Episode 42 – Turtle Tales

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 41: Turtle Tales 

 

[intro music, Oyster Waltz] 

 

Matthew Godfrey: Welcome to Seas the Day, a podcast from the Duke Marine Lab. I am Matthew Godfrey, adjunct faculty member at the marine lab, and this episode is part of the sea turtle series. It was made by students participating in the sea turtle biology and conservation travel course. These students include:  

Jessica Ozog 

Erika Kraabel 

Chloe Jessrdan 

Jessshua Meza-Fidalgo 

Michael Vrbanac 

Britney Pepper 

Rachel Hilt 

India Mackinson 

Julia Plasynski 

Kaylee McKinzie 

I turn to them now as they share their experiences of traveling to the Caribbean to work with existing sea turtle conservation and research projects. 

 

Julia: Hi everyone, my name is Julia Plasynski. 

Britney: And my name is Britney Pepper, and we’re masters students in the Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles class at the Duke University Marine Lab. 

Julia: The first part of our class started the day after our Master’s Project presentations finished. We flew from the Raleigh-Durham Airport to San Juan, Puerto Rico Saturday morning. 

Britney: After we got to San Juan, we took a ferry to Culebra, which is an island to the west of mainland Puerto Rico.  

Julia: Culebra was beautiful and we had the chance to stay on the Culebra National Wildlife Refuge – which is part of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Refuge System.  

Britney: During our time in Culebra, we had the opportunity of helping Carlos Diez and his team with their sea turtle research.  

Julia: The first day we arrived, we just got settled in to our bunk beds, explored the nearby area, and Britney even tried to chase a rooster- 

Britney: Well to be fair, that rooster had it coming.  

Julia: Even with the roosters and bunk beds, I really enJessyed living there. 

Britney: Right? Our class dynamic was really shaped on the refuge and now, I could not imagine waking up at 5 am with anyone else.  

Julia: Speaking about waking up at 5 am… I miss the sea turtle patrols we did in Culebra.  

Britney: Same! One of the moments that stood out the most to me was on the second day of the trip when we hiked down to do a beach patrol on Brava Beach – which is on the north side of Culebra.  

Julia: That was our first time seeing the actual tracks of a leatherback making her nest – now I am 5’8, but the body and flipper imprints were literally bigger than me! You could tell that leatherbacks are the largest sea turtles by how wide their front flipper patterns are! Our instructor Kelly, told us that they can grow up to 6 feet long and weigh 2000 lbs.  

Britney: She also told us that leatherbacks like high energy beaches, which is why they nest on Brava Beach. When the conditions are right, they can lay up to 8 clutches of eggs in one season.  

Julia: Britney and how many eggs can be in one clutch?  

Britney: A leatherback clutch size is approximately EIGHTY eggs! 

Julia: 80? I would LOVE to see 80 leatherback hatchlings, but although that sounds like a lot.. We know it’s important for leatherbacks to produce large amounts of offspring – since they are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List.  

Britney: Right. Also, during our patrol, we learned how to figure out the turtle’s entrance and exit points in the nest, based on flipper direction.  

Julia: and using the entrance and exit points, you can find the body pit AND an estimated guess of where the eggs are laid underneath the sand  

Britney: The eggs, on average, are 76 cm deep, which is about 2 and a half feet deep. Once the sea turtle lays her eggs, she covers them with sand and pats the sand down, before returning to the ocean.  

Julia: We were lucky enough to see more than one leatherback nest on the beach.. But sometimes false crawls occur… so understanding how to read a sea turtle nest and markings is important  

Britney: Knowing the differences between a nest and a false crawl can save researchers lots of time when looking for eggs. A false crawl is basically when a sea turtle comes up on the beach, but leaves without laying eggs.  

Julia: Sometimes the conditions aren’t perfect or the sea turtle was distributed when trying to find a suitable nest site, so these false crawls can be pretty common.  

Britney: I am not sure about you Julia, but after our mornings of sea turtle patrol… I feel pretty confident that I can find nests and read crawl patterns. 

Julia: Yeah… I am basically an expert now.  

Britney: We are also pretty good at finding Wilson’s Plover nests now too. 

Julia: Yeah! Those birds were so cute and their little nests were even cuter.  

Britney: Finding the nests – sea turtles and Wilson’s Plovers – was such a great way to spend mornings in Puerto Rico.  

Julia: and even though the hikes to the beach were tricky, I loved spending so much time outdoors.  

Britney: Yeah the hikes! After we searched for the nests on the beach, we had to hike back to the car.  

Julia: During our hike, we were exposed to diverse vegetation and other wildlife – like the little garden snake. 

Britney: don’t forget the horses and chickens that were grazing nearby too! 

Julia: Yeah & I think my favorite plant was seeing the mango tree.. 

Britney: Oh yes! We saw a lot of mango trees during our trip. We also saw this native tree that had red peeling bark. 

Julia: Kelly was telling us that it’s called the gumbo-limbo tree! 

Britney: Yes! She said the locals Jesskingly call it the tourist tree because the bark looks like sunburnt tourists! 

Julia: Haha we definitely made some really great memories and learned a lot during our trip! 

Britney: Yeah I agree! We had a lot of fun and this was a great experience for us! 

 

Chloe: Hi, I’m Chloe and I’m an undergrad at Wittenberg in Springfield, Ohio. I’m studying environmental science and marine biology and am spending my spring semester here at the Duke Marine Lab. 

Josh: And I’m Josh. I’m a 2nd year Coastal Environmental Management masters student here at the marine lab.  For the first half of our field class we traveled to Cuelbra, an island off the east coast of Puerto Rico. We were there to work with Carlos Diez and his research team from the Puerto Rican DRNA, or Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. Carlos and his team have been conducting sea turtle research in Puerto Rico for decades and we were there to help them with in-water surveys for juvenile green sea turtles. Most of this in-water work involved catching the turtles in a 200m long net, and that’s what we will be focusing on for our segment.  

Chloe: Our first task was to inspect the net; we removed any tangles and repaired any large holes. We then loaded the net onto a DRNA boat, and boarded a separate boat, to head to the field. That first afternoon we headed to Mosquito Bay for a test run. This bay seldom has sea turtles so it was the perfect place for the students to learn. The net boat deployed the net, and once it was set, the students jumped into the water in pairs and got to work. 

Our Jessb was to patrol the net and alert the research team of any turtles, or other wildlife, that became entangled in the net. The entire time we were in the water we stayed with our partners, as a precaution, with the two of us being a team. We slowly circled the net watching for any signs of life. As expected, we didn’t catch any turtles in Mosquito Bay.  

Snorkeling the net for sea turtles in Mosquito Bay was my first time snorkeling. I was pretty nervous and intimidated since everyone else had been snorkeling multiple times prior to our trip. I didn’t want to hold anyone back with my lack of experience and I also just didn’t know what to expect. I figured I would somehow mess something up so I was afraid to be embarrassed as well!  Everyone was super nice and supportive of me before going in. I was given great advice and was comforted a lot as well. Everyone was really excited for me that it was my first time snorkeling which was sweet and made me feel a lot better.  Before going in the water I remember I was really scared that I would hit my head while falling back into the water to get in, and I know a few others were a little worried as well which made me feel a little better too. But we were the last pair to go in so I got to watch everyone else do it, and seeing them not hit their heads gave me more confidence. When I got in the water I was so happy and excited to finally be doing it. My first look down was a great feeling even though it was just seagrass. I thought it was so cool and knowing I was snorkeling in Puerto Rico felt surreal. 

I had a lot of trouble at first figuring out how to maneuver my fins, I know I looked like a hot mess. It felt weird at first like my brain couldn’t process how to swim with them on for a second but then after a minute or two I started getting the hang of it. I was worried about keeping up but Josh was super nice about it being my first time snorkeling and understood I needed to get the hang of it first. After a little while Nilda (one of the researchers) came up beside me and pointed out some things I was doing wrong while snorkeling. She gave me advice and was very nice about it. She had told me to not bend my knees so much while swimming because that would tire me out faster. She kind of showed me how to move my legs and also said I had been doing a decent Jessb for it being my first time. I was so glad she came to help me because it felt nice knowing I was being looked out for and that she cared to help me. Her advice was great and very helpful, and snorkeling felt much smoother for me after doing what she told me to do. It took a few tries but after a bit it clicked for me and I noticed the difference.  

Josh: I’ll interject real quickly to say I got the same feedback on my technique. I wasn’t intentionally letting Chloe flounder around. 

Chloe: I had never been in such clear water so it amazed me how well I could see beneath me and far out on the sides of me. Seeing fish was so fun since I had never experienced anything like that, and I remember thinking how beautiful everything I was seeing was. Even though I didn’t see any turtles I was still very satisfied and having a great time. 

Josh: On our second day we traveled to the island of Culebrita, or little Cuelbra, a smaller island off Culebra’s coast. After 2 deployments, we caught 10 green turtles, which were brought on board one of the boats to be measured, weighed, and given a physical health assessment, and then tagged before being released. We also got to see some other really cool marine life including stingrays, spotted eagle rays, barracudas, remoras, and even a small shark. 

For our final day of net work, we traveled to Manglar Bay. This area tends to see a lot more turtle activity so as soon as the net deployment started we were in the water and on watch, and it wasn’t very long until we were catching turtles. Unlike Mosquito or Turtle Bays, Manglar tends to see older juveniles that are about ready to leave Puerto Rico and migrate to new feeding grounds where they’ll continue to grow and develop into adults. The size differences in the turtles was pretty apparent, especially when Carlos asked me to help get some of the turtles into the research boats. These turtles were big enough that removing them from the nets while in the water would have been incredibly challenging. So after making sure that Chloe was linked up with another pair of students, I climbed aboard one of the boats to help Matthew, Kelly, and one of the boat Captains, Juan, to get some of these larger turtles into the boats.  

Much like the day before in Culebrita, after we had a full boat of turtles the research team removed the net from the water, and we conducted our data collection and turtle tagging. A group of local high school students came to help and to observe, and it was really cool to see the outreach work that the researchers were doing with these local students.}}} 

Chloe: Patrolling the net and working the turtles was absolutely exhausting, but it was an incredible experience beyond what we could have hoped for. 

 

Michael: Hi, I’m Michael, a third-year biology undergrad from Wittenberg University.  

Jess: And I’m Jess, a second-year Coastal Environmental Management master’s student at Duke. We’ll be recapping our last field day in Puerto Rico, when we were snorkeling for hawksbill sea turtles near Tamarindo beach on the western side of Culebra.  

Michael: That’s right. This was definitely one of my favorite days on the trip.  

Jess: Yes, same here. So, here’s how this day went:   

Jess: After our morning beach patrols that day, we packed up all our gear and snacks and headed out to the dock by 9am. Due to the location of our field house on the eastern side of the island, we had a scenic boat ride along the northern coast of Culebra.   

Michael: We got to see the two beaches we had been hiking to for morning patrols (Brava and Resaca) from the water. When we got to the Tamarindo area, it was definitely different than the previous snorkeling spots we had been to. While we snorkeled around seagrass beds all the other days, this spot was a coral reef.   

Jess: This location is a known foraging ground for hawksbill turtles, where they rest and forage amongst the coral. The goal was to hand-capture as many hawksbills as possible and then bring them to the boat for measurements, tagging, and photos. If we saw any green sea turtles, we captured them too.   

Michael: The area we wanted to survey was quite long, so we divided it into two shorter sections. The group was also divided into two smaller groups, and each was assigned to a section. We would get in a line perpendicular to the beach with about 10 yards between each person. Then we snorkeled parallel to the beach until we reached the end of the section. That way, we were able to search the entire area for sea turtles. It took about an hour. After we finished the first section, the groups switched locations and we did it again. 

Jess: From the first survey, we got 4 turtles – 1 hawksbill and 3 green. Unfortunately, we came up empty handed during the second survey. Our group didn’t spot any of the turtles on the first survey.   

Michael: After all surveys were completed and the turtles were on the boat, we measured the turtles, tagged the untagged ones, and released them back into the water.  

Jess: When all the turtles were back in the water, we went back to the starting point to relocate a large boat anchor that had been left on the coral reef.   

Michael: A few members of the research team went and recovered the anchor. They documented it and were going to try to find the boat that left it there.   

Michael: I really enjoyed snorkeling over the coral reef and we were able to see a whole bunch of different animals. I think the coolest thing I saw was a pretty large nurse shark swimming through the reef.   

Jess: The nurse was super cool – it was my first time seeing one in the wild. I also saw one of my favorite fish – the boxfish.   

Jess:  After our surveys, we got to get back in the water for some more leisurely snorkeling. Some students went to check out a coral reef that had previously been treated for stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). We also went to an area with seagrass beds and got to swim around with all the foraging green turtles.   

Michael: It was definitely cool to see the turtles doing their normal thing. This was such a great way to end our time on Culebra. Shoutout to the research team, they were awesome.   

 

 

Rachel: Hi Everyone, I am Rachel Hilt. I am a second-year Master’s student at the Duke Marine Lab. 

Erika: And I am Erika, and I am a sophomore majoring in biology at Duke.   

Rachel: We are going to talk a little bit about our experience doing night field work on St. Croix. On April 20th, our class arrived to the beautiful island of St. Croix to begin sea turtle patrol on Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge. It is a two-mile stretch of sandy beach on the West End of the island. While we were there, the beach was actually closed to the public. From April through August, it is closed to the public entirely. We did 3 nights of sea turtle patrol in total.  Erika, what was beach patrol like?  

Erika: Our first night we set up at the refuge around 7 and picked a spot a ways down from the turtle watch group. TurtleWatch is a program for St Croix students to volunteer and learn about sea turtles by helping with night patrols. The general routine is that every 30 to 45 minutes, a couple people would walk in the north and south direction on the beach, keeping an eye on the shoreline for nesting leatherbacks. As the night progressed, Kelly would do a few extra patrols with the UTV. In between walks we talked, learned to whistle and played trivia with whatever random facts we could remember. But mostly on the first night after the packed day of travel, we were taking little naps on the beach. On the first and last night we didn’t have any visitors but on the second night we got lucky and saw a nesting leatherback.  

Rachel: I was immediately struck by just how large the turtle was! Over the last couple of days that we saw leatherback tracks I had been trying to picture in my head just how big the animal was, but nothing could prepare me for the sheer size of her! It was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen, and definitely worth the sleep deprivation. 

Erika: I was in awe especially because of how much we had learned about leatherbacks, it was just amazing to see one in person. I also felt surprisingly emotional, (it was so ancient and personal). Also, I don’t know what I was expecting but the noises she was making also kind of caught me off guard as well.  Once we got over the initial shock of seeing the turtle, we got to work with data collection. 

Rachel: After everyone settled into their initial excitement over seeing the turtle it was time to get to work! Our classmate Kaylee filled out a data sheet with the GPS location of the eggs, measurements of the location of the nest relative to the benchmarkers, and measurements across her carapace and tail length. While she was laying her eggs, I reached down to her left hind flipper and read off the tag number. It turns out this turtle was a regular to Sandy Point and her name was Snickers – she had also laid a nest 10 days prior to the one we were seeing now. We also took photos of some cuts and perforations she had on her body. By the time our group reached Snickers, she was almost done nesting and was laying what are called spacer eggs which are just eggs that don’t have any yolk in them, just albumen. Because her nest was pretty shallow and too close to the tide line, we relocated the eggs to a safer stretch of beach.   

Erika: After finding a better spot for the nest, Kelly dug a new nest and gave us her best Leatherback impression. I then lay down in the sand to gently put all 80 of her eggs into the new nest with the spacer eggs on top. Personally, I loved how hands-on all the fieldwork we did was. One of the reasons I took the course was for the field experience and I feel like we got a great overall view of what sea turtle field work is like from our experiences and from guest lectures. I think my sleep schedule is more suited to being up early, but I would happily stay up more nights to have the experience we did.  

Rachel: I would say I definitely agree, I loved the hands on field work. It was so much fun and even though it’s very physically rigorous, it is definitely worth it for how exciting it is to see these animals up close. I have to say I really enjoyed both aspects of the field work for different reasons! I loved being out on the water with the turtles during the day, but getting to actually see the turtles nest at night and be under the stars was really special. 

 

Kaylee: Hey everybody! My name is Kaylee, and I’m a second-year undergraduate at Duke University. I’m currently in the Conservation of Sea Turtles class because it’s my favorite marine animal, the leatherback sea turtle is, and I want to take part in preserving the species!  

India: Hi! I’m India, I’m a Masters of Environmental Management student at Duke University and I’m taking the Sea Turtle Class because I care about our beach communities in the southeast – and that includes sea turtles!  

 Kaylee: Yeah, so let’s just jump into it! We wanted to talk a little about the community dynamic that we had within our class. So we all started one early morning at RDU, the Raleigh-Durham Airport, and this is where we kind of met because we didn’t have an extensive class beforehand. So we all met on the group flights and we traveled over to Puerto Rico where we met Kelly, one of our instructors. So we had a great meeting after our first couple of flights and we started to head down on a quick drive to the ferry port where we got on the ferry to head to the island of Culebra within Puerto Rico.  

 India: In Culebra, we stayed in some dorms provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It was quaint accommodations, but very comfortable. We were doing a lot of day work at the time so we didn’t have a ton of time to sit around and bond, as we did later in the trip, since we were really busy doing field work all day. [‘Rooster Noises’ soundbite] But we did get to come together each morning and evening [‘Clanging Plates’ soundbite] to make meals together in Puerto Rico.  

 Kaylee: It took about thirty minutes to an hour each day to quickly make some lunch for ourselves whether its using some lunch meat and some cheese and throwing it on some bread, or quickly frying up some quesadillas. We tried to do our best to cook and not only cook for ourselves, but cook for each other. And not only did we make meals for each other but we even tried getting some snacks for all of us to take out on the boats. Including some cookies, which we thought were really delicious at the time – we had some strawberry and coconut cookies that we always begged our professors to get us every day. And we always talked about the cookies every time we had lunch or dinner. So we had some good gathering points around our meals in Puerto Rico.  

India: Yeah, I would say the Puerto Rican cookies were a really core part of my experience in Culebra.  From Culebra, once we wrapped up our daytime work there and said goodbye to the research team we got to know pretty well over the few days there, we took the ferry back to the mainland of Puerto Rico and flew over to St. Croix – where we got to stay at the Cottages by the Sea. Which is a really beautiful community right on the beach! I really can’t describe how beautiful it is, it’s right next to the water and we spent a lot of our downtime snorkeling. I saw plenty of sea turtles, I even saw a couple of octopuses while I was snorkeling out there.  

Kaylee: Oh my gosh, octopi! I love that!  

India: Yeah! Our rooms were really beautiful!  

Kaylee: They were gorgeous! We had a kitchen for each cottage, and there were about three people per cottage out of the students. And it was just an amazing time to get in close quarters with the people we got to know in the first five days of the trip in Puerto Rico, and just hang out in the cottages in St. Croix right next to the refuge where we got to work during the nights.  

India: Yeah, I feel like that’s really where our group dynamic really started to click – was in the cottages.  

Kaylee: Yeah, I agree!  

India: Just because we were still doing a lot of field work but we had more time to talk to each other, like during night patrol and the daytime work where we were just doing a lot of snorkeling and moving all of the time. But there was sitting around on night patrol, in-between our walks up and down the beach, to get to know each other better. So that closeness really permeated throughout our time there in St. Croix.  

India: During those down-periods, I think we had a lot of fun playing games with each other. We did trivia!  

Kaylee: But even, you know, we had some good and fun moments with each other at some points – like you guys just heard – but also, one of the nights we were talking about whistling. Our professor, Matthew, was randomly asking the question about if any of us could whistle before we went to go do a lecture with Mike, one of the professionals there at the refuge, and we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could whistle! So we all tried whistling all night long, and as you can hear next, Michael was actually somewhat successful at whistling and you can hear us all laughing drearily as it was about 2am when he was able to finally accomplish this.  

India: Okay, so I think I missed the origin story of how this discussion came about. I just remember going to the bathroom and coming back and everyone had been trying to make themselves whistle through that!  

Kaylee: Exactly! There was a good six of us that were trying really hard but I could tell you that I can!  

India: So I think that we had a really good time! It was a really good group. The work itself was really fun, but I think the community we built just over the course of ten days was a really important part of the trip and is one of the most memorable things about my time there.  

Kaylee: Really what you need to prepare for this class is just to have the mindset that you’re going to have a lot of fun. I got to be honest, you know, it’s a bit of work getting up every day to go see the turtles – but its all so worth it. You see the green turtles and the nests, and potentially hawksbills as well, and even to see the mama leatherbacks on the beach – it was absolutely amazing and worth every single moment.  

India: I agree! It was totally worth it.  

 

Matthew: You have been listening to Seas the Day. Special thanks to Kelly Stewart and Carlos Diez for helping the students have these experiences. Thanks to Joe Morton for original music and to Stephanie Hillsgrove for artwork. Please visit our website at sites.nicholas.duke.edu/seastheday 

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