First Sunday "Something" Post- Reflection of my Summer Sea Turtle Internship

I spent this entire past summer in Juno Beach, Florida after applying to and being accepted as 1 of 2 research interns at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center.

Unfortunately that meant I had to say goodbye to my family and my Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier Angel. I'm not going to lie, I got a bit homesick not being able to see them for that long. I grew up in Castle Rock, Colorado and am able to visit my family sometimes over the weekends during the school year so I've been spoiled in this regard.

So I traveled to Florida on June 9th, which so happened to be my 21st birthday. Don't worry, I was still able to enjoy a margarita at a Mexican restaurant inside DIA. I moved in with Ken and Aubrey, who were full-time field technicians and so graciously allowed me to rent out a room of their house for the duration of my internship. I soon got acclimated to the Florida weather and their cat Meeko warmed up to me quickly as well!!

It was hard work, getting up at 4 in the morning to arrive ready to go out on the beach at sunrise to complete daily tasks of marking nests, digging out hatched nests to count the amount of successful hatch-outs. Later, I dealt with entering the information into the database and washing down the 4-wheelers we drove along the beach.

But it was also very rewarding being to help the babies out of collapsed egg chambers and then either directly releasing them into the ocean or bringing them back to the lab to be released the next morning. This was necessary if it was already too late in the day where the waves were too strong and there were too many predators out that may snatch them as they crawled to the water or swam beyond the tide into the open ocean.

It's hard to believe that something smaller than the size of my hand can grow into this 5 foot, 350+ pound, beautiful mother turtle shown above

But it was certainly nice to see that she had successfully dug her egg chamber with her rear flippers, and later deposited her eggs in to incubate in the sand, because every species of marine sea turtle is considered threatened, with some even being endangered. Don't worry, the barnacle buildup on her carapace (upper shell) should not impact her negatively as long as it doesn't rub against her body which it does not appear to be doing.

These are the three types of turtles we experienced on Juno Beach. From top to bottom: loggerhead turtle, green turtle and leatherback turtle. Loggerhead turtles are the smallest of the three and had the largest nests. Green turtles are the ones commonly seen off of the coast of Hawaii and the species portrayed in Finding Nemo as Crush and Squirt. Leatherback turtles are the biggest, often reaching 7 feet in length and weighing over 500 pounds. They were especially clumsy on land as their flippers were clearly meant for propulsion in the water rather than land travel.

They all left slightly different trails behind them due to their unique crawls and body morphology. These allowed us to identify the type of turtle and whether it was a nest or a false crawl, in which instance they would come on land and turn around without laying eggs, long after they had returned safely into the water

Looking back upon this experience it was a great opportunity to gain experience in marine biology research and leave a meaningful impact on the sea turtle community. I am so grateful to have been able to be a part of Loggerhead Marinelife Center as memories of this summer will last my entire life and I learned important skills I plan to utilize as I progress in the field of Marine Biology. And I even managed to get a nice tan!