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: