Rodeo at the Blue Hole

Today Jessee and I went on a "turtle rodeo." That's the name the turtle researchers have given to a particular method of capturing turtles. The way it works is you drive the boat around in prime turtle habitat with as many people as possible acting as spotters. When a turtle is spotted you follow it in the boat to tire it out. Once it comes up for a breath or two it's pretty much knackered and will sit nearly motionless on the bottom. Then one person dives in head-first and grabs on. Pretty exciting! Some are better at it than others. Gilbert, a local fisherman and project assistant, can get them on the first try nearly every time. Jessee and I took 4 and 5 tries each before getting ours!

Crossing the Caicos Bank

The researchers wanted to target Green Turtles today, so we chose to go to habitat that is ideal for them. They mostly graze on seagrass and there is a great spot to find them around the Middle Caicos "Blue Hole." The Blue Hole is a collapsed underwater cave. It's on the bank side of the Middle Caicos (the shallow side opposite the open ocean), so the water is only about 4 or 5 feet deep around it. The hole itself, however, drops straight down to about 200 feet. It's a pretty famous place. In fact, according to one of the researchers, it was explored by Jacques Cousteau. Green Turtles like it there because the hole is a safe place to hide and provides easy access to the seagrass beds.


View Middle Caicos - Blue Hole in a larger map.
(http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&source=embed&msa=0&msid=104781959957579632954.00047adff0bb53528862e&ll=21.729524,-71.799431&spn=0.149577,0.308647&z=12)
Immediately upon arriving at the hole we spotted our first turtle - a huge Green! We turned quickly and tried to cut it off from the hole, just a second too late. It ducked under the boat and disappeared into the deep. There was no hope of getting that one unless it came out on its own. They need to be up on the bank in the shallow water for the rodeo method to work.

Gilbert rode on the bow of the boat where he could get a better vantage. From there he was able to spot them long before we ever could. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with it, but maybe we weren't as good at catching them because we weren't dressed in the proper turtle-catching attire. He was wearing a pair of old whitie-tighties and one rubber dishwashing glove!

Gilbert

Of the next four turtles we spotted, he nabbed three. The only one that got away made a quick maneuver under the sun's glare and we lost its trail. The first two were young Greens, and the third was a massive adult Hawksbill.

Gilbert catching turtles.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvFcVpxc39k)

Green #1: measuring curved carapace width.

Almost time for release.

A Monster Hawksbill - in the range of 30 years old and in egg bearing condition.

Measuring curved carapace width. It took a little weight on her back to keep her from crawling all over the boat.

Ready for release.

Whereas the Greens sat quietly and calmly while we took measurements and DNA samples, the Hawksbill was feisty. It kept flapping around, trying to crawl away, and snapping its jaws. The size of it was quite intimidating. Each time it reached out to bite I was thinking how easily it would be able to take off a finger. When we went to release her, she actually got hold of Dave's foot! Dave (the other fisherman helping us out today) yelped in pain, but luckily the turtle let go without much damage. She could have easily taken out a chunk of meat! You can hear when it happens in the video above. After the fact Dave joked that he wished he had thought to bite her back.

Bite mark on Dave's foot.

Green #2: posing for photos.

Green #2: on its back to measure plastron and tail.

Green #2: measuring curved carapace length.

Shortly after getting her on board, we spotted another small Green. This time it was my turn to try catching it. Gilbert called me up onto the bow and gave me instructions how to do it. He made sure to have Dave, who was driving the boat, follow the turtle for longer to make sure she was extra tired. When the moment was right Gilbert gave me the cue to jump on it. No luck. My hands sunk into the muddy bottom and there was no turtle. Twice, possibly three times, more I missed. On the final attempt I adjusted for refraction, slid my hand back and few inches and got hold! I brought it to the surface and quickly passed her off to the boat. You can hear me struggling to stay above water in the video.

Catching a Green
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPEtON-90as)

Green #3: my catch.

Jessee was up next for our final turtle of the day. She had a little trouble getting hers too, but finally did in the end. She probably would have had it on the first or second jump, but she was trying to be gentle. We didn't want to hurt them, but the truth is they are pretty rugged (as evidenced by the ones we've seen missing flippers and chunks of shell). Jessee's actually had two pieces of shell missing from the back end. They were completely healed, but at one time must have been serious wounds.

Jessee's Turn
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym4PwzigPi4)

Green #4: Jessee's catch.

Green #4: healed wound on rear of shell.

It was a great day out on the water and the best way we could have spent our last day before break. Tomorrow morning is our flight back to the States. We're headed to Florida first, then Philadelphia, Maryland, and New York. Jessee's also planning to spend a day in Boston with her sister. We're probably not going to keep up the blog while we're away, but we'll start again when we return on 2 January.

Empty Handed

This afternoon a few of us decided to make a trip up to Coast Guard in search of dinner. Our main goal was to catch some lobster, but we planned to get a few conch and possibly a fish if we had time. It was a fruitless effort. And it gave us some insight into how depleted the fisheries (at least very local fisheries) are. We couldn't even find a lobster big enough to legally take, let alone catch one. We didn't find a single conch, and so we had no bait to catch a fish. We had pasta instead. If we were cavemen, we'd be hungry.

Wild donkeys that roam up near Coast Guard.

If we swam out farther towards the breakers, I'm sure we would have had more luck, but it's quite a long ways out and better accessed by boat. We found six small lobsters, which would have been tasty, but left them to grow. Overfishing of those small ones is a major reason nobody can catch larger ones anymore. Even though we came back empty handed, it was entertainment for the evening.

Wrapping Up

Another semester comes to a close. Jessee was up early this morning (before 5am) to do the final room checks and accompany the students to Providenciales. Like usual, she stayed there for the day until all the students made their international connections and returned to South Caicos in the evening. I spent the day here helping the other staff with the various post-departure chores.


I'm sure Jessee will have more to say about it, but in all the semester went well. For me there were ups and downs between active and enjoyable times (like when the Smithsonian group was here) and down-right boring times (such as during the directed research projects when everybody else was very busy). Other than the short days, it doesn't feel like winter at all (it will be a complete shock to our systems when we return to the States next week). It was sunny and 85°F today.

The fact that it gets dark so early these days has meant a significant reduction in diving due to not having time to go after work hours. Although, since the directed research projects ended, I've managed to get out there quite a bit. I have more than 90 logged dives since arriving on South Caicos, and hopefully I'll hit the landmark 100 dives before break.

So what happens now? We'll have a few days of chores and work to do around the center, and then people will start leaving for the holidays. Actually, many are leaving for good, moving on to bigger and better things (we're really looking forward to 5 new staff members and at least 1 new non-staff "significant other" like me). We leave here on 17 December and return on 2 January, when we have tentative plans to visit Middle Caicos.

Applesauce Cake

Sunday morning Jessee volunteered to cover the "staff of the day" responsibilities for a member of staff who left early for the semester. Our cooks are off on Sundays, so part of the chore is preparing meals for the students. Jessee decided to get an early start and prepare an applesauce cake before the student kitchen crew was required to be there. It was a fateful decision.

Industrial Applesauce

About 20 minutes after leaving the room, she came back with an alarmed look on her face and blood-soaked paper towels wrapped around her hand. She'd had a bit of a mishap with an industrial sized can of applesauce. Our can opener is defective and always leaves the lids of cans partially attached. It usually takes some prying and pulling to get them completely open. In the process, her hand slipped, leaving a deep cut in the fleshy part of her hand nearest the pinky.

I had her keep pressure on the wound while I got supplies from the first aid cabinet. Once the bleeding stopped we called the Island's doctor and asked her to meet us at the clinic (they're closed on Sundays). The doctor had us contact the nurse on call and she met us at the clinic about 15 minutes later. She cleaned out the cut and told Jessee she'd need stitches. Reluctant, Jessee asked if it was possible to mend it without stitches. The nurse said it was a little too deep, but gave in to Jessee's request. That probably would have been the best time for me to intervene and encourage the stitches, but I didn't. The adhesive steri-strips that the nurse used aren't as durable and make it more difficult to keep the wound clean. Also because the adhesive closure makes it impossible to apply topical antibiotics, the nurse prescribed oral antibiotics, something both of us feel is excessive and only contributes to the rise of resistant strains of bacteria.


We talked about it that evening and decided to go back to the clinic this morning. It turns out, however, stitches must be put in during the first 24 hours or they can't be put in at all. So we spent nearly two hours in the waiting room to get done what we could have done on our own. In fact, when we got back, I cleaned it out a little more and reapplied adhesive closures. Unfortunately I don't have many pictures to post and none of the carnage (I thought it would have been insensitive to delay the run to clinic to get pictures for the blog).

In the end, she still made the cake.

Mouse in the Kitchen

Last night I rescued a mouse from our kitchen. It fell into our deep sink and couldn't get back out. I wanted to keep it as a pet, but that probably wouldn't have gone over well with the others. I released it outdoors, about 100 feet from the kitchen. By now, though, it's probably found its way back inside.

Trapped

Gotcha!

Underwater Photos

Here's a slideshow of some of the underwater photos I took during October and November:


(http://picasaweb.google.com/bmatulis/SouthCaicosOctNov2009?feat=directlink)

A couple of my favorites:

Black Jack

Cero Mackerel