Monday, June 30, 2008

Fish fry!

Both of my roommates are out fishing in the bay right now so I've been promised a fish dinner. My belly is ready, the fish better be biting today...

Our bowling night last week turned into bowling, go-karting and salsa dancing at a bar with live music. Needless to say we had an incredible time and it was so great to catch up with our friends and meet new people. Quite a few of the herpetology employees from the zoo and employees from the Mexico turtle camp came so we managed to more or less take over.

Work has been really great lately, even though we were a bit short staffed this weekend. So many of the interns requested this weekend off so there were only four employees working at STI to manage all the morning chores as well as all the tours and the traffic through the gift shop. On Saturday morning we had a downpour so we opened a little early to get all of our visitors out of the rain. Fortunately we have a new roof that works so much better in the rain than the cover we had last year. But unfortunately they haven't finished putting on the rubber cover so with the strong wind and the continued intense rain everything was soaking wet anyway. Including us, which made for a very cold morning.

On Sunday morning I had a family that came back to visit me at STI. The week before they had been on my tour and during every tour I mention the importance of picking up our trash on our beach and encourage visitors to pick up additional trash as well (on South Padre Island there is a campaign for this, it's called the Unlitter Campaign). So this family, Kim, Jordan and Summer, had been out on the beach and were helping by picking up trash when Summer found a can in the water with a fish inside. They cut open the can to free the scorpion fish which had grow so large in this protective shell that it could no longer fit out of the opening. The family of course took pictures and then put the fish back in the water. So they wanted to share their story with me and brought me some of the pictures of the fish and the can. It was a bizarre feeling for me to see that something I had taught someone did make a difference and it was a very encouraging lesson for me.

Later that afternoon we played a little musical turtle and moved around some of the hawksbills to clear out one of tanks so it could be cleaned and repainted. I always love helping move turtles and this time is was particularly fun because we were finally able to put Whittle and Buddy into the big new tank. It was great to see two little turtles swimming around such a big tank and they seemed to have so much fun exploring and stretching their flippers.

The construction continues and today at STI they should be finish up the roof and installing lights over some of the tanks. Now that we are done with the latest tank we will start preparing for the next tank, which will mean even more swimming room for some of our turtles.

It's going to be a great and very busy 4th of July week. A lot of the interns are having friends come visit so when we all get together for our own barbecue it should be quite the party.

I promise more pictures of our turtles will be coming soon, but since I only have a few of my own I'm becoming dependent on the photographic skills of others.

Act like a little kid, listen to music that inspires you (today for me it's MaCaCo).

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Blizzard of the Month: Cotton Candy















You lose any real sense of time working a job like this. I never have the same two days off week to week, which on one hand is nice because I work, at most, three days before having an off day. BUT it means I never really know what day it is, only if I have to work the next day. So strangely enough it’s when the DQ sign in Port Isabel changes that I have some sort of understanding of the passing of time in the “real world”.

It’s been another few unpredictable days. We had a really crazy work day a few days ago with tons of visitors and then fortunately yesterday wasn’t as busy so I felt a little more relaxed at work. The calm days also give us time to catch up on chores so we did things like paint tanks and unpack inventory. Our big news on Tuesday was the stranding of a juvenile Green in the jetties in Isla Blanca. Now we’re not exactly excited when we get a call for a stranded turtle, but I think on some level it makes us all seem more useful so we all jump into action. So unfortunately when we find out that a member of the public made the decision to release the turtle because “it looks healthy to me” we were a little bitter. And as far the turtle’s health is concerned it is generally safer for it to get care in the hospital after any sort of stranding. As far as we know the turtle hasn’t stranded again, so I’m sure it was fine after all, but really you give a glimmer of the oh so glamorous life of a sea turtle rescue squad and we feel cheated when it gets taken away. But staying so late after work, with the intention of working with the little Green, gave Adrienne, Andy and I the opportunity to help Jeff empty and scrub Fred’s tank. Adrienne took a ton of pictures so when I get them I’ll post a few.

Then yesterday one of our patrollers called in tracks that looked more like tractor tracks than turtle tracks to him and we spent the rest of the afternoon celebrating the arrival of our first Atlantic Green tracks of the season. When Jessica and I were in Mexico I think we saw more Green tracks than Kemp’s Ridley tracks, so all of the pictures looked very familiar, but we were still just tickled to have our own Green babies. Unfortunately this late in the season the eggs won’t be due till we are all back in school, but this nest brings our count up to 48 and that’s something we can all celebrate.

I’m trying to take advantage of this beach life that I love so much so yesterday after work I walked down to the beach bar Wanna Wanna that is close to my apartment and sat at the bar, drank a soda, looked out over the beach and read. It’s nice to escape from the turtle work on occasion and the free time gives me lots of opportunity to read.

Today’s my day off so I’ve been running errands and hopefully I’ll eventually get to some laundry too. But what I’m most excited about is the visit from one of my new friends from Mexico. Ana, one of the employees at the turtle camp where we worked, is visiting a mutual friend in Brownsville so we are all meeting up tonight to go bowling. It will be nice to catch up and get some turtle news.

The pictures are of Jessica and I with Ana and of my first nesting female.

Read a good book, enjoying the feeling of sand between your toes, recycle.

Monday, June 23, 2008

babies

I sat in the corral at 4:15 this morning watching the sand crackle and pulse with its 70 hatchlings. To watch the beginning of a life and to recognize its fragility is a powerful thing and it gave my sleep deprived brain more than enough to think about the rest of the morning.

I've been on corral duty the past two nights and I only slept about an hour last night, so pardon me if my post is a bit loopy. Since I have to work tomorrow I didn't want to sleep all day and not be able to sleep tonight so my attempt to distract my body and stay away is leaving me low on energy. Saturday night fortunately went smoothly and between the times I went to check the nests I was able to watch a movie and get a Blizzard with BJ, my second roommate. Sunday morning when I got back to STI there were a few more babies in the closet that were ready to be released so I took a trip to the beach with a couple of our volunteers, one of whom is a camera man for channel 5 (I was less than thrilled when he pulled out the videocamera to shoot footage of me and the babies - windswept hair may be in, but bedhead doesn't really do much for me). Afterwards I crashed and didn't wake up till 5:15 pm only to realize that I had an hour till an intern barbeque and that I was on corral duty again Sunday night. The barbeque was great, there was a ton of great food and I got to see a few old friends, but I was wiped out and periodically had to leave to check the corral. It was a little more complicated than usual because I had to release 20 more hatchlings between the time I spent at the corral and then I had to water all the nests because the sand is so unusually dry. And by the time it all got done I was waking up from an hour long nap to find babies peaking their heads out of nest number 12. Jeff and I dug up two nests around 5:00 and had all the babies counted, measured and weighed by 6:15, which left us a little time to relax before the release. Every once in a while we get lucky and the babies will be especially active by the time we're ready to release them and thank goodness this morning we were lucky. Our 168 little guys were practically racing towards the water and the release was over in 30 minutes, which must be some sort of record for us. With all the babies our hatchling release count is at something like 1200.

There have been a few other exciting or at least noteworthy things going on, but my body is saying it's lunch time so you'll have to wait. So, watch the sunset, enjoy the cool summer breeze - it's another beautiful day.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

I'm back




To those of you have read my blog last year and have been eagerly awaiting this summer’s blog,

thank you and I’m sorry to have gotten such a late start. You may or may not know that I spent the spring semester

studying in Granada, Spain and got back home less than a month ago. So, in my defense reverse, culture shock has taken more of a toll on my emotions and ability to write than I expected and I’ve been suffering from a terrible and bizarre case of writer’s block. FYI that’s also your warning, there will probably be many references to Spain throughout the summer.

To those of you who are new to my STI (Sea Turtle, Inc.) intern blog I'm Anna, one of the seven interns working at Sea Turtle, Inc. this summer. As an intern I will be working with the other interns as well as interns working on other nearby beaches and our curator, Jeff, and our educator, Lucy. The Sea Turtle, Inc. facilities are open for tours from 10 to 4 Tuesday through Sunday, however, there are lots that goes on behind the scenes to keep the sea turtles healthy, to maintain our facilities and continue conservation efforts. My blog is intended to give you a glimpse into my life and my work as an intern.

It’s been a wild three weeks since I’ve gotten back to the island, but it’s been chaotic in the most fabulous way. My first day at work I experienced a STI “arribada” and with 6 nesting females on the beach and hundreds of people at the facility I was overwhelmed, especially because so many employees needed to respond to turtle calls leaving only two interns holding down the fort. The whole first week continued more or less in that way and we now have 45 nests, almost double our total nest count for the entire nesting season last summer. Things were also hectic because there is so much construction going on right now and between the new tanks (which also requires “musical turtles”), the new deck, the new amphitheater and the new roof we’ve been on our toes. But, it was a particularly special week for me because my little sister Clare stayed with me and then my parents visited for the weekend, so of course we had to do all the special island things we love like play beach volleyball, swim, take pictures with sea turtles, watch the Friday night fireworks and eat at Naturally’s, Badabing Bagels and Daddy’s. And it was nice to spend time with my family since I only spent three days at home between Spain and SPI.

This past weekend I went to Mexico with Jessica, another intern and one of my roommates, for our training trip. It was different from last year because this time it was just the two of us, which in the end was really advantageous and we had more fun than we thought possible. I was pumped about the trip because it gave me an opportunity to practice my Spanish and in the end I found the discomfort of being an American in a Spanish speaking country rather comforting and very familiar. It was an amazing trip not only because I was able to speak in Spanish, but because the food was incredible (there’s a cook who takes care of the employees), because they adored us and loved playing volleyball, talking and working with us, and because they are just such fun and funny people. They told us they weren’t used to the visitors integrating themselves into their world as we did and at the end when we had to say bye we really had to tear ourselves away.

We were there during a really busy time so both of us were up by 5:30 every morning to patrol and sometimes worked till 9:30 at night patrolling and separating hatchlings. It was very hard work and I’m still sleeping about 12 hours a day in an attempt to recover and catch up from my lack of sleep, but it was well worth it. I finally saw my first nesting female! And then over the next few days saw five more, tons more tracks from both the Kemp’s Ridley and Atlantic Green turtles and thousands of hatchlings, one of which I watched hatch in my hand. Even though I was able to see so many fabulous examples of mother nature at work one of the highlights was seeing a nesting female with Jessica. So of course we took tons of pictures and took all of measurements, etc. ourselves. To make it easier for Jessica to measure the carapace of turtle I held her, since she was already headed back to the water. So I’ve never actually had to hold a turtle on the beach, but last year before my first patrol when I was really nervous I had Jeff walk me through how to hold one in case the need arose. I kneeled down in front of her with he head between my knees and my thighs against her front flippers, which in theory was the best way to keep her still. Yeah but I didn’t really consider how strong these relatively small turtles are and not only did she whack me and bruise a few spots on my legs she ripped a big hole in my highly fashionable bright purple scrub pants, which, to be perfectly honest, I’ll probably wear like a trophy. It was such a rewarding five days and at the end they even threw a little going away party for us and some of their friends from the next turtle camp over came to hang out with us. A group of us sat on the porch enjoying the weather and the company, blaring reggeton and dancing salsa till about 3:30 the next morning.

Since I’ve been back on the island we’ve had tons of activity of our own, though there haven’t been any new turtles there have been four hatchling releases in the past five days. I’m on corral duty tonight and it seems that there will be another release tomorrow. But I loaded up on books from the library (I just finished Water for Elephants and am working on One Hundred Secrets Senses) and I’ll settle into the trailer for the long night.

Enjoy the sunshine, give someone a hug and smile bigger today. Good karma makes the world go round.