Turtle Stats for 2012

The sea turtle nesting and hatchling season has come to an end. We haven't had a nest since early August. Our 44th and final clutch of the year hatched about one week ago. The monsoon season, and its accompanying waves (which are a blast to surf in a sit-on-top kayak), is creeping in. So no more Green or Hawksbill turtles will lay eggs and obviously no new young-ins will hatch. As Mr. Womack sang, "it's all over now." Take a glance below at our numbers for 2012. Not atrocious, but not too robust either.

Only 8 female turtles visited 3 beaches. Not to confuse anyone but that's very low. There used to be 2-3 different turtles visiting Mentawak beach (where JTP resides) per night decades ago. This year just 3 showed up - out of 8 months when they coulda nested. The optimistic takeaway is that projects doing hatchery work, protecting eggs and releasing babies have seen an increase in nesting turtles, but we got a long way to go before that's possible for us. Green turtles take 25-40 years before they return to nest (longer than any turtle, marine or terrestrial, in the world). Hawksbills start plopping out eggs a little earlier, after 20 years. JTP has only been around for 6 years, with a government run hatchery operating for 5 years before that. We got some time before it's possible for more turtles to start showing up. Another bright spot: I'm proud of our 88.4% hatching success rate. At least we got as many of those tiny turtles into the ocean as we could.

Urgent: Please Sign Petition for Turtle Friendly Development in Juara

Development is currently underway on Mentawak Beach that threatens the population of Green sea turtles nesting here. Mentawak beach is where JTP resides and where Alli and I have been living since we left the U.S. in April. Most of JTP's work over the last six years, plus ours since we got here, will be in vain if we don't protect this habitat. Action is needed now to make sure turtle-friendly development is put in place or the turtles of Tioman will edge closer to extinction. Please follow the link below and sign the petition. Then spread the word people. Thank you so much everyone!

Petition link: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/support-sea-turtle-friendly-development-on-mentawak-bea.html

I will be writing more about this pressing subject, as well as what the future holds for sea turtles, JTP and Juara in general, soon on the blog. Stay tuned. Below is a map of the current development plans for Mentawak, as well as photos of the vegetation being cut and habitat for nesting turtles disappearing. *** All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.***

Notice the red streaks - a lot more chalets, lights and people are being planned for Mentawak Beach. The turtles are going to be pushed out, as well as natural vegetation line along the beach.

Above two photos: vegetation being cleared directly south of JTP, between us and Lagoon. Notice the photo on the bottom that vegetation still exists right of the sign, but to the left it is gone.

Above two photos: vegetation being cleared directly north of JTP for a future resort. It used to be very hard to see the ocean from where these photos were taken. Not anymore.

New chalets going in on the north end of Mentawak Beach. Opening soon.

These two photos of nesting Green turtles on Mentawak beach could  a thing of the past if measures aren't taken for turtle-friendly development to be put in place.

Saved by Sound

I've been doing the field biology thing for a little while now. Over the last couple of years I scoured the desert ground for a lot of herps, sometimes for official business, but mostly for thrills and pleasure - the pure fun of it. One thing I came to know quickly: listening matters, a lot. Sure, you need a solid set of eyes to find what you're looking for, but keeping your ears open and paying attention to the audio cues around you is also mightily important and useful. Good thing I’ve only seen two Dinosaur Jr. shows in my life, cause a collection of their ticket stubs has to affect one’s hearing.

Listening enabled me to see Desert tortoises duke it out and a Tiger rattlesnake woof down a mouse. I found a lot of Gila monsters and tortoises this way, plus zoned in on quite a few snakes. And since they shout out for all to hear, following the calls of toads and frogs usually rewards you with a slap-happy monsoon pool of amphibian copulation that is always comical to see. The point is: keep your ears open and sometimes it's alright to just shut the hell up in the field. And soak up the sounds.

Louise the Green turtle laying her first nest of 2012 on Mentawak Beach on  April 14th.  All red light photos of Louise are from previous landings, not the night I'm writing about now. Call it red-light photo turtle fatigue.

On June 6th turtle watch was on. Louise (named after my Grandma and pictured above) was expected to grace us with a clutch of eggs for the sixth time. Since Green turtles can nest up to seven times, but often fall short of this number we weren't completely positive our first Mentawak Beach mother of 2012 would return. At 20:23 hours Alli and I saw that she did, except we messed it all up. 

When patrolling a nesting beach the ideal spot to walk is between the high tide line and vegetation, which is up on the beach away from the water line. The Lady and I were not following this rule at all. We were strolling at the water's edge for some reason. I honestly don't know why. Alli shined her red light ahead of us and there was our large female breaking the surf and coming onto land. The light went right into her eyes. After a few quiet, but startled "Holy shits," we retreated away in hope she would still come on shore. She didn't. We scared her off. She was coming ashore between JTP and Lagoon, a resort at the end of Mentawak. Now she was back in Juara Bay and (hopefully) plotting to get onto the sand sometime later tonight. Usually when you interrupt a turtle like this it's the equivalent of being walked in on in a bathroom stall. You feel semi-violated for a moment and stop what you're doing, but eventually the process continues. Past experiences say the turtle would make another landing, especially since it was still early.

She fell in the pit definitely to the tune of Parks and Rec.

I did a stealth walk of the beach with no light and (of course) up higher, but this discovered nothing. We then decided to continue our regular walking schedule in hope she would return.

At 23:05 I was strolling the beach and heard some intriguing noise, which sounded a lot like sand whacking leaves (I need to work on more mysterious foreshadowing). Not much on the beach this hour makes noise besides turtles flinging sand, tourists being soused, or your occasional cat mucking about. I heard it again and again, the sand ramming against the vegetation. I was walking near the high-tide line and saw no turtle tracks in the area though. None. The moon was assisting, and along with my red light, I couldn’t find any tracks at all. I kept hearing the noise and after a minute or so decided to investigate regardless of the lack of tracks. I got down low and crept toward the sound, eventually losing all my dreams of becoming a suspense novelist, but I did scope out the turtle we spooked earlier.

I rang the gang and since she was close everyone got there fast. She laid 125 eggs between 23:50 and midnight, and left for Juara Bay about 70 minutes after that. But this is merely the standard data and numbers I’m regurgitating back to you all.

Slip slidin' away... to the tune of Paul Simon, duh...

This night is inimitable for another reason: no tracks existed because they were covered up by people. When folks showed up they commented on the absence of tracks too. After she was done laying eggs, we started to poke around. There were no standard turtle tracks leading up to the body pit, but a lot of other markings made a nice trail to our female. Zig-zag patterns from the ocean to her were present. Imagine slowly walking on a beach and moving one of your feet back and forth, left and right, like the scraggly line on a heart rate monitor, but vertical instead of horizontal. At the water’s edge a smattering of footprints existed too, with the zig-zags heading up from there.

Before long we knew what the jig was. Other folks found the turtle before us and covered up her tracks, with the hope of leaving us in the lurch. We never see the tracks, find no nest, stop our patrols for the evening and they come back, dig out the nest and have 125 eggs at their disposal. No other options were feasible.

The kicker is no one was around when I found the turtle. And nobody was seen while we hung out in anticipation and then collected the eggs. After our people-covered-up-the-tracks hypothesis was agreed upon, we all hung back as Louise covered up her now empty nest. Sitting in a quiet circle, enduring the dead wind and ravenous sand flies, we chatted quietly about the covered-up tracks. It’s disheartening to think people, only a couple minutes walk away from JTP, would so obviously try to trick you so they could take some eggs. Frustration and dismay were in the air, along with relief that we got the leg up this time. Nights like this exemplify in bold letters with an exclamation point why our daily beach patrols are necessary. JTP’s been going for six years and after all its time here people still want to take eggs next door from us. Conservation work is a prolonged slog. We obviously haven’t convinced some people a turtles’ eggs are worth more in the ground than out of it.

Her one-way track back to the sea the next morning. I tried getting a photo of the covered up tracks but  after so long they just looked like plain ol' disturbed sand.

Around 00:45, as Louise was still covering up, we heard the “bip bip bip” sounds of an alarm on a stop-watch. A reminder for the covered-up track crew that it might be safe to dig out the nest? Maybe. Nobody showed and shortly after Izati and I sleuthed around with our torch lights to see if anyone was milling about or hiding. Nothing. Five minutes later though we heard two motorbike engines rev up relatively close by and head off. Coincidence? Could be. We’ll never know.

People were thrilled I found the turtle without seeing tracks. Not me. If we had followed protocol and walked the beach the correct way, Louise wouldn’t have gotten rattled. Eggs would have been laid much earlier in the evening. Considering the location of her first attempt the tracks, most likely, would have remained intact and not become a thing of the past. Saved by sound tonight? Yeah, you could say that. But I wonder if there are a collection of past ghost tracks we’ve never found. With tracks being deliberately disguised on the beach JTP resides on and having already endured our first poached nest of 2012 in May, it’s going to take a lot more than open ears, and even eyes, to alleviate the challenges these sea turtles face on their natal beaches. We’ll gladly take this nest for now, but it just shows the present and future have a noisy disposition.

Sandy Eyes and the Explosion

On June 25th a bundle of Green turtles rose up. The one above was a few of the first to reach the surface, but it faced a small problem: blindness via sand. Outta the ground, but still in the dark. These front runners made it out first, but took their sweet time before they fully emerged and let the impending explosion boom out. The above photo is just a few Chelonia, but after these youngsters finally got out of the way, the whole gang shot up in spades. Seventy-nine total by sundown; with them all let loose to the ocean at 2am the same night.

Funny Field Work Follies (and the letter F goes wild!)

Field work, just like life, can be spectacular, routine, drab, infuriating or just plain silly. Sometimes when you're on point and luck is rolling the dice with you, I've seen things that have gave me goosebumps. Witnessed events that have caused me to yell out joyful curse words and pump my fist, Arsenio Hall style. A few weeks before we departed I was lucky enough, after following her for 1.5 hours, to watch a Gila monster we were radio tracking dig out a juvenile Cottontail rabbit nest and scarf down some furry youngsters. Incredible. I was on cloud nine for the entire ordeal. That's about as amazing a day you can have in the field.

The female Gila on her way to finding a Cottontail rabbit nest. This is one healthy lizard.

But then there's days where all you do is sweat and are exhausted, you forget to take a specific data point, leave all the vital gear you need at home or totally just blow it. The key to it all: laughing at yourself when you mess up. A lot. And then making sure you don't do the same idiotic thing twice. I once dropped my keys out of my backpack while tracking a Gila monster at night by myself. Over 3 hours later I found them. Never again have I pulled that move.

Charlie (face bomb!) cruising the boat to Munjur beach at the sun sets on Tioman. Juara Bay is in the background.

That being said, Charlie and I recently spent two nights in a row camping (err, maybe being on a stakeout is a more appropriate term) on Munjur beach in anticipation of a re-nesting Green sea turtle. Hmmmm, I just didn't do any foreshadowing about how this endeavor worked out. Munjur is one of two uninhabited beaches we monitor that are directly south of Juara Bay here. It's probably about a 15 minute boat ride. So let's see: camping near the beach in hope of finding a nesting Green turtle so we can measure the mama and tag her plus get a nest for our hatchery, yup I can get to that. Cue Ziggy Stardust lyrics though: it ain't (that) easy!

Will Smith bearing down on Munjur Beach, one of the 3 sea turtle nesting beaches we monitor daily.

The first night started off with a solid sign: two turtles were mating near the beach as we rode in. For the record: JTP's boat is named Will Smith. I would have gone with Jeff Goldblum, but that's another story. We then walked in with our gear and started looking for a place to camp. We chose some ground on the north end of the beach between the high tide line and end of the jungle. More sweet news: an Oriental Whip Snake (Ahaetulla prasina, AHPR) greeted us in the leaves. It's a graceful snake that moves through trees and other vegetation while looking for lizards and frogs to munch on. First time I've seen this one. Only bummer news is I forgot my camera. So all the photos on this blog are from the second night.

A gorgeous underneath view of the Oriental Whipsnake (Ahaetulla  prasina, AHPR).  These guys can be a variety of colors, but this one was like Laffy Taffy green.

Overhead view. Sweet view of its wrapped around the branch and leaves.

Well, hammocks got set up, a small, hidden fire burned, and then Mega-moon came out around 22:30 hours. Talk about bright! The beach was lit up for real, for real. To miss a turtle on this beach would be tough, but alas, we did. As high tide rolled in we got sleepy. Charlie dozed off and I fell asleep for about 10 minutes. After waking up I had a weird feeling of panic that maybe we missed her. So I scampered down the rocks and started walking the sand. The strech in front of us was track free but as I walked up to the southern end of the beach, which of course turtles don't visit too often and you can't see from our makeshift campsite, two sets of turtle tracks were there! One for the way in, the other on the way out. No turtle. No nest. She came up, just like the day before, moseyed around and then headed back to the ocean. I woke up Charlie, we checked out the scene some more, hung our heads in despair as sand flies bit us on the beach, and then decided it's a wrap. We swam out to the boat and got back to JTP around 2am.

North end of Munjur at sunset.

Not to be defeated, we were very sure that after coming ashore two nights in a row this mother turtle was ready to drop a clutch on the third night. Back to the camping spot. More jolly times at Munjur! This time I remembered my camera (and binos!), but forgot shoes. Walking on wet coral and rock is not a skill I have mastered yet out here. It took awhile for me to even walk in with our gear. Looking at the photo of low tide you can understand why. Back to the same spot. I had a warm and fuzzy feeling the turtle was gonna show. I searched for more snakes after the sun went down, finding another AHPR in the trees. Then we scarfed some take-out noodles, shot the shit and waited on the tide. The moon came out. No turtle seen. I had a feeling again I needed to get down to the beach. With no red light on (we were being extra careful to not spook the turtle) I made my way and in the first minute I saw tracks on the stretch of beach in front of us. One set. Then noise. Tossed sand and the movement of a flipper. She must be starting to dig her nest! It's always feels glorious when you find what you set out for.

Low tide, slippery rocks, sharp coral and an uncoordinated Brian make for slug-like walking. But I got no open gashes on my legs so that was a plus.

I woke Charlie up and we crept back. She was still flinging sand so after checking out the rest of Munjur we took a seat away from her on the beach. She continued to fling sand. Time passed. Chit-chat here and there. Silence for a little while and then I heard a noise behind us. Holy Toledo that's a turtle heading back to sea. She ran into our cooler we use for the eggs and almost head butted Charlie's backbone. She was on the move and we misjudged her big time! Her nest was layed and she was covering it up when I first saw her. Maybe we should have at least shined some light on her once. We thought about tagging her on the way back, but decided not to. She was ready to get back in the water and make us feel like morons. I couldn't help but laugh. Two nights of camping and no nest collected, no measurements made and no tags placed on her flippers. We laughed a ton and she swam away. I hope she was chuckling too.

Our improvised (and in the end failed) stakeout location. That piece of driftwood  we found made for a lovely bench though. 

Since midnight was on deck and the tide was high we decided to call it, bail on camping and boat back to the JTP. Swimming out to the boat, trying not to slice my foot open in the dark water, I couldn't stop smiling. I knew we'd get the nest in the morning so no worries about that (yeah, Izati brought the eggs back, 98 total). I had to admire how well we succeeded in failing. I think we'll do a few things differently next time. As Will Smith motored back under the night sky I didn't feel too much like he did at the end of Independence Day. Heck, I wasn't even feeling much like Will Smith at all, since he's usually doing everything right and saving the world from imminent demise (ID4, iRobot, Bad Boys, MIB, the list goes on and on). But at least we gave everyone else here something to joke about for awhile.

A Turtle at our Doorstep

In the early morning on 27 April, Joris (a volunteer from Holland) spoke through our open room window and asked if we wanted to see a turtle. Well, it was about 2am so at first I had no idea what was happening. After I got my bearings and stopped dreaming about the new Neil Young and Crazy Horse album (just guessing on that one), I realized hell yeah I wanna see a turtle. I tried to get Alli up, but the lady was too sleepy this time around.

Back to the sea, trudging along!

The lucky part: this very wide Green turtle mama decided to nest right at the beach in front of the JTP. Boom-shack-alacka! Like NBA Jam used to say. By the time she had been spotted she already had her eggs covered up and was going nutty with her front flippers. Sand was moving. She was only a couple meters from our hatchery so there was no point in digging up the nest and moving it there. We left it in-situ. We missed our window to tag her front flippers so hopefully on the return visit we can get that done.

Dani and I measuring the outside width of her tracks after she left the beach. I a like this photo!

She should return in the next 4-5 days. It'll be her second time coming back to Mentawak Beach so we don't know for sure what her re-nesting interval is gonna be yet . The portly turtle gave us our 8th nest of the year. The ocho.

The in-situ nest right in front of the JTP.

On her saunter back to the ocean is when we measured her shell, took some photos and then bid her adieu. She took 15 minutes to get back to the water - entering just a smidge before 3am. She probably first came ashore right around midnight. Her tracks were measured and shortly later I was back in bed. Whether Neil Young crept back into my dreamscape I can't recall. He definitely wasn't in Alli's. She hates that dude (an unfortunate trait I think she inherited from her Mom).

Her nest in relation to where our hatchery is.

And her tracks the next day before her mesh enclosure went up.

The Female Green Turtle Returns!!!

Once sea turtles start laying eggs you can start to narrow down the date when they will return again. Creatures of habit these swimming reptiles are. Lucky us. Knowing the date is coming up round here gets our blood boiling. A large female Green turtle dropped 121 eggs within the first half hour of 14 April. She chose Mentawak beach, where JTP is located, so there's a strong shot she was born here 25-30 years ago since the mommas return to where they were born. This species' renesting interval is 10 - 14 days so starting two nights ago our eyes were wide when we strolled the beach at night.

Alli getting in there! It was her first time collecting as a turtle laid eggs. Exciting!

She didn't come back after 10 days, but on the 11th, she came through! Charlie got the call as we were hopping on the motorbikes after a superb dinner (my belly was bursting with potato curry and peanut chicken) in Juara. Onward we went! By the time Alli and I arrived with the processing gear she was flicking sand out with her front flippers and bout to deliver some eggs. Excellent timing!

The whole shebang! 104 total.

Everything played out quite nice-ty (as Bootsy sings). We had a full house in attendance. Besides Alli and I, Charlie, Izati (also full-time at JTP), Ina, Dani (German hatchery intern), another German (his name slips my mind), and Michelle (our new volunteer from Holland) were all there gazing at a huge shell tinged in red light. After she dug the egg hole with her rear flippers (the process looks remarkably like a construction scooper), the eggs started plopping down on the sand. And this time Alli got in there, shoulder deep, and scooped some eggs out (Arizona represent!). She loved it. Having a sticky sea turtle egg fall on the top of your hand is quite the feeling.

The female Green turtle after she did her work. She was breathing heavy after it all!

All in all this time only 104 eggs total, 17 less than last time. We need to figure out why the number dropped. The eggs are under the sand in our hatchery now. In about 2 months the babies will scurry up. And in 11 days we can expect the momma to return to plop out some more. The nesting season is hopefully ramping up! The more the merrier round here.

Her tracks back to the sea around 630 hours this morning. Still there and looking solid in the morning light.

Sea Turtle Talk Time, Internet Style

Afternoon people (except most people reading this are sleeping right now). Here at the Juara Turtle Project (JTP) we give a whole lotta turtle talks. On some days when the tourists are poppin' in on a constant basis we give more than a lot, as we can be consumed by turtle talkin' for easily over an hour or two. That's no problem though because most of the time the talks are fun and informative, but in a sense the info can be very depressing with a dash of optimism thrown in, too.

Two German tourists getting to know Jo the Green Sea Turtle on one of our turtle talks.

Why depressing? Well, let me give a sea turtle talk to y'all, it's going to be in broad strokes so if you know a lot about these creatures already, sorry in advance for the repetition (you guys can just look at the photos). This is the JTP turtle talk, Internet edition! So there's no way to sugar coat the facts. Sea turtles are in SERIOUS trouble. To put it simply: there just ain't a lot left of 'em in the world's oceans. Only seven species exist and all have the unfortunate status of "endangered" or "critically endangered." Hundreds of millions of Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas) used to swim in the Earth's tropical and subtropical oceans. In 2004, after a worldwide accumulation of data, only about 89,000 female turtles were coming ashore to nest. Male sea turtles never come ashore, only the females, so getting a line on total population #s is rather tricky.

A Green Sea Turtle laying eggs on Mentawak Beach on 14 April 2012.

I don't want to ramble on forever about turtles (trust me, I can ramble, anyone who has ever received a voice mail from me can attest to it) so I'll try to keep this post neat and to-the-point. On Tioman Island here we used to get 4 species of sea turtle: the aforementioned Green, the giant Leatherback (the largest sea turtle, they can weigh up to 500 kg, sorry America, we're metric system now!), Hawksbills and Olive Ridleys. As Tom Petty sings, the Leatherback and Olives "don't come a-round here anymore." Luckily, the Green and Hawksbill still do. A reason for the drastic decline in sea turtle numbers on Tioman is that people collected the eggs to eat. People who lived here ate them, as did tourists who came to the island. And they were collecting the whole caboodle so no new babies were reaching the ocean. You can see where this is going: no new babies = very few remaining turtles returning to Tioman. Female turtles return to nest at the site they were born at. Talk about impressive: Tioman turtles will swim to the Philippines and Australia to feed, then turn around and haul shell back here to drop off their next generation.

Charles Fisher sadly looking at a poached nest on Mentawak Beach. Unfortunately JTP didn't find it in time. It's a photo of a photo.

So at JTP we patrol the beach we live behind on a nightly basis, multiple times per night depending on when high tide is. We look for turtles, or turtle tracks, and if there is a nesting female we collect her eggs and then place them in our hatchery on the beach. We're also patrolling two beaches south of Juara Bay by boat in the morning. After 2 months the babies all come up at the same time and then we release them exactly where we found them. Those cute little flipper happy turtles want to get to the ocean as fast as they can once they're born. If 1 out the 129 Hawksbill eggs Alli placed in our hatchery this morning survive then that's a success. The females drop a lot of eggs, but not many of them make it.

Alli placing 129 Hawksbill eggs into our hatchery. We found this nest earlier this morning on a nearby beach.

The other threats are everywhere, mostly human-caused. Drowning in fishing nets is a large one (shrimping, long-lining, etc.). Being reptiles these creatures need to breathe so they can only hold there breath for so long (an hour is pushing it to the brink for most species). People still eat their meat (turtle steak used to be a common cuisine) and eggs, and turn their shells into tourist trinkets. Boats hit them, too. Light pollution scares nesting females away, and the ever-encroaching beast known as "development" swallows up nesting habitat every year. Trash in our waters gets mistaken as food: plastics bags look like jellyfish, cigarette butts are the shape of a floating snack.

What Green Sea turtle tracks look like. We look for these on our nightly walks. These tracks are from the above female in the photo laying eggs.

Bam! Have I got you depressed yet? Sorry, the numbers are sobering and like I said, trying to sugar coat deep fried gruel is tough. But here at JTP we're trying to help out as much as we can. We patrol the beaches, collect the eggs and get as many babies in the ocean as possible. We are working on sea turtle friendly lighting for the nesting beach in front of us. Protecting nesting habitat is also on the docket. Education and outreach is always important. We are open to the public, and like I said before, we give a lot of turtle talks on a daily basis. And working with the fisheries department and the marine park around Tioman is a priority as well. A postive side to all this: communities and organizations that have continually collected eggs and released them for 30+ years (coincidentally how long a lot of species take to reach sexual maturity) have seen nesting increases. That's more turtles on the beach mon. It takes time to turn things around, but it can be done.

That's a lot of dead turtle on the line. Unfortunately this happens all too often. Another photo of a photo.

So what can individuals do? I'll touch upon this in another post as I believe I have broken my own goal, and have rambled on for a quite a bit. But remember: it isn't just about sea turtles. A striking number of species face extinction in the ocean, from huge sharks to smaller ugly fish (the Monkfish anyone?) The hope is since sea turtles are sexy charismatic megafauana (for instance: not many people hate on sea turtles, but folks sure do hate rattlesnakes) people will not only get involved to help their seven species, but the smorgasbord of other marine life that faces a continued battle to not blink out before my generation passes. Thanks for reading and if you have anyone questions about all this (and I know it's a lot) please do ask me or Alli.

Enlarge this photo to read. It's a great summary of the problems sea turtles, and a lot of marine life, face.