Arribada 1 and Special Visitors

One of the most critical parts of my project this summer is recapturing females on the nesting beach. We had a tough go of our first arribada due to the fact that it was very short lived and quite small, so we're hopeful to capture many more turtles in the August arribada. Alexis High and Ryota Masuko had a blast working the mass-nesting event and recount their experiences in the following blog, you can find out more about Alexis High here and Ryota Masuko here. 

            The arribada is a fantastic event that happens once a month on a dozen beaches across the world. This phenomenon is a large-scale nesting event where hundreds to thousands of sea turtles come out of the ocean to perform their motherly duties. By studying the arribada, we hope to find the females we caught during boat work. We will take and compare the data we obtained to later draw conclusions for Brie’s research.

Ready for night work! From left: Nicole, Ryota, Alexis and Matti with Brie in the front.

July 3^rd  Training day

            It was 9 pm, we were all filled with excitement as Brie lead us to the beach, where we found a female who recently came out of the ocean (stage 1 of 7 for the nesting process). Eventually, she finds the perfect spot and begins moving her back flippers- this is called body pitting (stage 2).

Soon after, she begins to dig her nest by scooping the sand out using her back flippers (stage 3). When we noticed that she was almost done digging, Matti laid down on her stomach and widened the nest to allow her to reach below the turtle’s cloaca to catch the eggs (stage 4). Then Matti caught ten eggs and laid them softly on wax paper for Nicole and Alexis to take the eggs’ mass and circumference. While Alexis and Nicole worked, Matti continued counting the eggs. Once the turtle laid twenty eggs, Brie (with the assistance of Ryota), took a blood sample while the turtle was fully in her trance. A trance is a mental state where a female will continue to lay her eggs and cover her nest even when we are working with her. After the turtle finished laying eggs, Alexis put the ten eggs back into the nest. The turtle then covered her nest by using her back flippers to fill the nest and moved her body side to side to pack down the nest (stage 5). Then we all took the weight, length, width, and circumference of the turtle. Next, the new mama moves all four flippers in a snow angel pattern in hopes to camouflage her new nest (stage 6). Once she successfully hides her nest, she goes back to the ocean (stage 7).

We all stayed on the beach till midnight, but Brie and Matti went back to the beach at three and found one of our tagged turtles from boat work.

July 4^th Day One of the Arribada

            The day started at 6pm, we searched and searched for our tagged turtles to no avail. Around 8pm, Chris, Dillon, and Dr. MacKenzie showed up to help us out. They happened to find one of our tagged turtles from the get go, and we all jumped into action performing the procedures stated above. Once we finished with collecting data from our first female of the night, we continued our search for more. We found many Ostional turtles (turtles tagged with Ostional tags) and a few solitary beach turtles (turtles tagged with solitary beach tags) but none of our own. We took measurements of the solitary turtles so Brie can look at their feeding patterns, and try to see why the female chose to lay her eggs during the arribada rather than as a solitary. In total we found one of our tagged turtles and many Ostional turtles.

            On a more personal note, it was a beautiful night; the moon was half full with very few clouds in the sky. The light of the moon helped to illuminate the shells of the turtles who had just come out of the ocean. That, and the random bursts of heat lightning would light up the area around you to allow you to see the hundreds of turtles that surrounded you at that moment. We ended the work day at 5am with the rising of the sun.  

July 5^th Day Two

            Again, we started the day at 6pm. Today, there were only a fraction of the turtles we saw the previous day. A lot of these turtles were handicapped in one way or another. Some were missing flippers and some had spinal cord issues making it very difficult to properly use their hind flippers. Due to their issues, they cannot properly form a nest and will not lay their eggs. These turtles will come back every day of the arribada to try and make a suitable nest, but eventually the females will get too tired and lay their eggs anyway. Sadly, these eggs will have no chance of survival. For a few of these turtles, we helped them build their nest to give her eggs a better survival rate.

            Due to the lack of turtles this night, Brie sent a few of us home early at midnight. This night we found a few Ostional turtles, but none of our own.

           

What’s next?    

Overall, this month we experienced a rather short arribada consisting of only a few days. We hope to have a larger arribada next month and find more of our tagged females. Working the arribada is a very exhausting process; however, seeing hundreds of female turtles come out of the ocean to do their part in the success of their species is absolutely beautiful. I am so proud to say I have had the luck to be able to see this amazing natural event, and I look forward to working the next arribada in August.