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Research digest
New research analyzing a decade of fishery data shows nearly 1 in 5 leatherbacks are released with dangerous amounts of fishing gear still attached, with Gulf waters showing the highest risk.
How do leatherback sea turtles respond to the kind of impulsive underwater sounds generated by seismic surveys — the same type of activity that precedes offshore wind farm construction?
After laying several nests earlier in the season, a team of biologists has encountered and tagged a rare leatherback sea turtle that is nesting along Sanibel and Captiva Islands. She can now be tracked in real time as she travels the southwest Florida coast.
After almost two years and traveling more than 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) Isla, an endangered leatherback sea turtle with a transmitter was once again encountered by researchers on her nesting beach at Jupiter Island, Florida.
The leatherbacks are here! EARLY!! The first nest of the year was documented on February 6th - the earliest on record in Florida.
We're fast approaching the peak of leatherback nesting and wanted to give you a quick update. We have encountered leatherbacks a total of 182 times.
11 days after we attached her transmitter, Kailani returned to nest again. For those that have been following along, we attached Kailani's transmitter in March.
It's been a bit of a slow start for us. We had multiple ATV issues pop up within just two days and out survey team got cut short until we could get them repaired.
Our surveys started about a week ago and we've had an exciting start to the season! Over the weekend we attached a transmitter to a turtle named Kailani.
In less than two months, our team will once again be on the beach conducting research on Florida's endangered leatherback sea turtles. Our lead biologists have been doing this work for nearly 20 years!
It's World Sea Turtle Day so we thought we'd give you a season update - finally! These girls have been keeping us busy! We have passed the 300 mark! We've now had a total of 316 encounters this year.
Ever wanted to chat with a sea turtle? Send a text message to Isla the leatherback and see what she is up to!
We've been having lots of fun on the beach this past week. On Saturday, May 5th, we attached a transmitter to one of our nesting leatherbacks as part of a new research project that we're conducting in collaboration with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
As of last night we reached 150 encounters this season! We've had 27 encounters this week alone. We have seen a total of 78 individuals and 19 of those were new, untagged turtles.
This week our team passed 100 leatherback encounters for the season. We are currently at 114 encounters and the peak of season is still a few weeks away. We have seen a total of 71 individuals. 15 of those were new, untagged turtles.
Today marks Earth Day and we thought it would be an appropriate time to give you a season update. The team at Florida Leatherbacks Inc. has been so excited for such a great year.
It's only April 6th but we're already up to 37 leatherback encounters! That could be a sign of a good year! At this point last year, we had just 12! Several of our turtles have now been seen more than once. Rosa is already on her fourth nest!
It's the beginning of the 2018 nesting season and the girls are here! We've been anxiously awaiting the start of this nesting season after several low years in a row. Nest numbers have dropped for unknown reasons around Florida since about 2014.
UPDATE: Palm Beach Gardens police have located the ATV's. Thanks to the hard work of the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department and a neighbor with a good eye who had seen our posts, our ATVs have been recovered by PBG PD!
Well it has been a while! Sorry for the lack of updates but the season always keeps us busy. Last night marked our 50th leatherback encounter of the year. Sadly, it's been quite slow out there.
You can now hear short updates on our research in near real-time on your Amazon Alexa enabled devices.
We're so excited for the 2017 research season! There have been a handful of nests reported in and around our nightly survey area in the last three days. We are getting all of our gear prepared to start regular surveys this weekend.
The 2017 field season has begun! ATVs are ready, gear has been purchased, database system upgraded and most importantly; the turtles have arrived! We now have two nests along our primary study area at Jupiter Island.
Since our team of volunteers studies sea turtles on remote beaches as far 100 kilometers apart we have developed a system that simplifies data entry and communication.
The team of volunteers at Florida Leatherbacks Inc. is gearing up for the 2017 leatherback research season and we need your help! We've launched a 30-day campaign to raise $9,500 to purchase equipment for the upcoming season.
Well we've come to our least favorite time of year. Our nightly leatherback surveys are over. Despite a relatively low nesting year in our area, we had a great season. We had 214 total leatherback encounters this year.
What is it like to do what we do? We thought we'd show you! We shot this time video lapse over the course of three hours as we surveyed for leatherbacks under the full moon.
Although the season seemed to be coming to an end, we were pleasantly surprised to find four leatherbacks while surveying last night. It was an absolutely gorgeous night. The water was eerily flat and perfectly clear.
The team at Florida Leatherbacks would love it if every day was World Sea Turtle Day! It is to us. We are getting ready for our last week of leatherback surveys here in south Florida and hoping a few girls have stuck around for us.
We are reaching that time of year when the leatherbacks have begun to move north in search of foraging grounds and the nest numbers have dropped off pretty dramatically. We've seen just 4 turtles in the last five days.
Last night at around 1:00am, we got the familiar and consistent beep-beep-beep-beepbeep-beep of Shehyn's VHF tag. Her satellite transmitter led us to St.
Shehyn stayed just off Hutchinson Island last night as we followed her around for hours. Last night wasn't her night so we're back out tonight.
Shehyn is almost off our beach! She is 17 km away from her last nest. Tonight could be the night that she returns to nest again. It is now day 8 since we put her transmitter on.
Shehyn is transmitting beautifully and heading our way! Since we attached her transmitter one week ago, she has travelled 236 km during her journey to the Melbourne Beach area and back toward the nesting beach.
Aside from tracking Shehyn, we're still busy on the beach each night. Last night we found 5 more leatherbacks. That seems to be about average along our regular 12 mile stretch.
Shehyn, our tracked leatherback, has made the turn south and is headed back our way. Leatherbacks that nest along our survey beaches typically follow the same pattern. We know this from years of looking at satellite data.
Two days ago, FLI researchers attached a transmitter to a nesting leatherback to monitor her movements during the internesting period. Leatherbacks nest up to 9 times in a season and typically nest every 9-11 days.
Last night, Niki, one of our permitted volunteers and a staff member at Ecological Associates was conducting some monitoring on Hutchinson Island and ran into an old friend.
Sorry for the lack of updates but we've certainly been busy. In the first 3 weeks of May we've had 74 leatherback encounters! That's despite the fact that it's been a fairly slow nesting season.
Many people ask why we bother to give names to our turtles. While it may not seem scientifically necessary, it is actually extremely beneficial. Giving our turtles names gives them a history and a story.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night brought in 16 turtles. We had a pretty good mixture of old and new faces. There were five turtles each on Friday and Saturday night and six more last night.
With a small cold front moving through Florida and temperatures dipping into the 50s, we're adding on the layers. While not cold by most standards, temps in the 50s while driving on a windy, humid beach can bring on the shivers.
Over the past few nights we have encountered four or five leatherback turtles a night and the loggerheads have been really making their presence known! Last night there were probably about thirty loggerheads on our study area.
As we head into May, we thought we would give you a bit of an update on March and April.
We found eight more leatherbacks last night in what turned out to be a really fun night on the beach. Busy turtle nights always keep us awake. They kept Liz awake at least.
We had seven more turtles on the beach last night. One of these was a new turtle from this year and another girl, Parker, who we tagged in 2014, was back for the third time this year.
We can't believe it's been over a month since we started surveying. Even though it's a fairly slow leatherback season, we're seeing quite a few turtles and it's been a lot of fun. We saw five turtles over the last two nights.
We're just wrapping up a fantastic night. The conditions were just about as perfect as they could be. The moon was full which illuminated the beach and the tide was extremely low which made for great driving conditions.
Continuing a tradition that began waaay back in 2001, Its time to announce the arrival of the first Loggerhead sea turtles to appear on our study area.
We owe a huge thank you to our supportive friends and family for the items purchased from our Amazon Wish List to help us with the 2016 research season. We're overwhelmed by the support and we couldn't do it without you.
Last night we were thrilled to encounter a girl that hasn't been around for a while. She's also the biggest turtle we've ever encountered! Tagged back in 2005 and seen again in 2007, she's been absent for 9 years.
We are extremely excited to have had our proposal chosen for funding from the Marine Turtle Grants Program.
Well we've had some good nights and some slow nights out there. After a five-turtle night last Wednesday, we got skunked on Thursday and Friday.
Early Thursday morning we encountered our first new turtle of the year. Unlike about 60% of the turtles we encounter each season, she had no tags from previous years.
It's one of our favorite times of year - the team from the Canadian Sea Turtle Network was in South Florida for a visit and we got to spend the evening catching up and swapping turtle stories.
We're already a huge fan of TOMS shoes. The TOMS company helps by giving shoes, sight, water, safe births, and bullying prevention around the world. But through their latest campaign , they've partnered with Oceana to help save sea turtles!
One of our volunteers, Valerie, was recently honored by the Jupiter Island Public Safety Department for her role in apprehending a group of illegal immigrants that landed on the beach at Jupiter Island while she was surveying.
We are so fortunate to be attending the International Sea Turtle Symposium in Lima, Peru. Several hundred researchers from around the world are here to talk about our favorite topic - turtles!
No, really. It is actually a big check! Several members of the team at Florida Leatherbacks Inc. recently accepted a donation from the National Save the Sea Turtle Foundation (NSTSTF) to support our study this upcoming research season.
Here in Florida, the official start of sea turtle nesting season begins on March 1st. We are now really busy prepping our gear and working on developing a new data management system for the crew to use in the field.
What tools do we use for this study? A lot! We use Honda All Terrain Vehicles (ATV's) to patrol our entire survey area. Many thousands of kilometers are driven each summer and we have found that that Honda has been our most reliable ATV.
During one of our nightly patrols, our team was very excited to encounter a nesting leatherback with a large Monel flipper tag on one of rear rear flippers.
The PAT tag that was attached to Katia has now been gathering and relaying data to us for 145 days and the battery is just now starting to show signs of failure.
Since the tag was released from Katia on 10/15/15 it has transmitted almost 10,000 messages via its small antenna. The latest message shows that the battery is still OK and it may be able to transmit for a few more days.
The Argos satellite system continues to relay data from the tag that Katia was towing. This tag is programmed to send as much data as it can before the small lithium battery is exhausted.
This morning, the PAT tag that Katia has been towing around the Atlantic Ocean has relayed data to indicate that it has been floating at the surface for three days without diving.
Katia has begun relaying regular data once again! One of the reasons we believed for the lack of data was that she was simply moving too fast and it seems that that was indeed the case.
Katia's transmitter has relayed a few more data points over the past 24 hours. The transmissions indicate that the tag is still attached to Katia and she is behaving normally.
After almost ten days of missing data, we finally received a tiny "blip" of data from Katia. During one of the transmission windows yesterday, her tag sent a small packet of data which likely means the tag is still attached to her.
We have not received any data from Katia in a few days now. One possible reason for the lack of data may be that she is simply moving too fast.
Katia has just left the relatively shallow waters of the continental shelf and is now passing over Hydrographers Canyon which drops from about 600 feet deep to well over 6,000 feet deep.
Katia continues to head northeast and has now made it past Nantucket, Massachusetts. Since leaving Jupiter Island back in June, Katia has traveled more than 3,000 kilometers and is located approximately 1700 kilometers from Jupiter Island.
I will admit that we were a bit concerned as there was very little data relayed this past week, but all is well!
On August 25th, Katia began moving north and is now located off Cape May New Jersey. This track is very similar to several turtles we have tracked in the past.
Here in Florida, we are waiting to see how Tropical Storm Erika will affect the beaches along the coastline.
The leatherback turtle we are tracking is currently located about 77 kilometers east of Virginia Beach. This area has seen an uptick in leatherback sea turtle strandings in the past month. Lets hope Katia stays safe.
Katia is still located about 55 kilometers southeast of Wallops Island in Virginia.
Katia is heading north once again. She is now located about 50 kilometers southeast of Assateague Island in Virginia.
As the 2015 field season comes to a close, we will begin to analyze and present data collected.This year we deployed GPS recording devices and IMU data loggers on three leatherbacks as they traveled the coastline between nests.
It has now been 50 days since we attached a small tracking device to a leatherback named Katia on Jupiter Island, Florida.
What a fantastic night! There was an offshore lightning storm and quite a few meteors to keep us entertained, but there were plenty of turtles too. There were eleven leatherbacks and much to our surprise, we saw a nesting green turtle!
It was a busy night for all of our surveyors tonight! The turtles kept coming all night. We always say that "when there's one, there's more," meaning that they tend to nest at the same time.
We can't resist an old joke. For years, we've brought you the news in a silly manner, so here it is - If you heard the buzzing of chainsaws and thunder of falling trees coming from the beaches last night, that's because, you guessed it - the loggers…
The team at Geographic Consulting monitors the nesting leatherback population at Sandy Point, St. Croix, USVI. Historically, Sandy Point has always seen more females nesting each year than we do along our survey area.
Nest #3 for the 2015 season was found this morning just south of us. As we start preparing, we wanted to share this great story and video footage with you.
There was a second nest on our survey area yesterday. The girls are here! We're getting ready to begin surveys as the 2015 leatherback season approaches its official start. Get ready for an exciting year!
The first leatherback sea turtle nest in the State of Florida was recorded today, and it was found on our nighttime survey area! The nest was found on Singer Island and was marked for protection by our friend and collaborator Debbie Sobel.