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