Fish Cay

I was invited to go along on a turtling trip today. The destination was Fish Cay (a small island South of here frequented by the fishermen) and Middle Reefs (a series of patch reefs between Long Cay and Six Hills Cay). I got the day started early and was down at the dock waiting a few minutes before the arranged time (8am) this morning. In typical island fashion, though, we set out around 10:30 after running several of errands.

The boat was called "El Cacique" (or "The Chief")

The wind was out of the West today, so the water was very flat behind Long Cay. When we were passing through, I was hoping so much that we'd see the whales. We were in one of the DECR boats instead of one the School's boats, so our range wouldn't have been so limited. I kept an eye out all day, but unfortunately we didn't see them.

The water didn't stay flat all day though, and made much of the ride quite jarring as a result. It wasn't possible to stand (which allows you to absorb much of the shock in your legs), so I just had to sit tight was the boat slammed against the waves.

When we arrived at Fish Cay we went to shore briefly to check for nests. The Turks and Caicos isn't a very popular nesting area (likely due to over-harvesting in the past), but there are a few beaches that are regular nesting sights. I didn't know it until today, but adult females can lay eggs as many as 8 times a year. Though, most years they do it far fewer times and often not at all.

We didn't find any nests, but we did find some tourists that came over for the day from the nearby (and privately owned) Big Ambergris Cay. I bet they came halfway across the world (on a private jet, no doubt) to have that beach to themselves, and there we came trudging over the hill salty and disheveled. You wouldn't have believed the number of diamonds this lady had on her finger - an essential accessory of sunbathing.

We "manta towed" around Fish Cay for a couple hours. I was a little wary of manta towing in that area because of the reputation it has for sharks. The fishermen claim to see Tiger Sharks around there, and it was there that the recent attack happened. Being pulled around by a boat makes you feel a lot like bait. Luckily we didn't see anything more than a Nurse Shark (which do not have teeth and are not predators). We did see lots of Eagles Rays though (which, of course, are harmless).

I had 4 turtle sightings (all Hawksbills) and we had 2 captures. The two that got away may have just been one that got away twice - it was a fairly big Hawksbill both times. I captured the first one (the smallest of them all) with ease. It could barely swim faster than me with it's tiny little flippers. It only took about 10 seconds to get him.

My little Hawksbill. We'll call him Felipe.

The other one that we caught at Fish Cay was also a small Hawksbill, but he really ran for it. He was also in much deeper water, so getting to him was much more difficult. We slipped free from each of our hands once and really tired us out before Tom finally brought him to the surface.

Tom's Hawksbill. We'll call him Manuel.
(Hawksbills often have dirty, algae covered shells).

We wrapped things up at Fish Cay and headed over to Middle Reefs. It's not far from Six Hills Cay (which from our angle looked more like 7 or 8 Hills Cay). I'd never been to that area before. Visibility was quite bad today (likely due to the Westerly wind), but it's probably usually really nice. We only had 1 sighting there, but it was a successful capture. Tom nabbed a little Green that was not much bigger than the one Jessee got last week.

Tom's Green. We'll call him Gustavo.

Releasing Gustavo
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx68ajLMNWM)

Bush Cay

Our visiting researchers departed last Thursday, and I thought I'd get a little down time. I had been so busy collecting fish with them two, sometimes three, times a day. I enjoyed every minute of it, but I was exhausted. Almost right away, however, I got an offer to go with the resident turtle researchers to the far away Bush Cay to check on nesting sites, and I couldn't turn it down.

Map of Bush Cay

Bush Cay

Bush Cay is about as far south in TCI as you can go before ending up in Hispaniola. It took a couple hours to get there by boat. It's a tiny speck of an island, but has about 75 yards of nice sandy beach - prime real estate for turtle nesting. And the beach was covered in tracks. So many that even the most experienced person with us had trouble discerning which turtles had gone where. In all I think we counted 9 individual sets of tracks, including positive nesting sites and a few "false crawls," the oldest being about 30 days and the newest about 1 day. You can actually determine the species that came onto the beach as well. Hawksbills (and the less common Loggerhead) leave tracks with an alternating flipper pattern, whereas Greens leave a symmetrical pattern. Nests can be somewhat difficult to locate, even with tracks, because the turtles cover them well and even attempt to mislead you by leaving tracks to nowhere.

Tracks

Nests that have hatched are slightly more apparent because they are collapsed, leaving a funnel shape above them. We found one of these and decided to excavate - important information about the success of a nest can be gathered that way. We counted the total number of empty shells and the number of early-, mid-, and late-stage undeveloped eggs. This particular nest had a relatively high percentage of undeveloped eggs, leading our researcher to wonder if it had actually been two nests, one right on top of the other and one disrupted by the other. I'm not sure if that is common or if it says something about the availability of nesting sites in the area.

Excavating

Late Stage Undeveloped, gross and stinky!

On the way to and from Bush Cay we passed the Ambergris Cays - one of which (Little Ambergris) is an iguana reserve and the other of which (Big Ambergris) is a privately-owned island and extremely high-end resort: the Turks and Caicos Sporting Club. Their website invites you to "make it yours" with "seaview homesites from $650,000 to $6.5 million USD." We actually docked there at lunch, and one of people in charge of activities invited us to eat there anytime we were in the area if we just called ahead, slyly adding that some of his guests would be really interested to see (and presumably handle and photograph) the turtles we often capture (we had a small Hawksbill on board that we had just caught at a nearby patch reef).

Hawksbill

On the way back we stopped at Fish Cay (the site of regular South Caicos spearfishing the recent shark attack) to check for more tracks and catch any turtles we could. Almost right away we spotted a small Green Turtle from the boat and jumped in after it. Marta (an SFS staffer) and I chased it for a long time before it was tired enough for us to grab it. Well, before it was tired enough for Marta to grab it - I was considerably more tired than it was. The water was pretty deep, so our strategy was to swim above it until it needed air. Unfortunately, it still managed to surface three or four times for a short gasp before we were successful. This one had an especially nice shell.

Green Turtle

We then spent the remainder of the afternoon "Manta towing" around the bay in search of more turtles (a.k.a. we got dragged around by the boat with our snorkel gear). It's usually pretty fun to do that, but I was on there way too long and had breathed too much engine exhaust. You also get surprisingly chilly even in 90 degree water if you stay long enough without actually swimming.