Meeting K209 (6/23/09)

Before our shift start Ariel mentioned that we should get a turtle tonight, because it was our last shift together and neither of us had tagged a turtle yet. This was odd because Ariel and I must have had 8 or 10 shifts together over the past three weeks. That’s more shifts than I think I had with everybody else combined. We had done the Koroni Bike, Hike and Kayak trip 3 or four times and night shift together for the fourth time.

Night shift is the “real” mission of the volunteers. It involves going to the long Mounda Beach at 10 pm. The beach is divided into two – Kamina and Potamakia. A pair of volunteers spends the night walking up and down one portion of the beach (four volunteers in all) looking for nesting turtles. If we find a turtle we are to observe its nesting process. This continues the entire night, until 5:30 am.

The two of us walked along the beach. At 1:30 we were making our way back done Kamina toward the Hotel. And, there in the sand was the distinctive trail of a sea turtle dragging itself across the sand. Ariel went ahead to see if there was a “down track” – which would mean the turtle had already left the beach.

One night shift the week before, we missed the down track and Ariel had followed what we call a “false crawl” (a beaching without nesting) in a U around me as I lay in the prone position. While it was a bit funny to see her crawling around recreating the turtle’s own false crawl, it was disconcerting that again we did not see a turtle nesting.

This time however, it was not a false crawl; there was no down track. Instead, there was a turtle nesting in the soft sand of Kamina. She was recreating a process that has been going on for 100 million years. Sea turtles spend the vast majority of their lives swimming and diving in the sea. But, as Blair Witherington describes in “Sea Turtles,” they are “inextricably tied to the land for their reproduction.” A male sea turtle will never return to land after its big run for the sea as a hatchling; and a female will only return to land once every 2-3 years to nest once it has reached sexual maturity.

The nesting process of the Mediterranean loggerhead is similar to all other species of sea turtles. A female loggerhead returns to the area near where she, herself, was born. There are seven steps to the process. First she comes ashore looking for a suitable spot and walks back far to the back of the beach where it begins to incline. This is a tremendous effort for an animal that has evolved with wing like flippers designed to “fly” through the waves during dives for food.

Once she has found a suitable spot she creates create a “body pit” that is a comfortable place for her to lie upon while she lays her eggs. She uses all four of her flippers in unison to hollow this out. Some scientists believe that she is also testing the sand for the appropriate dryness to build her nest. This is where Ariel first started observing her.

The next step is to dig out the “egg chamber.” I realized this may be my only chance to observe the nesting process first hand, so this is when I began to slowly crawl forward to Ariel’s position. The turtle was using her back flippers to slowly dig, one flipper at a time, her egg chamber. She takes one flipper, digs some damp sand out and places it next to her. Then she shifts her body the other way to use the other back flipper and do the same. She does this until she has excavated an acceptable chamber. This spherical hole is about 2 feet down and one foot in diameter.

While it was hard to make out exactly the activity in the new moon darkness, it was obvious that she had stopped her digging and was now in the egg laying process. All the flipper activity has stopped and she has begun depositing her 70 to 170 eggs in the egg chamber – the average is 115.

This is when the volunteers get to work. In the earlier periods, she may have been spooked by the American and Canadien nearby. But now she has reached the point of no return and will continue regardless of possible predators. Ariel and I quickly scooted across the sand toward the nesting turtle. Ariel checked her for any previous tags. Once Ariel was convinced she had no tags on her (on the turtle – not the Canadien girl), I moved in.

Weeks earlier, Ariel and I had decided I would hold the turtle and she would tag. The Mediterranean loggerhead is smaller than other loggerheads but still can grow to one meter long and 100 kg – larger than me. Others in our group had discussed how hard it was to hang onto the back flipper, which is exceedingly strong. Florian had lost control of his turtle’s flipper completely. So, I grabbed the turtle’s back flipper at the “elbow?” and held tight.

Ariel took out the “tag gun,” which is more like vice grips, and placed tag number K206 in it. She then placed the gun in the webbing between her phalanges and pressed down. We have been told that it is equal in pain to piercing an ear – but, to my knowledge no one has ever asked a turtle about this. The turtle jerked her flipper quite violently back toward her shell. But, because of previously stated plans I was ready and the flipper did not move much.

We then checked underneath her flipper for success. It was not complete success. Like a staple the tag must pierce the skin then fold over on itself to secure the tag. The tag had not folded over, but had pierced the skin and gone through the hole in the tag on the other side. Thus, Ariel took the gun and pressed it again and we got a successful fold-over, flush against the back of the tag.

Now, we took out our turtle measuring tape. We measured her top carapace (that’s “shell” in turtle research jargon) across its widest point – 72 cm (24.5 inches). Then we measured it lengthwise – 77 cm (30 inches). [For turtle people, these are “curved lengths.”] This concluded the turtle volunteers’ active work on the turtle. So, we retreated back to a reasonable distance from her.

Once she had finished her egg-laying, she carefully replaced the sand back onto the chamber using her back flippers to pack it a little bit. She wants to keep it safe from predators, but not limit the oxygen that reaches the incubating eggs. Once she finished the covering process, she moved to “camouflage.” This is a wild flailing of all four flippers. She flapped them around grabbing all the light dry sand about her and covering the area around the nest – hoping to erase all traces of the nest. There was a distinctive thumping sound on the ground as she flopped her body and flailed her flippers in this act of cover and concealment.

Once she sufficiently camouflaged the nest, she began her long laborious crawl back to the sea. She pulled her body down the beach. Then K206 walked unconcerned into the crashing waves of the Ionian Sea – never to see her progeny again. K206 may return to the beach up to 4 times this year to lay more clutches of eggs, before migrating back to her winter feeding grounds – probably near Venice in the Adriatic.

In the morning we were joined by the two from Potamakia to measure and GPS the site of the nest. Ian drew a quite detailed map of its location. The four of us then covered up the remaining tracks and the nest. And we were off, back to Base-Station Turtle for a well deserved sleep!