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.