Another research update...

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It’s official. I am now known as the “Turtle Girl”

Sorry it has taken me so long to give another update, but things have been pretty crazy on the little island lately. Last weekend was an El Salvadorian holiday so Fantasy Island was booked solid Thurs-Sun, and my new resort, CoCoView had no room until Saturday, so I was in a pickle trying to improvise places to stay and where to pack/store all of my gear (yes, there is a LOT of it). I had also been dealing with a couple different sicknesses during the past couple weeks, so I would come back to the dock every day feeling completely drained and not feeling like going much of anything, especially writing. Anyway, long story short, things worked out fine, I had a bed to sleep in both nights, and am now in my new home for 6 weeks at CCV.

My fabulous assistant Christi headed back to the States on Wednesday, but not without helping me work up one final turtle that we caught the night before her flight. “Leon” as it was named by it’s new adoptor, Tracy, was captured on Tuesday afternoon at Iron Shores reef, which is conveniently located right next to Pirate’s Point (where we caught/released “Roderick”). I was actually on the boat doing some tracking at the time, so the divemaster, Derry, captured it for me instead. I am going to miss those rockstar DM’s over at Fantasy!

Leon was pretty well-behaved during transport and tagging, but gave me some troubles in my lavage attempts. I had no problem opening the mouth, but every time I would inser the bite block (a device that locks in place when the animal is biting down, causing the mouth to stay open so I can insert tubes), the little stinker would open its mouth farther, causing the block to fall out. It’s mouth would then snap shut onto my tubing, about a centimeter from my poor little fingers! After this happened three times, I decided I like my appendages too much to risk them for the sample, so we had to settle with no stomach sample. Again. The transmitter attachment went very smoothly, using the methods the ex-guests helped me develop, and we had Leon back in the water (and transmitting!) before sundown.

I skipped the morning dives the next day to try and rest up after a disastrous airport extravaganza that began entirely too early in the morning, and almost made Christi miss her connecting flight to the US. I also started feeling a bit under the weather that morning, with some sort of flu/sinus bug that was going around the resort. Since getting wet usually perks me up a bit though, I headed out to dive in the afternoon. Sure thing, about mid-dive I came face to face with a curious juvenile who must have missed the turtle abduction memo, and let me follow it for a bit before attempting a capture. Since I have yet to see the turtles eat anything, I was hoping for a bite, but the little guy was more curious than anything else. Again, Derry grabbed hold and caught it. As we started to ascend, another turtle caught my eye on top of the reef, so I swam after in an attempt to get some photos and videos. It was a good-sized adult male (!!!) so I was pretty excited to see both age classes at the same reef (part of my thesis research). Derry saw the adult, handed me the juvenile, and tried to hunt the big guy down. I was impressed to seem him catch up and get a hand on the shell, but he was unable to get a good enough grip and the turtle rapidly swam away. Disappointing, but at least we got one!

Since Christi was gone, I had to find a guest to help me with the workup (harder this week than others), but a great guy, Brandon, agreed to record data and hold the turtle for me as I attempted to lavage. While we were working, another couple, Joe and Tess, came along and offered more help which was greatly appreciated! However, my bad lavage luck stuck yet AGAIN, as the pry bar (used to open the mouth) slipped out of my hands, through the crack in the dock, and into some very loose sediment below. We snorkeled for about 15 minutes with no luck, and I finally had to give up since we still needed to get back to the reef before dark. Why all of my captures occur on the late dive is beyond me, as I feel like I’m always racing against daylight to get things finished. Anyway, Joe and Tess agreed to come along to help with the release so I could get in the water and try to follow this one for a bit. Once free, it swam like I had never seen before, bolted straight to the wall ledge, and dropped deep into oblivion. Hopefully it calmed down soon enough! This turtle, currently named 116-11 is still in need of an adoptive family, so please let me know if you want to help, or see my note about ProTECTOR adoption protocol in my previous blog entry.

On Friday, a traveler friend I had met in the West End, and undergraduate conservation biology student in Canada came out to Fantasy for the day to help me search and track some turtles. Mike was a huge help, as I can cover much more ground with a dive buddy than I do when I have to stay with the dive group. However, even though we searched up and down, we didn’t have any sightings on the dive. In the afternoon, we headed out to a reef close to Pirate’s Point for some tracking. I was ecstatic to pick up some “pings” from the hydrophone, though they seemed distant. Mike agreed to work the equipment on the boat and tell me which direction signals were transmitting from, while I searched the reef for the turtle. Unfortunately, when I dove in the signals stopped until I got back to the boat and the fun divers were reloaded. Pedro, the amazing captain, agreed to idle back in hopes on picking up a stronger signal, and I’m very confident that we got right on top of the turtle at the tip of Pirate’s Point. Very exciting! Unfortunately, my transmitters are either not coded, or I have yet to figure out how to get the code to transmit, so I’m not sure if we picked up on Leon or Roderick. I did get another weak signal as we passed Iron Shore, so there is a chance that both turtles were in the area!

I am now at CoCoView, and boat schedules are a bit different, but there are 5 boats going out every day, so I will probably get more chances to track in the next few weeks. I also have a new assistant, Lindsey, who is an incoming student at LLU. She came on the afternoon dive with me today and we did a whole lot of searching while swimming into a nasty current with no success. Tomorrow we are heading to Pirate’s Point (YAY!) so I’m excited to try and track my little friends down!

On an unrelated note, I did have some great success on a lionfish spearing trip with some of the boat captains and interns here this afternoon. We came back with 19 lionfish from one dive, which apparently is a small number for them! They said they go out about twice a week, so I now have my late afternoon plans for the next six weeks. It was so much fun, and really necessary! Lionfish are literally everywhere on the reefs here, and highly destructive exotic species. However, I am still quite drained from being sick for so long, and not quite 100%, so I’m going to have to cut this short and head off to bed. Hopefully I will have more chances to update with good news soon!

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