Netting

For the past few days I was helping out the folks of the In-Water Research Group conduct a sea turtle survey in the Lake Worth Lagoon system. We observed a bunch of turtles, but only caught two in the net. Two pretty green turtles were captured, measured and tagged. One of them has a few papilloma tumors present, but the other was a beautiful fat healthy animal. We spent most of the time removing stingrays from the net. We caught quite a few Spotted Eagle Rays (Aetobatus narinari) and were very careful to remove them from the net. They sometimes have as many as five long spines on their tail which can inflict a very painful injury! I will post some photos in the next day or so.

Beach Nourishment

With the recent hurricanes affecting the United States you can bet that there will be plenty of beach nourishment projects planned. I just uploaded a few images from 2003 which include several aerial images showing nourishment projects along the coast of Florida. Check out a few nourishment images here

a few more images

I have been working on setting up a database to catalog all of our sea turtle images. It is almost complete now and we are in the process of keywording and organizing them. I have lots of images of Leatherback Loggerhead and Green turtles.

We uploaded a few images today. In the sea turtle gallery you can find a few more images of satellite tagged leatherbacks, and green turtles that have been undergoing rehabilitation at the marinelife center.

plastic bags

Niki went to the local grocery store the other night with her reuseable bag to pick up groceries.

The girl at the register was a bit confused as to why Niki did not want to use the disposable plastic bag and said:
"Oh, you must be european"

What does that mean??! Shouldn't we all try to stop using these plastic bags...

There are an aweful lot of posts about plastic bags on our website www.floridaleatherbacks.com

Recent Images

Niki and I conducted a lighting survey on Ft. Pierce beach last week. I took a few images of lights shining on the beach. The whole area was really impacted by last years hurricanes Frances and Jeanne. There was hardly any dune vegetation shielding the lights from the beach, so many of the lights were visible from the sand. Check out the images here