My Day at the Office

Rebecca sent me this picture from Little Cumberland Island, Georgia, earlier this afternoon. It was a daytime nester last night that she caught on camera with some friends. The very strange thing is that this particular turtle (Caretta caretta) was tagged in 1996, when Jordanna and I were the sea turtle team, and she hasn't been on the island since. How cool is that! She's now 110 cm!



It's been an interesting two days... There have been a lot of frisky dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) lately. These photos were from the Santa Rosa area of the park yesterday:







These are from a mating group near Fort Pickens today. Don't worry though -- I left out a lot of the photos. We took the boat out to replace buoys at Perdido Key and stopped along the Fort Pickens shallows on the way back.



It's interesting how the light and color change when the sun ducks behind the clouds.





















I was a little too closely focused to capture this leap, but I like the way the photo turned out anyway. Can you believe I was paid for this "work"?

Marine Mammals in Mississippi

I don't think I've ever been to Mississippi to be in Mississippi before, though I have driven through. Monica and I spent the whole day there today at a marine mammal stranding conference/workshop sponsored by NOAA and NMFS. It was a fun way to spend the day and learn about new protocols addressing human interaction with marine mammals that have stranded.



NOAA flew in a stranding from Virginia Beach for us all to work on together. They had a UME (Unusual Mass Event) a month or so ago, and this Common Dolphin, Delphinus delphis, was part of that group. It was interesting to see the animal as it's not a species normally found in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Monica did a great job playing Vanna...



I know the pictures today are kind of sad, so I'm only putting a few in... It's not a lot of fun to do a necropsy, but it's so important to find out what's causing animals to beach themselves while live, or wash up dead. It's equally important to ensure that biologists doing the studies are all doing things the same
way -- consistent data are vital! Check out the tattoos here -- he had some very accurate corals on his arms :)



This stranding had some not fun stuff -- discoloration and possible infection in the lung, necrosis in one kidney, lots of parasitic cysts, and a parasitic worm in the nasal sinus among other anomalies. His belly was badly scratched from rocking against an oyster bed in the Chesapeake region, and he had rake marks on his right flipper and right flank. Dolphins do sometimes play rough! Anyway, it was a long day, but a good learning experience and a great chance to get to know more local stranding team members. It's so hard to find them in the Florida Panhandle west of Destin. It's good to know we have friends to call on if the marine mammals on our beaches have a rough day...

Message in a Bottle

I wasn't going to post today, but it was such an extraordinary day that I have to write. It was 68 this morning when I woke up, and foggy for hours. It felt great to be back on the beach enjoying it instead of shivering in pain, just trying to get my job done. I forgot what it was like to not hurt. In all, it was a pretty fun day!



I started the day doing a piping plover survey on Santa Rosa. The birds were hard to identify in fog so thick it made it impossible to wear my glasses, and nearly impossible to use my binoculars, but it was warm and that made all the difference in the world!

It was easy to see this wasn't a bird:



While trying to find my way around some dead trees west of Opal Beach, I ran into scattered piles of rusty metal.



The Navy used to use the park as a firing range, dropping bomblets from planes post WWII. These remains and unexploded shells may not be very dangerous, but I worry about all the tourists that visit the park, not knowing its history, so I called law enforcement.



DOD is out in the park now cleaning up the beach. I wonder how many park employees and others walked by before I did. Why didn't it get noticed and taken care of earlier? I'm hoping it was simply uncovered by recent wind activity and that no one would choose to ignore this stuff. ***

Once I got to Fort Pickens, I knew things would be better til I ran into this. You can't tell, but it's a dead dolphin:



A crazy great blue heron claimed a perch on an osprey pole:



A sunken boat emerged from the sands:



And a bottle was cast ashore on the Gulf coast -- that was the best part of the day! At first, I thought it was just trash in the bottle.



I spent a little time working on it, and uncorked this memory from the glass time capsule:



The picture itself was pretty old -- a fuzzy black and white with the blue ribbon photo-shopped into the image. The bathing suits also seem more modest and less colorful than what we wear today.



I wish I knew where the bottle went in the water. The cork reads 2006, so I know the message isn't very old, but it would be fun to learn where it came from!



Where are these young swimmers now?

*** The DOD responded and destroyed these remnants in a controlled explosion that same afternoon. I hope that's the last of those remains in the park!

Another Stranding...

There was yet another stranding today. Sabrina Bowen came out from NOAA to help me. We did a pretty complete necropsy and reviewed some of our recent strandings. The one we had Saturday, the Dwarf Sperm Whale, was pregnant. How sad.



There's really not much to say; the red tide continues to take it's toll on the marine life in the area. The best we can do is learn as much as possible from each stranding.

It was great to spend time with someone who does this all the time -- I finally felt like I was really learning EXACTLY what we're supposed to do. Onward and upward!

It's Raining Sunlight

It didn't rain today, though fall arrived overnight. Temperatures dropped thirty degrees, and the high was in the 50s. Anyone who saw me on the beach must have thought I was nuts in my sweatshirt, three raincoats and borrowed winter jacket. I don't do cold well... I can take a desert in the summertime, but anything below 80 really chills my bones. Even the sky looks cold.


The red tide is still apparent, but very much lessened. I could see and breathe on the beach after six hours, though I was a little numb from the cold. There have been no new dead fish today, and only one dead dolphin yesterday. That's bound to happen for a while still as the effects make their way up the food chain. It just breaks my heart every time I have to necropsy a dead marine mammal or sea turtle. My one consolation is knowing that the person assessing them, me, is someone who really cares about the sea and the health of the animals in it.



The birds were out in full force -- it was a great day to be back on the beach, as long as you're dressed for the face-numbing north wind. Even the sanderlings were huddled together for warmth. Any venturing out on their own for a little food were fluffed up and bent over like hunchbacks, bracing against the breeze. Taking field notes with unfeeling fingers was difficult -- it's a good thing no one reads my notebook but me!


It seems odd to have autumn without the leaves changing and falling to the ground. The palm fronds simply bow to the north wind, the birds huddle for warmth and the sand and wind whip along the bay, but that's all that announces the arrival of a new season. Fall doesn't last long here in the deep south, but it's a welcome change from the red tide weather of last week!

No New Dead Fish!!!

How sad is that for a blog title? It's the highlight of my week though -- it was sunny and gorgeous in west Florida, and there were no new red tide casualties. Yes, I had to necropsy the Fort Pickens dolphin, but otherwise, life was good! It almost feels like fall, or what passes for fall in the sunshine state.

My writing has been so morbid lately that I feel kind of guilty. It was such a strange week. To top it off, yesterday we lost the Fort Pickens generator to a lightning strike and the computers and phones are still not functional at HQ and the fire cache. The Park has returned to earlier days without internet or telephone. It's been rather nice! Email on Tuesday might be scary though...

Dead Dolphin and an Eerie Encounter

Today was another day in paradise...

After 18 inches of rain in 30 hours, I was optimistic today that the red tide may be over. Under cover of the continuing moring showers, I headed to Fort Pickens. It was quite a sight with rain water everywhere! Fresh water ponds had formed in the dunes overnight and new rivers were draining them back into the Gulf. Driving the ATV was a lot of fun as I tried to find ways around the still rushing water. The obstacle course was made more challenging because I also didn't want to hit any of the dead fish, and they were everywhere...




Once I reached the Ranger Station, I spotted something large and very white in a high tide pool. Curious, I walked up to take a look. A dolphin had washed ashore sometime over the last five days since I'd been there. Watching the playful animals in the surf is one of my favorite things about life on the beach. After a call to my boss, I moved on to check the rest of the beach -- we'd deal with the stranding in a few hours.

I had to turn around before assessing the rest of the beach as some of the new drainage 'rivers' were impassable on my new ATV. I didn't want to go for an unplanned swim in the still toxic Gulf of Mexico!



When I reached the parking at the gate, the Santa Rosa Island Authority truck had just arrived. Clad in bright yellow slickers, the small group trundled down the beach, gathering the dead fish. I stopped to ask if they had any dead turtles or marine mammals. As a National Park biologist, I would assist the city as well. They hadn't seen any, but the strangest thing happened. One of them, a gentleman I do not know, took hold of my hand. He looked deep into my eyes, his mouth hidden behind the city-issued mask, and asked my name, then said he wanted to speak with me later. I never met him again today. It sent shivers down my spine -- I don't know what was going on!

It was still several hours til my boss was due to meet me, so I drove over to the Santa Rosa area, through some rather flooded streets:



Once there, I almost enjoyed the light rain as it washed the red tide out of my eyes, and I rode my ATV down to the Navarre end of the park. I thought I'd made it through without finding anything else too upsetting, but about 200 yards from the end of the seven mile stretch, there was another dead dolphin. This was a spotted dolphin, rocking back and forth in the sea. Tears mingled with the rain on my cheeks as I called my boss to tell him we had another stranding.

As I was finally returning to the spotted dolphin to meet Mark with all the gear necessary for a field necropsy, he called with more bad news. An adult female Loggerhead turtle had washed ashore, dead, in the Perdido Key area of the park.

In the early afternoon, the sun finally came out to brighten the day. Unfortunately, the absence of rain and presence of the south wind made the red tide almost intolerable. Mark chased me off the beach quickly, which was good as I was shaking and throwing up by the time I got my ATV back to the truck. Four days of red tide exposure, and all of those dead animals were quite enough!

I know it's mother nature at work, but still, I felt knocked out at the end of the day. Tomorrow I still have to necropsy the dolphin at Fort Pickens. Can't imagine why I feel so depressed :(