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894 days ago

The dunes on Singer Island have been a source of contention between the condo owners, the nesting sea turtles, the city and county government, and Andrea, the first named storm of the season. Andrea battered the coastline from Florida to North Carolina, stripping away what was left of the protective dunes along Singer Island. But Andrea wasnt the first. In this sequence you can see blurry photos taken of Frances and Wilma and then the storm waves from last year. See the photo album for a slide show of all of the pictures. Andrea Damage Andrea arrived in mid-May, well after the start of the turtle nesting season (March 1 through October 31), and many nests were destroyed along Singer Island. This created a real crisis for both turtles and people. Here the condo parking lot has started to collapse onto the beach. One more storm and the sea is eating away at the foundations of the building. Once the ocean gets behind the sea wall, the sea wall collapses. ...

Loggerhead Love

953 days ago

Spring is here in South Florida, the nesting season has started (we already have several leatherback nests) and the loggerheads will be nesting shortly, as you can see. Thanks to Michael Patrick O'Neill for sharing this photo of mating logggerheads taken off the Breakers in Palm Beach. You can find his wonderful children's books (and more photos) at http://www.mpostock.com/booksa.html . And thanks to Todd Essick for sharing these photos of Mike at work! Todd's fine art photography can be found at http://www.essickphoto.com/ .

Kemp's Ridley Valentine

1020 days ago

I know it's been a while (I've been bad with keeping up with non-work related writing), but thanks to Douglas Seifert's generosity I got inspired to drop a line and share some wonderful photos that Douglas took last week, right here off Palm Beach. The Kemp's Ridley is a critically endangered sea turtle that is rarely seen by divers in our waters, so the sighting was a special event. Kemp's nest mostly in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, but they also nest sometimes on Padre Island, Texas. The adult sea turtles mate offshore, and when a powerful wind blows from the north the females land in groups on the beach (they prefer areas with dunes followed by swamps). They are the only species of sea turtle known to lay their eggs during the day. We often see loggerheads resting on the bottom and under coral ledges, and occasionally greens hawksbills, but leatherbacks and Ridley's are a special treat. Happy Valentine's Day!

The Turtles of Lebanon

1123 days ago

While I was in Antibes at the Underwater Festival this last week I happened across an article in the International Herald Tribune entitled In troubled Lebanon, a safety zone for sea turtles. It tells the story of Mona Khalil and Habiba Syed and their admirable and heroic efforts to save the few remaining nesting sea turtles in a war-torn beach near Tyre, Lebanon. It's only one of three nesting beaches left in Lebanon, and they have greens and loggerheads but no leatherbacks. The women monitor the beach and put down wire mesh to protect the nests from being dug up by foxes. During the recent fighting their house was hit by an Israeli rocket. However, they had evacuated and none of the nests were damaged. You can read the story from the Tribune here: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/23/features/turtles.php . I did a little poking around and found that this wasn't the only article on Mona Khalil and Habiba Syed protecting their sea turtles. There's another article ...

Winding Down

1137 days ago

The end of this year's nesting season is nigh, and there's not a lot more action, especially at the North end where there was significant beach erosion. I'm heading out for the Underwater Festival in Antibes, France, so this will be my last blog entry for a while. A couple of weeks ago I went out surveying with Callie and Debbie, who are shown here excavating a couple of nests. There were no hatchlings, just eggs to count. The green turtle nests are quite deep, and require a lot of digging before you can locate the clutch and count the eggs. One nest was very unusual because the turtle had nested under a crossover. Instead of sand, which normally covers the beach there was topsoil instead which had washed down from the condo landscaping. You can see the photo where the earth is all dark. Nesting numbers were down, even though we ended up not having any hurricanes. The exact numbers are on the Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island web site at ...