Sea Turtles and Hurricanes

Over the last few days, many people have asked me about sea turtles and hurricanes. Since I'm not a sea turtle, all I can comment on is what I've observed over my many years working with them. The most revealing lesson was from the Leeward Island's hawksbills...



I spent 1998 in Antigua, working with hawksbill sea turtles on Jumby Bay. These skittish animals often nested under sea grapes and button mangroves, like this beauty here.



We satellite tracked about 20 of them in the Caribbean that year, from Barbados to the Yucatan. It allowed us to see what areas they utilized as internesting habitat, and where their home/feeding range was once they were finished nesting.



My colleague, Jordanna, and I followed each turtle on our beach and had a saturation tagging program, meaning we were on the beach every single night from 7 pm to sunrise, documenting each nest and tagging turtles new to the population. We never missed a night, or a nest. We knew each turtle pretty well, and saw them from five to seven times each as they came every two weeks to lay their eggs. Their patterns were pretty predictable, and the satellite tags reinforced and deepened our understanding of their behaviors.



In mid-September of '98, we noticed something very strange. One of our favorite turtles, Wrong Way Peach Fuzz, was swimming south, heading for deep water over two hundred miles away.



Since we knew she was due for a nest, we were confused. Peach Fuzz often did strange things, like swimming in the Follett's pool, but she was a regular nesting female. We never knew quite what to expect from her, but we knew to expect her!



At the time, there was a small hurricane storming across the Atlantic, forecast to swing north of us as a Cat I or II, but the turtles knew better! Once Hurricane Georges finished his trek across the Atlantic, he paused, intensified, and walloped Antigua. We lost 100 nests, representing about 10,000 eggs, hatchlings and potential hatchlings. The next morning, there were eggs everywhere,and hatchlings with yolk sacs tangled in tree branches and debris, drowned by the storm.



We even lost our gorgeous home. The country lost a lot more.



We were relieved to have the turtles return to the beach very soon after Georges, though there was still debris everywhere!

Guess Peach Fuzz and her cohorts knew what they were doing! Always believe what animals forecast -- they seem to read something that we have forgotten how to understand as we allow technology to cloud our instincts. Hope we'll get that magic back sometime soon!

As for this storm season, all I can say is that the turtles and the jellies and the sargassum came early. The Gulf seemed to warm early as well. Otherwise, the weather reminds me of that summer, long ago. For now, forecasters think TS Fay will swing east of us, which is good news indeed. I'm still moving some turtle nests though -- I learned that lesson very well!

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.

Spared a Storm, but the Seas are Choppy

Tropical Depression 10 never even made it to Tropical Storm status last week, which is a good thing... The seas still grew pretty rough for the Gulf Coast, so we're happy we let the hatchlings go a bit early. The waves are small by human standards, but just imagine how huge a five-foot wave looks to a newborn animal the size of a half-dollar.

There is a beauty in a sea this strong. Even as a Tropical Depression, it re-shaped the shore overnight, leaving behind the sea's placating gift of glossy, unmarred shells as a reminder that the sea is both power and grace. Sitting on the shore, listening to the rushing winds and crashing waves, I realized yet again how small and insignificant my petty worries are. By next month, I won't remember what troubled my thoughts today, but I will remember this refreshing energetic morning on the Gulf of Mexico. Both humbling and empowering, it is a day worth saving in my bank of magical memories.

High Tides in Turtle Time

It's a windy night on the beach, and the waves are starting to pick up, with a strong pull to the west. The Park has put us on Hurricane status III, which doesn't mean much; there isn't even a storm yet, though there may be over the next few days. If so, it's likely to be tropical storm at worst. We will, however, have high tides and flooding by tomorrow. So, it has been a long and fun day getting ready.... The best part was helping more hatchlings get to sea.

We have two nests that are hatching tonight. Normally, we let them hatch at their own rate with no interference, but in some circumstances, we may have to move a nest just before hatching to prevent hatchlings from flooding in a storm event. One of these nests hatched on Monday, so it was time to check for stragglers anyway. The other was due to emerge tonight or tomorrow, when the weather is supposed to be bad, and it may be impossible to reach the nest as the sea tends to breach the island. We spent the evening checking these nests and others to make sure we gave these endangered creatures every possible survival advantage.

Turtle hatchlings are tiny beings -- at times tonight, I had 8 or 9 in my hand, as I reached into the nest, boiling with wee loggerheads, as they struggled to reach the beach and the sea. We took these turtles a little closer to the water to let them go, to give them a head start before the tides and waves grew too strong for their miniature flippers. Eighty-four little loggerheads and 20 big (in comparison) greens reached the relative safety of the Gulf of Mexico tonight.



As they headed to the sea, the turtles first found a light on the horizon. Some chose the quarter moon, until it slipped behind the growing cloudbank. Some oriented towards Portofino, a four-towered condo to the west, and some headed east towards the urban glow from Navarre. Town lights reflected off the low-hanging clouds, bouncing light back to the ground, creating an eerie grey ambience in the evening mist. Time after time, I picked up a wayward turtle and turned it towards the south and the Gulf of Mexico. When there are 84 turtles on the beach, that can be a constant job.

For nearly an hour, I watch as turtles crawl over the berm created by the rising tide, flip on their backs and flail, waving one flipper in the air as if asking for help, until they right themselves and crawl seaward once again. Some capricious animals try to crawl back UP the beach, perhaps to the safety of the known world in the nest they've left behind. In the crowd, turtles bump into each other, crawl over the heads and flippers of their siblings and disorient in new directions. It's like watching the Three Stooges as these animals strive to understand this new world above the earth, hearing the crashing waves, smelling the fresh breeze, and learning to crawl.

As soon as they have these lessons down pat, they are rudely awakened by their next, imperative lesson -- they must learn to swim. As the first wave washes over them, nudging them a foot or two back up the beach, it threatens to drag them into a new, watery world. Startled, the turtles seem to shake off their salt-water baptism and search for the horizon once again. A few recalcitrant animals seem even more determined to crawl back to the known elements on land, as if they fear the sea. With gentle prodding and redirection, they eventually learn to swim into an oncoming wavelet at the sea's edge.

What a difficult start to life! I think that's part of why these animals fascinate me so much -- they are so determined to survive, though they face nearly impossible hurdles in their first few days of life. After finally reaching the sea, they must swim for miles, evading predators, until they reach the deep sea currents where they can eat, find shelter in floating rafts of sargassum and random debris, and grow for years until they return to near-shore habitat as juveniles.

I crawled along on my knees for almost an hour, paranoid about the possibility of crushing a turtle under my boots if I walked along the shore. By the time the last turtle reaches the sea, my pants are soaked, there's sand in my ears and bellybutton (don't even ask), and my hair is a tangled mess that I consider cutting when I think of the time it will take to tame it. But, it's all in a days work as a turtle girl.