Turtle Patrol

I've been here at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida for the past 3 months so I figure I should fill everyone in on what I've been doing. We work six days at a time with two days off in between - two sets of night patrols (two interns) followed by one set of day patrols (one intern at a time). Here's what a typical day patrol consists of...

6:30am - Begin at Naples Beach (after driving the Conservancy stick shift there!). Starting at the pier we ride north on the ATV looking for crawls, collecting trash and spotting gear left out on the beach. If a beach club/resort has chairs or umbrellas out overnight, we leave them a citation and inform the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. If the beach gear is not affiliated with a club we just remove it from the beach.

When we find a crawl we determine if it's a false crawl or a nest. Either way we draw a diagram and count with steps how far it is from the mean high water line, the vegetation and the nearest distance marker. For false crawls we leave a stake in the dune so that the GPS location can be taken later. For nests we locate the eggs and set up a perimeter around the egg chamber to keep people away. Once we reach the north end we turn around and head south, stopping at each old nest to check for predation or evidence of hatching (there are also rain gauges we check on the north and south ends). From the pier to the south end we again check for crawls and on the way back check the old nests. This whole time we pass people walking on the beach and many of them stop us to ask questions, especially if they walk up while we're working on a nest. We also record how many people we talk to each day.

9:00am - (Time differs a little day to day) Rinse off the ATV at the pier and park it in our hiding spot behind the bushes. Then take the Conservancy Kia down to the south end of Naples Beach to another set of bushes where we have the kayak stashed.

9:30-10:00am - Kayak over to the north end of Keewaydin Island. Take the ATV we have hidden away there and patrol the northernmost 17000ft of the island (we patrol 17000-38000ft during night patrol). The only difference here is that we dig a cage over the nests because there are hardly any people and lots of raccoons. Then we kayak back (typically between 12-1) and spend about an hour or so doing data entry.