the woods in 42 degree rain. It isn't so bad when you're moving, but when standing still, my joints were all freezing. It was impossible to write, especially while holding a metal clipboard... The seedling area had mushroomed from 24 trees last year to nearly a thousand, and every one had to be identified and measured in the driving rain. What fun! Today dawned gray and dreary, but there was no rain. When we arrived at PICL 8 (Pinus clausus plot 8), we were elated to see that it was so sparse. We finished the plot in three hours, after disturbing this patient woodpecker for the entire time.
Once we finished the plot, I abandoned Jennifer and Angela to do a PIPL (piping plover) survey on Fort Pickens. Drainage ditches from the rain yesterday made parts of the north shore completely impassable, and there were few birds and a dead beaver. I didn't even know we had beavers at Fort Pickens! The biggest adventure was just trying to find a way to drive an ATV down the beach. I failed to find safe passage past the buildings at Fort Pickes, so I had a pretty long walk to finish the survey -- it was a beautiful afternoon for a stroll and the walk helped me thaw a bit :)
I checked out the tree removal in the campgrounds and the trash removal at Battery Worth. The trash pile is just vanishing -- it was great to see the progress! It gives me hope that the park may indeed open again soon.
It's just amazing how much trash a storm throws up on the beach. It makes it very clear how much we consume, and dipose, in this society. There has to be a better way!
When passing by the road, I wondered how they were going to manage it. The surf was fairly large today, but was knocked down by the northerly winds. Even so, I could clearly look up to the Gulf of Mexico while riding along the road about three miles into the park. How can we build a permanent road that's not above sea level? Quite a challenge to maintain that one! It would be better for the turtles and the birds to just leave it as it is.
Riding back, the south beach was loose and wet and my ATV kept getting bogged down, so I decided to try the corridor -- bad choice! I managed to get the ATV sunk to the axle in more loose, wet sand. Eventually, one of the construction workers from the tree/trash removal came to the rescue. I'm a scrappy lady, but I can't pick up an ATV all alone. Next time, I'll stay on the beach!
In all, it was a fun day, though I still can't figure out what this was doing on the North shore...
Posted by
Turtle Girl
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4:32 PM
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Labels: Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Ivan, sea turtle, shore birds, turtle, turtle girl
09 January 2008
More Goodbyes
Today we had a goodbye luncheon for Monica and Jennifer. Monica actually finished her internship on Monday, and Jennifer finished tomorrow as she prepares to move to New York and a permanent job with the USDA. She's already planning on moving back to Gulf Islands once a permanent biologist position opens up. Once the park is fully operational again, that may be a real possibility -- when we pull in revenue, we can hire people. How sad is it that half of the team was/is here on hurricane recovery funds, and we still are not recovered three years after the storm?
Big plans are underway for the park though. Today, efforts began to remove all the dead trees that threaten to fall on the public campgrounds at Fort Pickens. Except for Loop A, all these grounds are still closed to the public, and the road and power to the sites won't be re-established til 2009 at the earliest. The current goal, though, is to have the sites and all the buildings fully operational by the time the road is completed so the public can finally return to the park. Since we don't even have a plan for the road yet because of the new wetlands and piping plover critical habitat, not to mention the frequent overwashing of the island, it could be awhile before that vision is realized. Still, it's nice to see some forward motion. Maybe we'll even clean out that Ranger Station time capsule!
Jennifer and Monica will be missed -- I still have just as much work to do, but only one of me. I'll never have a dull day!
Posted by
Turtle Girl
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5:25 PM
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Labels: Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Ivan, sea turtle, turtle, turtle girl
04 January 2008
PVC and Rattlesnakes
Today, Mark decided to come play in the field. He has been on vacation since Christmas, so he hadn't seen the progress on the new road at Santa Rosa, and he wanted to check up on the birdies too. With saws and a mule in tow, we headed to the park around 9am.
Hurricane Ivan pretty much flattened Santa Rosa in 2004. Arlene and Dennis completed the job in 2005. Since then, no one has made an effort to clean the beach. Asphalt is scattered everywhere, miles and miles of PVC pipe litter the landscape and random hurricane debris intermixes with destroyed park structures. Mark has made it our mission this winter to remove all of the PVC on the island, which is not as easy as it sounds. This is one of two loads we removed today:
After struggling all day to get that small amount removed, Mark has decided to invest in an battery operated power saw -- it will make the job go faster, but it still won't be simple. Most of the pipe is buried in sand dunes, twisted at crazy angles and FULL of sand. Even ten foot long pieces weighed more than I do until we emptied them of their quartz cargo. This is going to be just the gym workout I need, and I get paid for it while making the environment much more beautiful. All we need to do now is find a way to recycle the tons of PVC we'll be removing. Any ideas?
Once we returned to Naval Live Oaks, we found a park visitor with this small, cold rattle snake in a cardboard box, searching for a new home. Sorry for the bad pic -- it's from my phone, but it does show the snake finding winter refuge in a gopher tortoise burrow, which is exactly where he belongs. Thanks, random visitor! Wish more people did that instead of just killing the poor snakes!
Posted by
Turtle Girl
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2:02 PM
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Labels: Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Ivan, hurricane recovery, pollution, rattle snakes, sea turtle, trash, turtle, turtle girl
26 December 2007
Time Capsule
I spent a good portion of this morning at the Fort Pickens Ranger Station, hunting around for satellite location data for Shelly and Sandy, two loggerheads tagged at the park several years ago. It was like walking into an office that stood still while life moved on in the distance. The last day is marked on the wall by the visitor's entrace, just in case anyone forgets what flattened the park...
There's evidence that those in the offices beat a hasty retreat. Garbage bags cover old computer components, boxes and paperwork are strewn across the floor, spilled coffee mugs roll on desktops, cans of cat food, labels faded by years of intense sun, stand by an east facing window, magazines, unopened mail, random rain jackets and gum wrappers, bug repellent and family photos weave a crazy trail through recent history.
I felt as if I was disturbing a memorial, and apologized to the room as I dug through the debris in my hunt for the elusive data. Once I unearthed the priceless paperwork, I headed back to my ATV to return to our temporary office. Traveling by ATV in late December with a box of paperwork is less than ideal, but three years post-storm, there still isn't a road out here. How have we allowed this to happen to one of our national treasures? Have we sunk so low in our quest in the middle east (for what?) that we our trashing our own country? What a waste...
Thankfully though, this retreat into the recent past reminds me of how much better things are today than they were three years ago -- at least we have an office (in a garage, but hey, it's dry and has heat!). The road closure has been great for the birds, though the sea turtles continue to struggle. The lost dunes, flattened landscape, light pollution and frequent flooding make it nearly impossible for nests to survive, even when they are present. There's a lot of work to do, and not just in the box of paperwork now sitting at my feet.
Posted by
Turtle Girl
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11:11 AM
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Labels: dunes, Gulf of Mexico, hurricane, Hurricane Ivan, hurricane recovery, pollution, sea turtle, trash, turtle, turtle girl
International Coastal Clean-Up!
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