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.