Sea Turtle Rescue, Day 6

Well, this morning, I apparently opened my eyes & stretched when someone "woke" me up, but in reality, I was still sleeping. You see, I do this thing where I sleep with my eyes open. Freaky. Someone took a picture & I'll upload it once I get a copy, apparently it's pretty funny. Today was a pretty quick day, we found 11 turtles and then went to Juno Marinelife Center. We got a tour of the new facility, which is very impressive indeed. After Juno, we went to this lighthouse, which was scary, if I do say so myself.

But that may be because I like neither heights, nor rickety stairs. The view from the top was pretty sweet though. In this pic, the little outdoor patio thing at that restaurant is where the video for Jimmy Buffet's "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" was taped:


Oh, and one more awesome thing from the Lighthouse place was this tree outside, called the Banyon Tree:


Oh oh oh! Another sweet thing I got to do today was interpret French. There was a lady walking the beach and she was curious about what we were doing & she was from France. She came up to the group & started speaking French & I responded... the entire group balked for a second. It was sweet. Had to be the first time I spoke French in almost a year, so of course I sucked, but it was cool.

Sea Turtle Rescue, Day 5

This morning, just like every other morning, we woke up @ 5:15 and were at the beach by 6:30. We found 4 disoriented baby turtles before we even got up to the shoreline, then we had the most amazing discovery, a Leatherback nest. Leatherbacks are by far the most endangered of the species that we were dealing with. They had laid less than ten nests on that stretch of beach, as opposed to the hundreds of Loggerhead & Green nests. As soon as we found that nest, we knew something was wrong though, none of the turtles were moving. We did find three alive, but the nest hatched when it was hot out & they were exposed to the sun for too long. :(. Sidenote on Leatherbacks, they are soooo big when they mature, one was found on the coast of Maine & it was the size of a Volkswagon Beetle.
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Here's the Leatherback turtle nest that died, but 3 of those turtes made it & we took them over to the Juno Marinelife Center.

After lunch @ MacArthur, the guys from the Florida Parks Service took us on a boat ride on the Intercoastal Water Way to get to Munyon Island to pick up trash. Unfortunately, the tide was too low, so we had to go on a pontoon ride for almost an hour. Ughhh I hate when that happens ;). We saw some amazing stuff, primarily a family of wild bottlenose dolphins. It was flippin' sweet. We also saw some famous stuff, like Kate Winslett's house and Tiger Wood's yacht. Here's a sign that was to be taken completely seriously:


I think that's pretty much amazing. Here's another photo, I stole this one from Katie:

That one was more amazing though. Riding around on that pontoon was so much fun & being with the group like that, just hanging out, was a lot of fun. I'll post another picture of the whole group on the pontoon, as I think I can only put 3 on each post. After the awesome boat ride, we went to Munyon Island and picked up trash for about 20 minutes and I saw real hermet crabs... they were huge. I think they were in conch shells, it was so cool... and kinda scary.

After MacArthur, we went back to the church and showered & hung out, then we got to go to Debbie's for dinner. She's an amazing cook, it was delicious. We also got our shirts, which wre beautiful, with little Leatherbacks on them. I got one for my mom too. We got back to the church after eleven, had reflection, then went to bed. AWESOME day.

Sea Turtle Rescue, Day 4

Today we got up around five... this seems like a trend, does it not? Anyhoo, we went to the beach but had to wait until about 7 to go out, as there was a small storm over the water. We found one nest when we got there & there was only one hatchling in it, so that's a good sign. Quite soon after we found that nest, we found a nest that was on the verge of emerging, so we waited & helped them along, there were 91 in that nest alone, it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. After the emergence, we took a swim break. After that, we found another nest with a few turtles left in it and a family came up to talk to us, curious as to what we were doing. One of the cooler things on this trip was that Katie & I were able to answer all of the family's questions.

Click To Play
After we got done @ the beach, we went to Juno Marine Life Center and had lunch. We got a mediocre tour of the place, but they thought we were coming on another day, which I don't believe, so there wasn't much work for us to do. I did get to clean out a Kemp's Ridley tank. That was flippin' sweet. Then we went inside with the rest of our group and incured the wrath of Jessica, the girl that worked there. She was a bitch. Then we went outside to collect some trash off the beach. Ironically, I found a piece of wood with a rusty nail in it... and I wanted to hit her in the face with it. But I didn't. But I wanted to. We had a very short day, we were back @ the church by 2:45, so we showered and ate dinner. Ashley got the genuis idea to play mafia, which no one else knew how to play except me, so we pretty much got everyone hooked on it. The hardest part is narrating and not being able to think of interesting ways to die.

Sea Turtle Rescue, Day 3

This is the first morning on the beach, we had to get up at an awesome 5:15 in the morning. That's shitty if I do say so myself. But somehow we all managed and it was a pretty sweet day. We were on the beach by six am and we met Debbie Sobel, the turtle lady. She seems super passionate about her turtles. Anyways, we found a nest with about 8 live turtles in it that were left behind from the night before and made sure that they got into the water alright.

(Ashley, Liz, Kristen, Mandy, Melissa... ? unknown person's arm)
I'm pretty sure that that's not my hand holding the turtle. Anyways, we got to have a few swim breaks along the 2.5 miles that we walked, which was pretty cool, as I haven't been in the ocean for years. We also found a few nests that were laid the night before by both Green & Leatherback turtles. That was pretty sweet, as the turtles tracks are plainly visible from the shore.

Around lunchtime, we went to MacArthur State Park and ate our lunches, followed by the cleaning up of exotic plants. We were supposed to be going to Munyon Island to clean up these plants, but the weather was not boat permitting. These plants looked like carrots, but they were stringy like coconuts. So not really anything like carrots. We also watched a film on MacArthur State Park, but everyone was pretty much dead and fell asleep during it. After that, we went to the church & showered, then a few of us went to the store to get random stuff. I had to get a new satchel to carry on the beach, as my old one kinda ripped right in half.

Sea Turtle Rescue, Day 2

This morning I drove from 2 am til' six. Atlanta is sweet when there's no one awake, otherwise is slightly shady. I'm pretty sure I slept for a good few hours after my driving shift. We got to the First Presbyterian Church around 4 in the afternoon, so 11 of us somehow managed to shower after being awake for about 25 minutes. Needless to say there were a few naps. We hung around the church campus for a few hours, then went to a Pizzeria for dinner... not good times. Well, the pizza was okay, but they gave us dirty silverware. And they had the Spanish channel on... muted. But it was fun to try and read lips in Spanish, our table made up some flippin' sweet story lines.

Sea Turtle Rescue, Day 1

I got to Mt. Pleasant around 1:00 pm and went to have lunch with the Philf. The Alt. Summer Break group assembled & we left around 2:30. I wound up in a van with Melissa, Katie, Shelley, Liz & Nick. I'm pretty sure our van was SILENT for a good few hours, I read some of my book then fell asleep to my mp3 player. I drive at 2:00am, right through Atlanta, Georgia. I get to stop somewhere around 6 in the mornin'.