Blog Entry Six

Blog Week 6:

This week was groundbreaking  as well as heartbreaking.  Early in the day we set out to go do about ten turtle nest excavations. Starting on the beach Anse Jose, the first excavation we did was unsuccessful. When you find unhatched eggs after the nest is empty, the eggs are opened and put into a category:

Undeveloped

Stage One

Stage Two

Predated

Predated beyond recognition

Every single egg out of the 167 laid in the nest were undeveloped. This nest had no bacteria or any signs of outside influence on the eggs, they just never grew.

After this nest, we continued to find another whereas in the nest was another set of unhatched eggs. In this of 171, we found six hatched eggs. The rest were  stage three (an almost completely developed hatching with a slight embryo remaining). This nest was buried deep under a layer of what we thought at first were to be roots, but as we opened the eggs we found that these white fiberous roots were actually a type of fungi  that burrows through the shell of the eggs and wraps itself around the turtle, restricting it from growing  and causing it to die.

When we opened these, however,  all of  them were stage one (where there is a visible embryo the size of a grain of rice) but when a "healthy" egg is opened, the entire content should be yellow whereas these eggs had a pink bacteria growing in them.  This bacteria was found in a different nest a few weeks earlier and when none of the specialists on the island could identify it, it was sent to a research lab in Europe. The results are yet to be conclusive but the bacteria is thought to have been feeding on the fluids inside the eggs, barely giving it the chance to grow. This became a more current issue when six of the ten nests excavated that day were found with unhatched eggs containing the same bacteria.

After these unsuccessful nests, the next days were spent in the mangroves. In this, we would rope off a 10x10 foot parameter where as inside you would count the number of mangroves, labeling them by species and by stage of life (juvenile, seedling, mature). This might seem like an easy task but when there are about 400 trees in the same area, it is easy to loose count. 

Lastly, I got the chance to see the bioluminescent plankton that glow in the light during the night. Although I'm not studying them, the chance to seem them was exciting and it was beautiful.

Blog Entry Five

7:01 AM

Blog Week 5:

I started this week off with a hike to through the mountains of Praslin to spend the day replanting the palms that were lost in the fire in 1998.  The fire started because the local fishermen felt that without the vegetation, the walk from one end of the island to the other would become much more simple. Although successful in making it an easier hike, that fire destroyed over seven endemic tree and/or plant populations. A group known as TRAS (The Terrestrial Recreation Association of the Seychelles) is dedicated to replanting the lost species on the island. So my volunteer group took the day off from baby turtles and shark tracking to plant saplings along a 1000 meter stretch of land in the mountains.

The following days included hikes to the four major beaches in order to continue the excavations of the hatched sea turtle nests. But what we found one of these days wasn't any hatchlings, rather two Hawksbill turtles laying their nests. It is rare to have nesting mothers this late in the season so coming across two was extraordinary! When it comes to collecting data on laying mothers, it must be done quickly and quietly. They go into a trans-like state in which during their trans you must measure them, both length and width, tag both the front flippers if they are yet to be tagged, take a DNA sample from their back flipper and (if you see them nesting early enough) count the eggs as she starts to lay them. (In the photos, I am counting eggs and measuring width.)

Finally at the end of the week, I got the chance to track the location of the sonar tagged shark (Little Kalina). It was exciting to see that she was healthy, swimming from in the mangroves out to the ocean on a daily basis.

Blog Entry Four

Blog Entry 4:

What have I learned this week? If I'm told I'm going to be hiking over Mount Cueriuese in order to reach Anse Manderine, as the vegetation type so that I am better prepared to walk through the razor palm population with long pants on rather than shorts. Other than that though, it was a very productive week. After a break in the action when it came to catching sharks, on Tuesday morning, I single-handedly caught the only shark that has been seen in the last two weeks. The shark was the first on this population to receive a sonar tag which allows it to be tracked continuously at any time or location. This will allow for a better understanding of how the juvenile lemon sharks grow and behave. The tagging was successful and the shark (named Little Kalina after its capturer) is still a success story. 

The rest of the week, I got the chance to release more of the hatchings into the ocean, sometimes up to eight at a time. We did, at one point, find an entire unreleased nest whereas there was at least 150 baby turtles in the sand but we had to cover them again because it is crucial for the turtles to reach the ocean on their own so they can imprint on the beach to return when they lay their own eggs. Although it is so exciting to be able to watch the hatchlings escape their holes and make their way to the beach, it is also sad to find not so successful nests. This week we found 2 nests, one where not a single egg in the nest developed and another where half the hatchlings in the nest had died in the process of getting out of the sand because the water was too high and forced the sand down on them, suffocating them. It's not pleasurable to find but it's important to research. 

One thing we did find though was an unhatched egg that didn’t make it past the third stage of development. Surprisingly the hatchling was an albino which isn't crucial for data collection, I just thought it was cool.

Other than that, this week I got the chance to count the newly born giant tortoises, which you would never believe grow from the size of your palm to the size of about double my torso. They aren't the smartest animals in the world but they are really cute.

Here are some of the pictures from the leper colony that I'm residing in: