little b & the sea turtles

One morning they were out on the beach when one of the Park Rangers came by to check out the Sea Turtles that had been under attack recently.. he stopped to give a little presentation and of course guess who was there??? Yeppers... little b... and he even gets selected to help out the Ranger...  here's the newspaper article .... see who's front and center????

 

Sea turtle talk attracts crowd to Gamble Rogers State Park

Park ranger Tony Greaves explains how they patrol a 4-mile stretch of beach every morning during sea turtle nesting season to mark off nests that were laid the night before as well as to monitor hatches.

 

News-Tribune photos/MARK ESTES

By MARK ESTES
Correspondent

As female sea turtles are drawn back to the beach where they were born, people are drawn to a program about sea turtles. On Friday, more than 30 people came to hear park ranger Tony Greaves at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach talk about sea turtles around the world and those that nest right at the park.

As female sea turtles are drawn back to the beach where they were born, people are drawn to a program about sea turtles. On Friday, more than 30 people came to hear park ranger Tony Greaves at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach talk about sea turtles around the world and those that nest right at the park.

Part of the talk involved Greaves asking the audience questions about sea turtles. However, no one got the right answer to how many different species of sea turtle live in the world. There are seven.

“There are the loggerhead, green, leatherback, hawksbill, Kemp’s ridley, olive ridley, and Australian flatback,” Greaves said. “The first five nest in Florida. The loggerhead is the most common and over 90 percent of the loggerhead nests found in the United States are found in Florida.”

Greaves explained that last year there were about 78,000 loggerhead nests in Florida, 38,000 green turtle nests, 1,000 leatherback nests and a handful of hawksbill and Kemp’s Ridley nests. The number of green turtle nest was a surprise to scientists because there had been no more than 12,000 to 15,000 in prior years.

“Given that turtle nests average 100 eggs a nest and there were more than 100,000 nests in Florida last year, why is the loggerhead turtle considered threatened and all the other species considered endangered?” Greaves asked the crowd.

Few survive to adulthood. Greaves explained that turtles face predation at all stages of their lives. Eggs and hatchlings are particularly vulnerable to ghost crabs, raccoon, birds, and even dogs.

“Ghost crabs are probably the biggest predator that we have on our beach,” Greaves said. “We’re dealing with a new one right now. We’ve never had critters getting into nests on our beach. That changed this year about two weeks ago. One morning a nest had been dug into a foot down. I followed the tracks to the next nest to find more digging but this time they’d gotten down to the eggs. There were seven shells and a dead hatchling. It’s become a daily problem. We’re thinking it’s a coyote.”

Other dangers to turtles come from Mother Nature and human activity. High tides pushed up by Hurricane Cristobal washed out the nest markers on five nests.

“Last year 97 dead hatchlings were found on the beach one morning,” Greaves said. “We checked it out that night and sure enough there was a street light that was misaligned and was shining onto the beach. So those 97 hatchlings headed toward that light, floundered in the sand, eventually became exhausted and died.”

Greaves led the group down to the beach to two nests side by side.

He got down on his hands and knees and demonstrated how thy could determine the species based on the crawl patterns.

“After she lays the eggs, she fills in the hole and then uses both front and back flippers to spread the sand around to disguise the nest before heading back to the sea,” Greaves said.

 

 

 

 

Not sure what's up with the golf balls... but

I hope they catch those predators!