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.