Week Nine!

Hey everyone! I'm about a month behind schedule but we finished up week nine on August 12th. We caught a lot of hatchlings that week, so we spent a majority of our time processing them and checking the nests. We also put three fyke nets inside two of the cells on the island instead of placing them on the outside perimeter of the island as we usually did. We ended up catching a surplus of young turtles that had never been processed before so we added a lot of new information to our data. Other than that, it was a usual week for the turtle crew and we only had a few extra tasks, such as cleaning the fyke nets and bringing the boat back, to complete along with our basic routine. As a final post from my experience on Poplar, I thought I would add a few pictures I took of the island itself in all of its beauty. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog, and I look forward to many more journeys that I can share with you as I work towards my future career in marine microbiology.

Week Seven & Eight!!

          Hey everyone! I’ve been so busy these past two weeks that I didn’t have any time to put up a blog for week seven. Thus I’m doing a combined blog to include both weeks seven and eight instead. Also, I just recently found out that our last day on the island will be this Friday, the 12^th, which means I’m leaving a week earlier than expected so I’ll be ending this blog on week nine. Other than that, I wanted to talk about telemetry and fyke nets in this blog.

            The fyke nets are what we’ve been using since day one to capture turtles along the shores of the island. They are huge nets with lines that are set in the water that lure turtles, crabs, fish, and even horseshoe crabs into the net compartment. Every Monday we set up the nets with stakes, and every Friday we take them down and clean them off. Throughout the week we always have two people that go out in the boat every morning to collect the turtles that got caught in the nets and to release the by-catch back into the water. Once we’ve taken the captured turtles back to the turtle shed, we process them. This includes taking all sorts of measurements including the plastron length, carapace length, width, height, right plastron length, mass, and head width. We also tag each turtle with a PIT tag (a micro chip we inject into their leg with a needle that has a specific number when scanned) and a monel tag (a piece of metal with a number engraved on it, that fits through a hole we drill in the ninth right marginal scute of the shell). Both tags are useful as a way of identifying whether we have caught the turtle before. Some monel and PIT tags fall out, so it’s important to have a backup in case either happens. Other than that, we take a tail clipping of each turtle or tissue from when the hole is drilled in their shell. This is important DNA that will be used to determine many aspects of the turtle population when looked at in the lab. Afterwards, all the turtles are released back into the water once processing is completed.

            It should be of note that we have had a few turtle casualties in our fyke nets due to unpredicted high tides and failure to tie the nets in the right fashion. Usually the fyke nets are kept afloat in the rear by a buoy so that the turtles have access to the air but, through a series of mistakes, the nets were completely submerged underwater and some turtles have drowned. When this happens, we place them upside down on the seat of the boat, because some of them do come back alive if we get there in time. This problem has mainly been resolved though and hasn’t happened for quite some time.

            I should also note that we have had many hatchlings die too due to the heat and being trapped in our metal rings. This has also been resolved by checking the nests more frequently when on the island in hopes that we’ll retrieve them before they dehydrate in the sun.

            To a more sobering topic, I’ll tell a little about telemetry. Telemetry is the process by which we attach a transmitter to the shell of a turtle, set it free in the water, and try to track it down with our sonar device in the water. We have two devices used to detect the transmitter on the turtle. One is an omnidirectional device that locates the transmitter in all directions and the second is a unidirectional device that locates it only in the direction is it being pointed. First, we use the omnidirectional to decipher which area the turtle is in, and once the signal is strong and true we switch to the unidirectional to pinpoint its exact location. Basically it involves a lot of time sitting in a boat and reading the sonar screen for signs of a signal. There is a lot of interference in the grassy areas of the cells, so it’s complicated to find a true signal. We have recently lost contact of all the three turtles we released, so fingers crossed that we locate them again soon!

            I think that’s enough to cover two weeks’ worth of blogging! See ya!

Tessa Barman

Bug Bite count for week seven and eight: 9

Week Six!

          Hey guys! Week six just flew by without me even realizing it! First off, I’d like to say that WE HAVE HATCHLINGS!!! :DDD We got our very first one on Thursday and then on Friday  three more nests started hatching out with about ten hatchlings in each. It was really exciting!

We check the nests twice a day for baby turtles and, once we find them, we take them back to the turtle shed for processing. We measure the width, height, and lengths of their shells and then we take their mass. We also “notch” the baby turtles and put a metal tag in their leg. Notching is where we carefully cut out two pieces of their outer shell so we know we’ve caught them before. The shell fragments are then collected to take DNA samples of all the hatchlings so we can test to see who their parents are from other DNA we’ve collected from turtles we’ve been catching in the nets. The metal tag consists of an extremely small piece of metal that looks like the piece of lead used in mechanical pencils but even thinner. We use an insanely skinny needle to insert this in the leg, since the hatchlings are barely bigger than the size of a quarter. Both tags are important so that, if we ever catch them again, we can either look for notches on their shell or put the turtle through a metal detector to see if we’ve caught it before. Sometimes the notches grow out though or the metal tag falls out, which is why it’s useful to have a backup method in each case.

We’re expecting a lot more baby turtles in the coming weeks considering we’ve found over 170 nests! Some have been predated by snakes, but most still contain at least 10 eggs. That’s 1700 hatchlings to process! We’re going to start getting pretty busy. Some days we had found over 20 nests laid in unison, so that right there would be at last 200 hatchlings to process. Aaah! It should be fun though! :)
 

Tern chick we came across!

-          Tessa Barman

Bug Bite count for week six: 5

Week Five!

          Hey ya’ll! Phew, week five is over and out! It’s been getting pretty busy on the island now too. No hatchlings yet, sadly, but they should be arriving this week at the latest. We’ve been crammed for time trying to fence in all the nests, locate Bubbles the turtle with the sonar device, look for nests still, and trap/tag turtles. Days are going by a lot faster with so much to do and not as much time. I tried taking pictures of the turtle traps on the boat, but my camera got wet through the plastic bag I had it in and now the screen isn’t working. I’ll have to ask for  pictures from my colleague when he posts his up so I can show what the traps look like.

            Something really neat happened this past week though…. We caught a huge snapping turtle! It’s the biggest snapping turtle I’ve ever seen and it wasn’t aggressive at all. It didn’t try to bite a single person and, with his mouth, he could have taken off a finger easily. We caught him in our trap and released him after we took a bunch of pictures of course.

            We had  a few problems though with the traps this week. Due to the monthly tides, we lost five turtles since the stakes holding the traps up in the water were too short and pulled the net down so that the turtles couldn’t get any air. It was a tough thing to experience, but we learned a valuable lesson about the tides and thankfully we did manage to save a few turtles that we originally thought weren’t going to make it. Mortality isn’t anything you ever want to happen due to a study, since it interferes with the natural life cycles of the populations that we’re trying to monitor.

            Next week I’ll be posting telemetry pictures and explaining how we track Bubbles! See ya!

                  -Tessa Barman 

                Bug Bite count for week five: 6

Week Four!

       Hey guys! I guess from now on I'll be updating a few days late since the library closes way too early on the weekends and I can't get here in time. I can't believe I've finished week four though already! Things are starting to get a bit more interesting too! Here's the count so far:

Total Nests: 170
Total Turtles Tagged: 231

       We're on a role! The most nests they've ever found is around 280 and, while we may not get that many this year, we are well above last year's high in the 130's.
       We're starting to catch a lot of turtles in the nets that we've already tagged, but everyday we seem to get at least a few more new ones. We're also not finding as many nests these days since the nesting season is starting to die down and a lot of nests get covered up by the rain and wind. However, the eggs should start hatching any day now and that's when the fun starts! We've started fencing all of the nests to capture the baby turtles so that ,when they start popping out, we can take them all back to the turtle shed for processing. Some of the hatchlings we'll be releasing, but a lot of them will be going to schools all across Maryland for our Head Start program. This program allows elementary students to raise the turtles for one year, then release them on Poplar Island to give them a "head start" on life. I'll be making a blog about that pretty soon once they start hatching. We're also going to start on telemetry, where we attach a device onto the turtles and set them free so that we can see where they go by following them using sonar in the water.

Fencing around the nests to catch hatchlings. The board is
placed over the top for shade.

       Other than that, everyday is pretty much the same so far. Two of us look for nests and the other two check the nets for turtles and process them. Then, after lunch, we double check certain areas or search the "wrack" for baby turtles. The wrack is basically an area with dead grass-like plants that we sift through with our hands. (Not my favorite thing with all the bending over we have to do haha). I'm getting excited for the hatchlings and telemetry though so stay tuned!

Bug Bite count for week four= 5

Week Three!

       Hello all! It was such an amazing weekend that I didn't have any time to update my weekly blog! Eeeek! I haven't been able to take anymore pictures either, so this week I'll be posting pictures of some of the wildlife we've caught on Poplar.
       There are tons of species on the island including different types of birds, butterflies, snakes, fish, crabs, horseshoe crabs, frogs/toads, muskrats, deer, turtles, and of course bugs and SPIDERS! Ahhh!! I haven't taken any pictures of those yet though haha, however today was pretty interesting since a black widow spider was found! Here are some pictures we've taken so far (I apologize to how sloppy it looks, but I can't figure out for the life of me how to post pictures nicely on here!)

Mallard Ducks are all over the island! I love to watch the ducklings cross the road and waddle around together :D

A Fowler's Toad! So Adorable and so small!

A Snowy Egret. They have crazy orange feet!

These, of course, are Terrapin Turtles!! So cute!

Horseshoe Crab! They are very unattractive, but harmless!
They are always getting caught in our nets though.

You can barely tell, but this is a Red Winged Blackbird. I tried to get a better picture, but it flew away.

This is a Willet. They are super annoying when you are near their nests.
They yell at you like there's no tomorrow!

Paul and I holding a Needle Fish! They have crazy spiky
little teeth in their long mouth.

 King Snakes are always predating the turtle nests (as shown) but they are friendly to hold! Unless you get a male of course...









Total Nests= 153
Total Turtles Tagged and Released= over 200
Bug Bite count for week three= 20

Week Two!

          Hey guys! So I made it through two weeks so far! It hasn’t been easy either. It’s definitely hard to adjust to such a different working lifestyle, but I’m so grateful for this experience and all the skills I will have acquired by the end of August. Yesterday was uber exciting since I got my boating license! I had to take an 8 hour class, but I didn’t even have to drive a boat to get it haha. I don’t think it will come in much use back in Ohio, but it sure will when I get the chance to study coral reefs someday, hopefully in Australia! ;)

            In this blog I wanted to talk about turtle trapping, but I haven’t been able to get on the boat and take any pictures yet. I have taken a few snapshots of us processing the turtle nests though, so I figured I’d load those up this time around. One really exciting thing is that I found my first turtle nest last Friday!! :D I also found another one today and I caught a turtle in the grass along the shoreline. One nest may seem like an unproductive day for me personally, but I’m just now starting to get the hang of this. Overall though, since May 23^rd, we’ve caught a total of 100+ turtles and we’ve found 135 turtle nests! Last year’s group never found any more than that, so this year is looking to be a huge turtle nesting season since we still have a few weeks to go! Now for some pictures!

A turtle nest is found!

            Turtle nests are really hard to find, as I’ve said before. This nest we found here only looked like a little bit of turned up sand and we would have missed it if there weren’t turtle tracks leading to it. When you see a patch of sand that looks disturbed you have to be very careful when digging so as to not puncture one of the eggs if it ends up being a nest. The first sign you have a nest is when you feel the sand cave in while digging, meaning you have located the pocket that the eggs were laid in. After a little more digging a bit of white or pink egg starts to appear and hallelujah! You’ve found a turtle nest!

Lisa taking hardcore data!

Weighing the eggs.

            After digging up all the eggs very carefully, you have to clean all of them off and weigh them. We also record data on the depths of the nest, the exposure to the sun, the area it was found in, GPS coordinates, and any other comments about possible predation or other factors. We can only dig up the nest if the eggs are new though (meaning they have no air pockets) since older nests are more fragile and can’t be moved around a lot. Once the nest has been processed, we place all of the eggs back in the hole as they were before, cover it back up, put a protective fence over top of it, and flag it with a specific number. Then on to find your next nest! It gets pretty exhilarating once you start finding a lot of them.

Putting the eggs back in the hole.

A processed turtle nest.

            Hopefully, I can get pictures of the turtle trapping for next weeks blog and sooner or later the eggs will be hatching so there will be a lot of pictures of that too! See ya!

                                      Tessa :) 

Bug Bite count for week two = 14