Earthwatch 2011 – Costa Rican Sea Turtles

Turtles are not the only animals being studied in and around Playa Grande. Matthew LaMarca, a master’s student at Drexel University, studies two types of Iguanas found in the Las Baulas Marine Park, green iguanas and black spiny-tailed iguanas. Here is a bit about his work.

Ctenosaur with radio transmitter.

In the past decade the populations of green iguanas (Iguana iguana) and black spiny-tailed iguanas (Ctenosuara similis) have drastically decreased at Las Baulas Marine Park.  Since the creation of the park back in the 1990’s, no one has done research on these animals. Now scientists, including Matt, are researching the habitat that is critical for their survival as development in Playa Grande continues.  Matt’s job is to place transmitters on individuals to find where they live and nest.  With the transmitter on the animals, he is able to pick up the radio signal with his antenna and track their location.  During the day, Matt can observe their movements and behavior around the park.  Not all animals receive a transmitter. As Matt encounters each iguana, he measures it, weighs it, and a places a pit tag microchip at the base of the tail to identify it as a member of the population.  He also searches for mother iguanas building their nests in the sand dunes of Playa Grande.  With this data the park will begin to understand if anything will need to be done to help these iguana species.

Matt attaching a radio transmitter.

Mary de Lapin, Marymount’s school bunny, joined me on my adventure in Costa Rica.  Although there are no pictures to document her work, there are plenty of her at play. Mary stayed awake in the night working on the beach with the scientists and volunteers.  She particularly enjoyed her hatchery shifts waiting for the hatchlings to emerge. What a hard worker she was. Her favorite parts of Costa Rica were meeting all the nice people, eating the food at Kike’s, working with the turtles, and spending time on the beautiful beach.

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Here are pictures of the volunteers on the project with me.

volunteers

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All work and no play makes Earthwatch volunteers dull.  Here we are working and playing!

mealtime-at-kikes

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Many of you have asked what a typical day on this expedition looks like. I thought I would share one with you. The nightly patrol schedule depends on the tides as the turtles usually nest on the beach three hours before and three hours after high tide. I am going to start with dinner because I began to think of that as the start of our day. We eat dinner at 6:00 (5:00 if you are working in the hatchery and it is a split shift night). Patrol duty involves walking on stretches of Playa Grande and Playa Ventanas looking out for any turtle activity.

We patrolled stretches of Playa Grande and Playa Ventanas.

This includes watching for adult and hatchling tracks, turtle movement, and nesting turtles and then taking the appropriate action. Hatchling duty involves checking the nests in the hatchery for any signs of emerging hatchlings.

Hatchery.

Protected hatchery nests.

• 7:00 p.m. – 11:00(ish) p.m.     Sleep
• 12 – 5 a.m.                                   Beach Patrol or Hatchery Duty
• 5:30  a.m – 10:00(ish) a.m.     Sleep
• 11:00 a.m.                                   Breakfast
• 12 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.                   Free time – swim, relax, enjoy the beach, read, blog!
• 2:30(ish) p.m. – 4:00(ish) p.m.  Beach work – excavations and triangulations
• 5 p.m. or 6 p.m.                          Dinner again

When we first arrived, we all had shifts from 11 p.m. – 5 a.m. because high tide was around 2 a.m. Later in the week, we began split shifts where we worked either directly after dinner from 7 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. or from 12:00 a.m. to 5 a.m. The biologists at the field station had other research work to do during much of the free time, so their days were particularly full and busy!

On beach patrol, there is always one biologist and either one or two volunteers. We must wear official Sistema National de Areas de Conservacion (SINAC) shirt to identify us as volunteers.  The beach is closed at night and only biologists, volunteers and a certain number of local guides and tour groups are allowed on the beach.

Field Manager

Tera Dornfeld

Tera is serving as field manager for the second season while also working towards the completion of a Master’s thesis on olive ridley sea turtles. She is originally from Minnesota and is currently a graduate student at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne.

Field Biologists

Kim Gieras

Kim is a Master’s student from Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne. Kim is a returning biologist from the precious season and is studying season variation in leatherback hatchling size. She is responsible for the monitoring and upkeep of the hatchery as well as excavating hatched nests.

James Houck

James is from Maple Shade, New Jersey. He graduated in June from Drexel University with a BS in Environmental Science and minor in Biology. He has experience with molecular biology and field biology in the New Jersey Pine Barrens and Barnegat Bay ecosystems. He is now actively seeking to advance his education in graduate school and new field experiences in ecology and biology. While working on the Costa Rican turtles, James is responsible for monitoring nest temperatures.

Avalon Mehta

Avalon is a recent graduate of Drexel University where she studied Environmental Science and Biology. She has traveled from her home state of Maryland to be a field assistant for the 2010/2011 field season. Her primary responsibilities include beach patrol and gathering temperature data from turtle nests.

Erin Keene

Erin is a Master’s student at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne who is investigating the effects of bacterial and fungal infections on the hatchling success of olive ridley sea turtles. This is her first year working with the olive ridleys, but has experience working with leatherbacks and loggerheads. This season she is also the Earthwatch volunteer coordinator.

Jacob Hill

Jacob is in charge of correctly triangulating at in situ nests. He graduated in May from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a lifelong resident of North Carolina. He has spent the past few summers working with loggerhead sea turtles in North Carolina and along the Gulf coast of Florida.

Matthew LaMarca

Matthew LaMarca is a master’s student at Drexel University.  Working alongside the people of the Leather Back Trust, it is his job to study other animals in the Las Baulas Marine Park.  Matt’s focus is on the two types of iguanas found in the park, green iguanas and black spinney-tailed iguanas. Please see the separate post on Matt’s work for more details.

The Earthwatch volunteers were so lucky to work with this enthusiastic, hardworking, and fun group of scientists.

Hi All!  I am so sorry that I have not been able to add any updates.  We have not had internet for the past two days!  Thank you for keeping up with the blog.  Don’t stop reading upon my return because I will be doing regular updates for a while.  Please check back for more information on the last few days of our trip. There were many turtle sightings and a lot of egg counting these past few nights!  More to come!

Hi everyone!  It was an exciting night on the beach last night. We released over 60 leatherback hatchlings into the water that had emerged from their hatchery nest.  Also, five turtles visited the beach to nest last night.  The latest was at around 3:30 a.m. So, even though I was looking forward to an early shift tonight from 7 p.m. – 12 a.m., we continue early and late shifts if turtles are nesting. I am excited for the possibility of meeting up with another turtle tonight during my 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. shift. I am looking forward to sharing exciting news and answering questions tomorrow during my Skype session with Class II tomorrow in Ms. Sicliano’s science class. See you then, Class II!

Yesterday we went on an estuary tour. I am sure there are many students who have learned about estuaries, right? What type of water does it contain? Why are they usually so rich in flora and fauna?  Take a look at the pictures of the various birds and other animals we saw. Class III, you will be happy to hear that we saw several howler monkeys, including babies!

Estuary

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Guess what!  Esmeralda (see previous post below) nested tonight and I was the one to count her eggs!  I just returned from early patrol from 7 – 12 tonight and am so excited I have to write about it.

Although this is not Esmeralda, she looks similar to this turtle.

First of all….she was huge! Jim, the researcher that I was on patrol with, measured her.  I will let you know tomorrow the exact measurements, but her carapace was over a meter long.  When we arrived at her nesting area on the beach, she had already made her body pit and was about 1/4 of the way done with digging her egg chamber. She used alternating hind flippers to carefully dig a very deep hole.

Here is an example of a body pit.  This was another turtle that came to the beach at about 3:30.  Sheri, one of the volunteers,  took this photo in the morning.

Here is the body pit of a leatherback turtle. She nested around 3:30 this morning.

She kept feeling around with her flippers to make sure it was the perfect shape. The chambers are cylindrical holes with a larger round opening at the bottom.  It was as deep as my entire arm.  I am not sure I could even reach the bottom without really stretching my arm into the hole.

I got into position behind her.  I had to lay on my stomach an arm’s length away from the chamber so as not to knock any sand in the chamber. With a counter in one hand, I waited until she was done digging the chamber and covered her tail with her left flipper. As soon as one egg dropped, I carefully pushed her right flipper aside, so I could see the eggs dropping into the chamber. After about 10 minutes or so of counting, the number of billiard ball size eggs was up to 93!  There are other smaller eggs of various sizes called shelled albumen globes or SAGS for short.  These eggs only contain egg white or albumen and cannot hatch into turtles. There are many theories which try to explain  the purpose of these SAGS. They may be to make space for the hatchlings as they emerge, to deter predators, or to facilitate the flow of gases.

After laying her eggs, Esmeralda filled the hole with sand, packed down the sand with her strong hind flippers, and used her long front flippers to fling sand over the egg chamber to camouflage it. When her work was done, she quietly returned to the sea, leaving what looks like a very large tractor tire track behind her.

Sheri took this photo this morning. It is the tracks of the other leatherback turtle that nested this morning.  Aren’t they huge?!

Huge tracks left in the sand!

I cannot describe in words just how amazing the experience of being so close to the beautiful turtle was for me.  I think I will probably dream of her tonight!