Stranded Truck and Stranded Turtle

Yesterday started as a day off for Steve.  It didn't end that way...

I started the morning with a bagel at the computer when I noticed lightening to the north.  A bad sign, so I checked out the local radar and it showed a growing storm northeast of Ossabaw.  I decided not to get stuck in a storm with the Mule, so I moved all the gear to the truck.  Soon I was heading south toward the marsh to cut west to the beach.  After half an hour of NPR news, I arrived at the beach, dark clouds nearing.  I patrolled North Beach and didn't find a single crawl.  Where are the turtles?  I returned south to check the nests and by the time I finished realized how long it took me to do nothing.  I hit the tidal creek at low tide and decided to cross the inch of water to patrol North Middle.  Typically this beach takes no time, but as my luck would have it, there were two nests, both needed relocation.  The first was a normal nest, just too low.  The second nest, I soon found, was depredated by a hog.  It was 3 meters from the nest Steve found depredated a few days ago.  We now officially have a nuisance hog that needs to be taken care of for fear of what it will continue to do.  Digging through the mess I found 51 intact eggs, and an estimated 49 eggs lost, though that number is sure to be lower than the actual amount.  It took a while to dig through the sand to find all the egg shells and relocate the eggs.  By the time I returned to the tidal creek, it was 2 hours after low tide and the creek was too deep.  I felt bad calling Steve on his day off, but I was stranded.  He left the house in the Mule and I began unloading all the gear and took the truck to the old road to hide it in the woods for safe keeping.  Soon, Steve and I met up, loaded the stuff onto the Mule, and went south.

I patrolled South Middle, and found a nest.  The turtle did an excellent job hiding the eggs under lots of sand and dead brush, which kept me guessing for a while as I probed into ghost crabs holes and soft sand.  I knew they were there and kept at it, and eventually had an egg in my hand and the nest screened off.  I finished the beach and headed back to Steve, over an hour later.  I found Steve sleeping on the Mule - he must have been waiting for a long time.  As I loaded my tools onto the bed, I was startled as I saw a dead sea turtle in a bucket.  Steve didn't have any nests down there, but he did have a stranded juvenile Kemp's Ridley.  I decided to wait to look at it until we got home.

We arrived home, unpacked the Mule, and started working up the turtle.  It was very emaciated, the worst we've ever seen, and also the smallest turtle we've ever seen.  It's measurements: Straight length (notch - tip): 27.9cm, Straight width: 26.2cm.  Steve stored it in the spare shed freezer and we'll do a necropsy at our next Mark/Adam visit to possibly learn more about its cause of death.  Since it's notably thin (email us if you'd like to see more pictures), the contents in the GI tract, or lack thereof, can shed some light on its diet.  We'll also collect its left humerus and a biopsy sample for research.

Yesterday afternoon we learned that our boss, Mark, will be headed back to the Gulf for more turtle research and recovery.  The team of sea turtle researchers are trying to locate turtles in the convergence zones where seaweed collects and turtles live.  It's also the place where the oil accumulates.  One of the cleanup methods is to burn this oil, and therefore the turtles are killed.  One L.A. Times article has finally surfaced, with pictures.

Last night Steve and I had homemade pizza dinner with a group of people with the UGA Marine Extension Teacher Workshop.  We learned that the teachers spent two weeks on Skidaway Island doing coastal research that culminated with a 2 day trip to Ossabaw.  After dinner we watched a presentation from David Nadeau about various fish research protects he completed in the Florida Keys and the Bahamas.  Needless to say, but our interest was sparked in possible work-related research jobs we should be looking for.  Scientists always want people to do the data collection, and with our SCUBA and Coast Guard Certs, we think we could give it a shot.  

Today was a slow day.  We recovered the truck with the super low tide and were home before lunch.  Only one nest and a few false crawls.  Our hunters went searching for the predator hog on North Middle.  We were told that there's a huge hog on the south end but no shots could be fired.   We did have a strange false crawl on North Beach.  The turtle walked all around the dunes, in circles, this way and that, for a long time and long distance.  I don't know why she never nested because the entire area she crawled was perfect.  I bet she was exhausted by the time she made it back to the water.  Another moment to mention was that I saw 30-40 wood storks in a small salt pond on North Middle.  So many wood storks in such a small pond all feeding.  I could hear their beaks snatch food as they moved through the water.  They made the bike ride worth it.  The rest of our day was lazy, and we took naps for the first time in a while.  Right now we're eagerly anticipating a storm.  It hasn't rained here in a long time and we want the beaches erased from all the tire, human and animal tracks.  For some reason the storms never make it here, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.