Hello trusty turtle folks!
Firstly HAPPY WORLD TURTLE DAY!!!!! Woop woop!
Secondly lets take a quick look at our current status of events!
We are in mid-May and the season is well underway for each
of the Cayman Islands , with loggerhead turtles
nesting across all three islands. With each week passing more individuals are
coming ashore to lay their eggs. Currently 12 nests have been identified on
Grand Cayman, 4 on Little Cayman , and 4 on
Cayman Brac, but with each week more nests are being found. This shows for a
very promising season indeed, especially as this time last year saw only 6
nests on Grand Cayman .
How do you find these activities I hear you say and how do
you I.D. the species? Well let’s sort out those queries for you… maybe once you
have this knowledge you may be interested in volunteering with your local
turtle team ;)!
The first step in successfully monitoring the beaches for
turtle activities is to have a turtley awesomely dedicated group of volunteers
that give up their free time to walk sections of beaches looking for any turtle
activity, which they report to a DoE coordinator. Each year we walk a total of
1,400 miles of beach across all three islands, looking for any indications of
turtle activity. These include distinct tracks and any disturbed areas of sand
indicating that eggs were laid.
If you recall we have 3 species of turtles nesting in the
Cayman Islands: green, loggerhead and hawksbill turtles. Each has very a very
distinct set of tracks which volunteers can use to identify species. Let’s take
a look:
The green turtle (Pic
1), coming in at up to 5ft in length and weighing up to 700lb ,
crawls on to the beach leaving a very large symmetrical track pattern, where
both front flippers are moved in sync. The tracks are typically deep, and can
still be identified days after the initial emergence. The loggerhead (Pic 2)
comes in at 3ft and weighs up to 250lb, and crawls onto the beach leaving an
asymmetrical track pattern where their front flippers move alternatively, like
swimming front crawl style. And finally the hawksbill (Pic 3) comes in at 3ft
in length and weighs up to 150lb. Hawksbills crawl in an asymmetrical manner
identical to the loggerhead, but often have a tell-tale sign: a distinct tail
track on both the up and down track.
Once the turtle track has been identified, we will then look
to see if there is any sand disturbance other than the track. Below are two
examples: a green turtle nest (Pic 4) and a loggerhead nests (Pic 5). Green
turtles take a lot of time digging their nests (over 2 hours), dig a deep pit with a very distinct sharp edge,
and move a large amount of sand in what is known as the camouflaging cover up,
where the exact location of the eggs is disguised. Loggerheads (Pic 5) have a
more scrappy nesting style. You can however still see a sharp edge to the
body pit and a mound of sand, but it is in no way as defined as in a green
turtle nest. Hawksbill nests are very similar to loggerhead nests however one
other indicator is the egg size (Pic 6). On the right is a loggerhead egg that
is smaller than a green egg, but as you can see bigger than the hawksbill egg
on the left.
The species
of turtle can also often be confirmed after hatching, when we excavate nests to
determine fertility and to collect genetic samples for our Darwin Initiative research
(see the previous blog post).
With the
help of our volunteers, the DoE's daytime nesting beach monitoring programme
has been running since 1998 and has allowed us to monitor population trends for
our nesting turtles. We're very excited that with support from the Darwin
Initiative we have been able to add a night time monitoring programme to tag
our nesting green turtles - stay tuned for more information when our night
monitoring begins in June!
When you
are walking the beach, even if you are unsure of whether or not a possible
track is turtle related, we encourage you to call in the site. DoE staff and
interns will be able to check the site and determine if it is a true turtle activity.
If you are interested in turtle walking with us or have suspected turtle
activity on your beach in the Cayman Islands
or would like further information on anything turtle related, then please do
get in contact. Phone 938-NEST (938-6378) or doe@gov.ky
Until next
time folks! Happy turtle searching!
Luc J
[B1]average
is more like 3-4 ft and 300 lbs?
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