Sea Turtles on Tybee Island and the Tybee Sea Turtle Project by Amy Capello, Guest Blogger

Last summer, my family and I took an ecology tour with Dr. Joe Richardson on Tybee Island off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.  These tours, called the Tybee Beach Ecology Trips, were a fantastic way to learn more about the local sea life of Tybee.  When we returned home, I became a fan of his tours on Facebook (you can too if you click HERE), where he shares lots of cool photos from the days catch.  Since then, Dr. Joe was generous enough to do a guest post here on the blog, which you can read by clicking HERE.  Over the last year, he has also shared numerous photos from another Facebook page for the Tybee Sea Turtle Project (which you can visit by clicking HERE).  I decided to contact the folks at the Tybee Sea Turtle Project as well to ask if they would be interested in doing a guest post, and I got back some fantastic material from Amy Capello, a volunteer involved in the Sea Turtle Project!  So without further ado, I'm going to let Ms. Capello tell you all about the project, and how to help out the sea turtles!  

Loggerhead sea turtles, Caretta caretta, are a common species of sea turtle found on Tybee Island and all along the Georgia coast. There are several species of sea turtle found throughout the world, all of which are threatened or endangered. Due to their status, there are many efforts being made to protect these amazing creatures. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources is responsible for monitoring sea turtle populations throughout the state. This is a large project to undertake and depends on sea turtle volunteers on every island in Georgia. On Tybee Island, the Sea Turtle Project is headed by a wonderful, dedicated local named Tammy Smith. She is responsible for coordinating approximately 80 volunteers. These volunteers are willing to give up large portions of their time to ensure the welfare of sea turtles. Starting in May, volunteers take turns walking the beach at sunrise to look for evidence that a nesting female came out overnight to lay a nest. Usually, the best indication of a female coming out to nest is her tracks. You might think it’s easy to spot the tracks from a 300+lb. female turtle, but that’s not always the case! Sometimes it can be quite difficult to spot her tracks and the volunteers have to make sure they don’t get distracted by Tybee’s beautiful sunrises and instead focus on potential tracks in the sand.

This is a female that was laying a nest on Tybee. It is a rare occurrence that we get to see the nesting females on Tybee. Some tourists spotted her and called it in and the volunteers were able to go out and see her. She had identification tags and we're waiting to see what other nests she may have laid this season.

Once a nest is located, Tammy will come out to the location and determine if the female laid a nest or simply came out of the ocean and decided to return. Sometimes females will emerge from the water and then change their mind about laying a nest. This could be caused due to disturbances from people who get too close or scare her with their white-light flashlights. It could also be caused due to natural reasons, such as no dry sand to lay a nest during a very high tide. If you encounter a sea turtle while you’re out on the beach at night, keep your distance and make sure that your presence doesn’t change the natural behavior of the turtle. Any living sea turtle you may see on the beach is a female; males will never come out of the water, so make sure to give them their space to do what they came to do! Remember, they are endangered and need to lay every nest they can if we are going to see increases in their population.

This is a false crawl. This means that the female came out of the water to lay a nest and decided not to for some reason.

If a nest is found during a dawn patrol walk, Tammy will determine if the nest is in a suitable location. Sometimes females will lay their nests in a place that may get washed over by high tides and cause the hatchlings to drown. If this possibility is anticipated, we will move the nests to a better, safer location.

A bucket of eggs waiting to be moved. Sometimes the nests are relocated if they need to be moved to a safer place for incubation.

All nests, whether or not they are relocated, are marked with posts and monitored by the volunteers every day on their dawn patrol walks. We make sure that there are no disturbances to the nests, by people or natural predators like ghost crabs.

We mark all of the nests on Tybee Island with a special sea turtle caution tape. The nest is federally protected since the turtles are endangered and only trained and permitted volunteers are allowed to interact with the hatchlings if they require assistance.

The nests will incubate for approximately 50 days, give or take, and then the babies will hatch out. Our volunteers work hard to look for field signs that a nest is going to hatch. When the time comes, we try to be on hand to make sure that the hatchlings make their way to the water safely. I often wish that the nests came with little timers so we would know right when they are going to hatch, but unfortunately, they’re like human babies – they come when they’re good and ready!

A traditional hatching is often referred to as a “boil.” This is because all of the babies hatch out at the same time, appearing to boil out of the sand. It’s a unique experience to get to witness, but since it only takes minutes for the babies to come out, it’s often missed – even by our volunteers! Once the babies come out, they orient themselves with the brightest point on the horizon. A lot of people think they only hatch during a full moon, and this is completely false. However, any light reflecting off the water is going to be brighter than light reflecting off the sand, so the light leads the babies in the right direction. But think about developed islands, like Tybee. There is so much light pollution from inside and outside condos, restaurants, hotels, residences, etc. that often times our babies will head towards those lights, since they are much brighter than the light reflecting off the water. Unfortunately, this means they head in the exact opposite direction of where they are supposed to go. This is why it’s so critical for people to be aware of how much light pollution is out on our beaches. If you are on any island during sea turtle nesting season (May – October), it’s extremely important to turn OFF your lights!! The only “sea turtle friendly” lights are ones that are red-filtered. Even the red-filtered lights, if they are too bright, can disorient a sea turtle, but they are less distracting than a bright white light. If you want to walk the beach at night, consider going without a flashlight or light from your cell phone and your eyes will adjust to the dark. But, if you must have a light, you can purchase red-filtered flashlights in lots of stores like Wal-Mart and Bass Pro Shop. I can’t stress enough how important this is for our babies!

Hatchlings making their way to the sea. These turtles came out earlier in the daytime, allowing for a photo opportunity! All of the babies made it safely to the sea.

Once the little hatchlings hit the water, they are faced with a 24 hour long journey out into the Sargasso Sea where they will spend the first 10-15 years of their lives. They don’t start reproducing until they are about 35 years old. Considering that only 1 in 4,000 survive to adulthood, if we lose any sea turtles before that age, they haven’t even had a chance to replace themselves in the population! In the ocean, they face threats of boats (whose propellers hit them, often fatally), fishing line, and plastic. Plastic in particular looks very similar to one of their favorite foods – jellyfish! Sea turtles have never been to the store and don’t know how to tell the difference between a floating plastic bag and a floating jellyfish.

We love our sea turtles so much and we’ll do anything we can to protect them. We’re so happy that our efforts and the efforts of the public are starting to make a difference! Last year, we broke the record for the number of sea turtle nests on Tybee and overall in the state of Georgia. It was a big year for all of us! We hope to see an increase every year until their populations have fully recovered.

What are some ways you can help sea turtles? Here are some great starting points:


1.  Turn off all lights at night during nesting season (May – October) – this includes buildings, flashlights, and cell phones
2.  Use red-filtered lights if you must use a light
3.  Pick up trash on the beach, especially plastic of all kinds
4.  Do not disturb sea turtles you encounter on the beach
5.  Fill in any holes you dig on the beach and knock down sand castles – these are major obstacles, even to a large turtle
6.  If you are on a boat, keep an eye out for sea turtles and make sure you don’t hit them
7.  Educate others and spread the word! Often times people are willing to do the right thing, they just haven’t been told what the right thing is yet

This was fantastic: thank you very much Ms. Capello, as well as the Tybee Sea Turtle Project, for taking the time out of your busy schedules to teach us about these sea turtles, and what we can do to help!  To support the cause, make sure you check out the project's Facebook page by clicking HERE!  You can also check out the website for the Tybee Island Marine Science Center HERE!  Thanks again, and hope to hear from you guys again in the future!  - Zack Neher

Photo Credit for all of the pictures in the post goes to the Tybee Sea Turtle Project.  

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Necklace Shells by Dr. Joe Richardson, Guest Blogger

Last summer on my family's vacation to coastal Georgia and South Carolina, we spent a few nights on Tybee Island, off the coast of Savannah, Georgia.  In the post about the whales and dolphins of South Carolina, I mentioned the Tybee Beach Ecology Tour that we went on under the guidance of Dr. Joe Richardson.  Here is a bit about Dr. Joe: 

Dr. Joe Richardson (Ph.D. Marine Sciences) conducts TybeeBeach Ecology Trips (http://www.ceasurf.com/Pages/BeachTrips.aspx) for families and groups year-round at Tybee Island.  He is a retired marine science professor who continues to conduct research throughout coastal Georgia through his consulting business Coastal Environmental Analysis.  He can be reached at joe@ceasurf.com.

The Ecology Tour was definitely a ton of fun, and my family and I learned a ton, I definitely recommend checking it out if you are out that way!  Now, Dr. Joe has agreed to do a guest post for the blog!  He has some very interesting information to share with us, so let's give him a warm welcome!  

Shell beds such as this can be found all along Tybee’s beach.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

Tybee Island has a large variety of species and colors of shells that wash up on its beach.  Because of its position on the east coast, Tybee has northern and southern marine plants and animals, both along the shore and offshore, that produce a large diversity or variety of what we are likely to find (see “Tybee Diversity").  Along with the diversity of shell species, we also see a wide variety of shell colors that are often due to the past environment where a particular shell has been buried or spent time.  For example, our most common bivalve (2-shelled) shells, the Ark shells, are often found in colors ranging from dark red, to orange, to gold, to white.  During my Tybee Beach Ecology Trips, people often remark about how they are surprised to see Tybee’s vast array of colors and types of shells.

It’s not hard to find Ark shells with perfectly round, small holes at Tybee.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

While alive, bivalve mollusks, such as this Ark and Surf Clam, have two shells and the soft-bodied animal that made the shells lives inside these protective shells.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

You don’t have to pick up many of our bivalve shells to find one with a perfectly round, small hole in it – just right for making a necklace.  You will see these holes in our Arks, Surf Clams, Cross-hatched Lucines and others.  It might surprise you to find out, though, that the animal that lived inside and made its shell did not make that hole.  To find out where that hole came from, we need to look at another mollusk, a gastropod or snail, that we also often find at the beach.

Moon Snail shells are sometimes called “Shark Eye shells” because they look like an eyeball when viewed from their bottom.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

If you know where and how to look, it’s not too difficult to find Moon Snails on the beach at Tybee.  Their round, light-brown shells often wash up along the high tide line; but you can sometimes find a live one burying through the sand in the mid and low tide, wet sandy parts of the beach. 

This is probably a Moon Snail burying its way through the sand.  It is probably an inch or two deep into the wet sand.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

Here are a couple of Moon Snails in our beach ecology trip “touch tank” as they are extended and gliding around in our tank of water.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

If you find a live one, it will probably quickly withdraw back into its shell.  But if you lay it back onto the wet sand or put it into some seawater, and be patient, it might re-emerge and start gliding across the surface.  You will be amazed at how large its body is, outside of its shell, and wonder how-in-the-world it can pack all that body back into that small shell!

While beach combing at Tybee, you might also come across the sand-colored, collar-shaped egg case of a Moon Snail.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

These Moon Snails are predators, and they like to eat many of those bivalves such as the Arks and Surf Clams that live buried down in the sand.  To accomplish this, the Moon Snail glides through the sand, by producing and using lots of slime to help it move through the sand, until it encounters one of its clam-like prey, which quickly closes up for protection inside its two shells.  The Moon Snail is not able to pry the two shells apart, but it wants to eat the soft-bodied animal that is inside.  Inside the snail’s mouth is a tongue-like structure called a radula.  The radula is like a small file or rasp that is hard and covered with tiny sharp teeth-like structures.  A Moon Snail can extend this radula out of its mouth and drill a perfectly round, small hole through the bivalve’s shell.  The hole is too small for the large snail to crawl through, but it can extend its radula down through the hole to the inside of the bivalve, where its soft body is.  The snail will then slash its radula around in there, shredding and chopping the bivalve’s body into “soup.”  The snail can then just suck the contents out, and it leaves behind a couple of empty shells – one of which has the hole in it!  So the hole wasn’t originally a part of the bivalve’s shell; but instead that hole was pretty much the last thing that happened to that animal.

This Moon Snail sort of got what was coming to it!  They can be cannibalistic.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

Sometimes it’s difficult to find an empty Moon Snail shell at Tybee because the Hermit Crabs like to use them for their own protection.  Photo Credit: Joe Richardson

So while you’re beachcombing at Tybee, and you find that perfect size, shape and color shell with a hole in it for making your necklace; you can thank the bivalve animal that made the shell.  But you need to also thank some predatory snail, like our Moon Snails, for drilling the hole!

Thanks so much for doing this, Dr. Joe, it was really interesting!  I think we would all like to thank you for doing this post for us, and we all would love to hear from you in the future!  Also, make sure to check out the page for Dr. Joe's Eco Tours HERE, and like his Facebook page too, right HERE!  He always posts really cool pictures!  Thanks again! - Zack Neher

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The Fauna of South Carolina: Cetaceans

This post was originally going to be a part of today's earlier post, previously entitled "The Fauna of South Carolina:  Cetaceans, Foxes and Otters."  However, when I tried to upload all of the pictures of the cetaceans, foxes and otters, the computer slowed to a crawl.  So I decided just to split the post into two parts, and just pretend like it was one.  So without further ado, I present to you...."The Fauna of South Carolina:  Cetaceans."

Bottlenose Dolphins at "The Inlet"

If you recall, a few weeks ago I posted about another fascinating creature that I learned about when we visited South Carolina in June, called THE BLACK SKIMMER.  We saw it hunting while we were in a small coastal inlet, which we shall henceforth refer to as "The Inlet."  Our main purpose for our visit to "The Inlet" was to see dolphins.  We had seen them last time we had gone to South Carolina at the same place, and we lucked out again.  We saw a group of at least three, but possibly four bottlenose dolphins swimming through the area.  My mom was able to snap a couple of pictures, but it was very difficult to predict where they would next surface.

Dolphin going under.  What you see in the picture is its tail.

 Although all four of these pictures of the dolphins were taken at "The Inlet," we saw dolphins a couple of other times as well; I believe I saw them on four other occasions, all while out on our friends boat.

Dolphin dorsal fin, the same fin that strikes fear into people who have seen Jaws too many times.

By far the most memorable occasion was out in Charleston Harbor.  We were just on our way back from buzzing around Fort Sumter (the starting point of the Civil War).  We had been (boating?  driving?  floating?) for a few minutes when Captain Jim stopped the boat: he had spotted dolphins.  A pod of dolphins was swimming around our boat.  None of them got closer than twenty-five or so feet, but that was still pretty close!  We knocked on the side of the boat to try to draw them closer, as dolphins are very curious, like the polar bear, but nothing doing.  They stayed nearby our boat for awhile, and they didn't seem to be hunting or anything, so my guess is that they were probably curious, but a little nervous about getting too close.  Or perhaps they were getting close, and we just couldn't see them under the water!  Or, perhaps they were just, as today's urban youth says, "Chillin'." 

Another shot of the dolphin dorsal fin

Later on, we went to an excellent restaurant called "The Crab Shack" (scroll down to the "Alligator" part of the post), and they had a small display of local fossils.  I took a picture of a few of the more interesting ones, seen below.

Dolphin vertebrae

A whale bone

These large bones help the whales to "see" via echolocation at the deeper, darker levels of the ocean, where seeing with your eyes is virtually impossible without massive eyes, like those seen in the giant squid.

On our last two nights of our vacation, we stayed at a little place called Tybee Island, near Savannah, Georgia.  On one of those days, we joined a local ecologist named Dr. Joe Richardson on an ecology tour.  It was a lot of fun, and I hope to devote a post to him and his tour later on.  Also on the island was a small museum, called the "Tybee Island Marine Science Center" (TIMSC), which was also very cool.  I know for a fact that I will have at least one post later on about an amusing incident that took place at the center, and probably mention it in passing a few times as well.  But for now, all you need to know is that they had a few bones of a sperm whale that had washed up on the beach there a few years back, I think perhaps in 2002.  Take a look below!

Sperm whale bone, I don't remember what bone this was.  If anyone has any idea, shoot me an email! 

Sperm whale ribs

Sperm whale vertebrae

Finally, on our last night there, we stopped at a small shop.  I had gone down to South Carolina in the hopes of nabbing a Megalodon tooth or two (I know you're tired of hearing this, but a later post!) but I had been foiled.  I did find a couple of really cool fossils, including other sharks teeth, a few fossils belonging to stingrays, as well as a fossilized horse molar!  A lot of what I have is unidentified at this point, but I will keep you posted as I find out more.  But I decided to buy two whale bones at this fossil shop, and below are two pictures.  The Rupee is there for comparison.

Fossil whale vertebrae

Fossil whale bone, I believe it to be a jawbone.

This post is part of "The Fauna of South Carolina" series.  For the rest of the posts in this series, click HERE.

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