Turtle Tagging

We had the chance to do some more turtle capturing today. This time Jessee got to bring one in. The group got three in all - two small Greens and one big Hawksbill. Jessee spotted the Hawksbill first and called us over for the chase. And chase we did! We were after it for probably 50 minutes or more. The water was really rough and Jessee and I followed it from one end of the bay clear across to the other side. The big ones can go longer without getting tired because it takes them less effort to move a given distance. I got really tired and called to the boat to shuttle me ahead. Jessee kept on its tail and kept on eye on it.

It was heading out towards deep water, so I dove down in front of it and tried to scare it back in the other direction, but it was determined to get out there. It was around this point that Jessee looked to her side to see a Hammerhead. A Hammerhead! I was oblivious. I didn't even know about it until well after things settled down. She says it was a really small one, a juvenile less than a meter long, and that it took a few seconds for her to realize what she was looking at. She kept her eye on the prize, however, and kept following the turtle.

At this point we'd been giving chase for quite a while and were completely knackered (so was the turtle though). I decided to call to our boat to radio the other boat for assistance. It's a good thing too. Jessee really needed a break. By this time the turtle had made it to significantly deeper water (about 30 ft) and wasn't far from drop-off. Fortunately John, a practiced free diver and the fastest swimmer of us all, arrived with the other boat and took over. It took him another 15 minutes or so, but he finally got it. He was in water well over 100 feet deep and just waited at the surface until it had to come up for air. When it started coming, he dove down and grabbed on. He didn't say, but it must have taken him for a ride. It was so big that it wouldn't have been possible to overpower it in the water. The only thing you can do is hold on and point its head where you want to go. You face the head upwards and it brings you up for air. Then you just have to keep its front flippers out of the water until the boat gets there - easier said than done when the water is as rough as it was and turtle is as heavy as it was (it weighted 32.5kg, about 71lbs.!). But we got there quickly enough with the boat to get it on board. In the process though, it bit John and nearly got a couple more of us. It wasn't major, but these big turtles can really do damage if they try.

Back at the Dock

The Hawksbill had a strange spike in it's neck as if it had mistakenly swallowed something sharp. It was old, though, because the skin was completely healed around it.

We removed it and cleaned the wound.

Measurements

We took this one to the dock straight away to take measurements and samples. I stayed to help with that and the others went back out in search of more. They eventually came back with two little Greens, one of which Jessee spotted, chased down, and caught all on her own!

"Pearl" - Jessee's little Green

Pearl weighed less than 5 lbs!

Waiting to go home.

The other little Green was missing a back flipper. It's not uncommon to see turtles missing limbs, but this one looked like a birth defect rather than a wound because there was no scaring.

Without ever trying it, you'd think there'd be no way humans could keep pace with a sea turtle. And certainly when they sprint we can't, but we're surprisingly good at out running them over long distances (especially if you can keep them come coming up for air that often). I once heard a story on NPR about humans being particularly well adapted for running marathons and, in fact, can even out run horses in a distance race. The same goes for sea turtles, I guess.

The Release

p.s. If you've been wondering about Suzie, she's still at home in the Black Rocks Bay area of East Caicos. I've been checking her location periodically to see if she's coming down to visit South.

Suzie in the News

Suzie's in the news yet again. It's part of channel 4's South Caicos reporting. Since I last wrote about her, she's made it back to the exact location where she started, the location that is believed to be her permanent residence. She's been there for about 3 weeks, but I keep checking on her. The researchers told me they think she might actually come down to South because this is where the fishermen brought her and where she was tagged. They were speculating that this location is somehow recorded in her memory and she might feel compelled to return, despite the trauma she experienced here.

Suzie's Home

I mentioned that I gave some of my footage to the reporters last Sunday, but that I hadn't seen any of it used. Well, they used a lot of it in this piece on Suzie. Almost all the clips and one or two of the photos were taken by "yours truly." I feel like it really helped make for an eye catching segment. Watch it below:

Suzie in the News
(despite what the report says, she's a Green Turtle, not a Hawksbill)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQOggf--JeQ)

It's only slightly relevant here, but I thought I'd mention it because people asked me if I care that they used my footage without paying me (or even crediting me). I gave my videos willingly because I wanted to see them used. I didn't care much about compensation in this case. I'm a believer in Creative Commons licensing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons) and "copyleft" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft). I do think it's okay for people to own and sell intellectual property (that's what allows for most high-end media to be created), but way too often people are over protective of media they'll never be able to sell (or don't need to sell) and it stifles the creative production people are capable of given abundant open-source media. It would have been nice to have been credited though. Okay, I'll step down off my pedestal now.

Copyleft

You can also watch an older story about Suzie from around the end of December before she had made it home:

Suzie's Journey
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RaN12FJ5lY)

Suzie's Home!

As of Saturday, Suzie is back in TCI waters! After traveling more than 5900km (I over estimated a little last time), she's managed to find her way back to the place she started. She spent the last two weeks at the Inagua Islands. Right now she's in waters off of North Caicos, and it appears she'll be back to East Caicos, exactly where she started, soon.

Local Map of Suzie's Journey

It's amazing that turtles can navigate such distances and finally make their way back to an exact location. It's like setting off on foot across the country with no maps, road signs, or ability to ask for directions and then making it back to your house without help.

Suzie's Entire Journey

She's passing around the north end of the Caicos Bank so, unfortunately, she's not going to come in range of us. I really wanted to go looking for her with her GPS coordinates. Maybe she'll come by later on - her GPS tag is going to remain on.

What's Suzie Doing?

Everybody was pretty sure Suzie was on the final leg of her journey, soon to return to TCI waters, but now she's in the Bahamas. She's traveled something in the range of 6000 km and visited many countries.

Suzie's Track

As she approached the southwest corner of Hispaniola in December, there was a lot of excitement that she might be home for Christmas (read about it in the news: http://www.tcweeklynews.com/link.asp?smenu=85&sdetail=1798&wpage=1). But she turned east instead of traveling between Haiti and Cuba directly to the Turks and Caicos. There was some fear for her safety in Haitian waters as the turtle fishery is quite large there. Social tensions bubbled to the surface as TCI Belongers warned of backlash towards Haitian expats living on South Caicos if she went missing in Haitian waters. We joked that it was going to incite an international incident and cause rioting on South. More than likely it was all talk, but it demonstrates the real interest local people have taken in her and the affection they have for her. I don't think anybody anticipated the level of awareness and local pride Suzie would generate, especially among people who routinely eat turtles.

The fisherman who caught Suzie (originally intending to make a meal out of her) is particularly proud, and he often jokes that if he had known that she'd become so famous, he would have demanded more money for her.

After heading east along the southern coast of Hispaniola, Suzie rounded the corner and picked up her pace. Keeping a close eye on her progress, we were pretty sure she had finally found her way and was headed directly back home. In fact, if she had continued that path and speed, she probably would have arrived today. She's currently off the coast of Great Inauga, Bahamas and, according the project webpage, the researchers are speculating that she might need to be down current of the TCI to detect them. Will she be home soon?

Project Page: http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/index.shtml?project_id=398

"Where Suzie at Now?!"

When Suzie the sea turtle started her journey out of the TCI, people in town were abuzz. They'd often call out, excitedly, to the researchers "where Suzie at now?!" Supposedly there were even some fears that Suzie was being controlled through the GPS tag on her back and being sent away to waters where turtle fishing is illegal. The interest in Suzie has subsided a little, but people on the island keep up-to-date on her whereabouts through bulletins posted at various shops and public buildings. She's gone quite a distance. For a while, she was headed in the direction of South America, and they thought she might go to Venezuela to nest.


But now she's taken a more easterly heading and is almost smack in the middle of the Caribbean. One of the researchers was worried she might now go to Nicaragua, where they "put away" 10,000 turtles every year. Hopefully, though, if she is spotted by a hunter, they'll have the courtesy to let her be because of her tag.


There other four GPS tagged turtles in TCI (Tom, Jerry, Deep, and Jewel) have remained local. I'm hoping Suzie will return, especially if she comes nearby, because we ought to be able to use GPS to find her.

Suzie's Famous!

Check out this BBC article about Suzie's journey through 3 British Overseas Territories: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8284780.stm

Suzie and Jerry

You might remember back in June, in a post titled Suzie, Jessee wrote about a big Green Sea Turtle that was getting some high-tech accessories installed. The other morning we got word from the same researchers that a second captured turtle was getting a satellite tracking device. This time it was a big Hawksbill, affectionately called Jerry. While Suzie was the first turtle caught in TCI to ever get such a device, Jerry is the first male turtle to ever get one, worldwide. In fact, we were told by one of the researchers that male turtles are extremely rare. They're almost never seen and so almost nothing is known about them. That makes the data that will be collected about Jerry's movements very important.

Jerry

Jerry was captured by some fisherman at the nearby Fish Cay. Turtle harvesting is legal in TCI (despite Hawksbills being listed as "critically endangered" by the IUCN). The researchers monitor the dock for turtles that are brought in and the fishermen usually cooperate, allowing them to take data before they're cleaned and eaten. Fortunately for Jerry, he was rare enough to intervene. The fact that the price the researchers would pay had not yet been negotiated even after his transmitter had been installed gives some indication as to how important keeping Jerry alive was (or that a trusting relationship has been established between the two parties).

For updates on each of the turtles you can follow these links:
Suzie: http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?tag_id=90740
Jerry: http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?tag_id=90736 (for some reason Jerry is listed as female on this site, but then properly refered to as "he" below).

Suzie's Progress

Presumably recovering from the stress of her capture, Suzie didn't go far for about two months, but as you can see from her map, she's currently offshore of the British Virgin Islands, some 500 miles away from where she was released (just picture the scene from Finding Nemo where the turtles cruise the ocean currents)! Her waypoints show up somewhat sporadically on the map, sometimes disappearing for days, because a signal cannot be transmitted from underwater. Turtles usually surface about every 45 minutes (presumably less often when sleeping), but Suzie and Jerry have to stay on the surface longer for a point to be registered (there are sensors that turn the transmitter off to save battery power while they're submerged, and they need to dry to activate it). It will be very interesting to follow Jerry to get some idea of just where all the male turtles go.