Senior Project!
Thesis Paper
TED Talk
ACTION PROJECT
I am here in Grenada in the West Indies working with a turtle conservation group for three weeks. I am staying at a house with two other people a few years older than me. We have tasks during the day including cleaning, cooking dinner, preparing research tools for the night and entering the previous nights date into the computer. We are about a mile from the beach where I go every day to swim, eat mangos, and enjoy the weather. The house is pretty sweet, I have my own room and bathroom with a door that goes out to the deck. The deck is a huge tyle area with a roof and two tables where we eat dinner. It faces north to the ocean and the view is incredible of palm trees, islands, and waves. On the other side of the house is the driveway and two big mango trees with very delicious mangos and as many of them as you can eat. On both sides is grass and plants including; Papaya, Coconut, Plum, Cherry, Golden Apple, Watermelon, papaya, oranges, limes, and lemons. All of these are eaten by us every day and the time of the year I am here is perfect for all of those fruits to be ripe. Most of the work during the day is easy and there is a lot of free time to explore the island and find fruits to eat and animals to catch. The majority of the work is done during the night survey.
The night survey is our job from 8pm to 7am every other night in rotation with other workers on the island. The goal of the night survey is to keep track of all the turtles that come on shore. At around 8pm the first group goes down the beach. Each group consists of a supervisor, vet students from the nearby university and volunteers which is what I am. The supervisors are some locals and some visitors who are here for a long time and have mastered the night survey. As we walk down the beach, about a 15 minute walk from one end to the other, we keep an eye out for Leatherback sea turtles coming onto the beach to lay eggs. When we spot a turtle emerging from the water we must wait until she has almost finished digging the whole before moving too close in order to not spook her or make her nervous. When the Leatherback sea turtle comes on shore there is a long process of laying her eggs. First, she finds a suitable place to lay the eggs and begins the “body pitting” process. This entails moving her body and flippers side to side and lowering herself slightly into the sand. After this she begins digging, using her rear flippers she digs one scoop at a time until a hole about 2 feet deep and a foot in diameter. One of the turtles we had last night was missing half of her rear flipper most likely because of a hungry shark which cause her to take nearly twice as long to dig the whole. However the dedicated mother using one flipper was able to dig a nice whole to lay her eggs in. After the laying is done she does what is called the “camouflage”. This is when the mother moves around and throws sand with her flippers in order to move the smell of the eggs around and camouflage the area that the eggs were laid before heading back to the ocean. Once the hole is dug the research team moves closer to the turtle and examines her for any parasites or injuries as well as write down the tag numbers. Each turtle has a metal tag on each back flipper as well as a microchip tag in the right shoulder. The tags are used to keep track of the turtles and know where they came from if they show up on beaches of different islands. The reason for both the metal and the microchip tags is that many places do not have the resources to buy microchip scanners and the metal tags allow them to still track the turtles. If they are missing any tags the will be replaced after she has laid her eggs. As the mother begins laying the eggs one person lays in the sand and holds the flipper back while the other counts the eggs with a clicker. There are two types of eggs these turtles lay, fertile and infertile. The fertile eggs are large perfectly round eggs resembling a cue ball. The infertile eggs are smaller and can be round or longer strange shapes. We record the data of the fertile and infertile eggs and as the mother begins to cover them up we leave a popsicle stick with the tag number of the turtle and the date in order to confirm what nest it is when excavating after the eggs have hatched. The turtles can lay anywhere from 50 to 150 eggs however on occasion is will be less or more. We then mark the nest with a rope and wait for the mother to camouflage her nest. Once the mother has laid the eggs we measure the length and width of the carapace (upper shell of the turtle) so when she comes back we can see growth rates in the turtles. We continue to do this to every turtle we see throughout the night. When a turtle lays her eggs to close to the vegetation or the ocean that is a problem. A nest too close to the water will not incubate correctly if waver wash over the nest too much. A nest too close to the vegetation will be interfered with by roots creating problems for the hatching turtles making it to the surface of the sand. When this happens we do a relocation. As the turtle lays her eggs we pick them up and put them in a bucket with a sandy bottom. We cover the bucket so the wind does not dry the eggs out and we dig a new nest somewhere safe for the eggs and put them in there. In the morning, we come back to all the nests and measure the distance from the marking rope to the markers placed along the edge of the whole beach as well as the vegetation line and the high tide line. This is so the nest are not marked because of poachers but can be found using the measurements later on.
The night survey is our job from 8pm to 7am every other night in rotation with other workers on the island. The goal of the night survey is to keep track of all the turtles that come on shore. At around 8pm the first group goes down the beach. Each group consists of a supervisor, vet students from the nearby university and volunteers which is what I am. The supervisors are some locals and some visitors who are here for a long time and have mastered the night survey. As we walk down the beach, about a 15 minute walk from one end to the other, we keep an eye out for Leatherback sea turtles coming onto the beach to lay eggs. When we spot a turtle emerging from the water we must wait until she has almost finished digging the whole before moving too close in order to not spook her or make her nervous. When the Leatherback sea turtle comes on shore there is a long process of laying her eggs. First, she finds a suitable place to lay the eggs and begins the “body pitting” process. This entails moving her body and flippers side to side and lowering herself slightly into the sand. After this she begins digging, using her rear flippers she digs one scoop at a time until a hole about 2 feet deep and a foot in diameter. One of the turtles we had last night was missing half of her rear flipper most likely because of a hungry shark which cause her to take nearly twice as long to dig the whole. However the dedicated mother using one flipper was able to dig a nice whole to lay her eggs in. After the laying is done she does what is called the “camouflage”. This is when the mother moves around and throws sand with her flippers in order to move the smell of the eggs around and camouflage the area that the eggs were laid before heading back to the ocean. Once the hole is dug the research team moves closer to the turtle and examines her for any parasites or injuries as well as write down the tag numbers. Each turtle has a metal tag on each back flipper as well as a microchip tag in the right shoulder. The tags are used to keep track of the turtles and know where they came from if they show up on beaches of different islands. The reason for both the metal and the microchip tags is that many places do not have the resources to buy microchip scanners and the metal tags allow them to still track the turtles. If they are missing any tags the will be replaced after she has laid her eggs. As the mother begins laying the eggs one person lays in the sand and holds the flipper back while the other counts the eggs with a clicker. There are two types of eggs these turtles lay, fertile and infertile. The fertile eggs are large perfectly round eggs resembling a cue ball. The infertile eggs are smaller and can be round or longer strange shapes. We record the data of the fertile and infertile eggs and as the mother begins to cover them up we leave a popsicle stick with the tag number of the turtle and the date in order to confirm what nest it is when excavating after the eggs have hatched. The turtles can lay anywhere from 50 to 150 eggs however on occasion is will be less or more. We then mark the nest with a rope and wait for the mother to camouflage her nest. Once the mother has laid the eggs we measure the length and width of the carapace (upper shell of the turtle) so when she comes back we can see growth rates in the turtles. We continue to do this to every turtle we see throughout the night. When a turtle lays her eggs to close to the vegetation or the ocean that is a problem. A nest too close to the water will not incubate correctly if waver wash over the nest too much. A nest too close to the vegetation will be interfered with by roots creating problems for the hatching turtles making it to the surface of the sand. When this happens we do a relocation. As the turtle lays her eggs we pick them up and put them in a bucket with a sandy bottom. We cover the bucket so the wind does not dry the eggs out and we dig a new nest somewhere safe for the eggs and put them in there. In the morning, we come back to all the nests and measure the distance from the marking rope to the markers placed along the edge of the whole beach as well as the vegetation line and the high tide line. This is so the nest are not marked because of poachers but can be found using the measurements later on.