Surprise on the Beach!!

Hello All!!
It has been a bit of a whirl wind lately with my last few trips quickly approaching but I have a lot of news to report! This trip I was sent to Awili, a green sand beach just past the southern tip of Hawaii. Going into the trip, Kelly and I were less than excited due to the fact that we have no permanent set up at this particular beach and were more or less going to have to camp directly out of the truck. At most of the beaches we have some sort of shelter that acts as a wind block for cooking and a good escape from the sun or the rain, but we’ve only recently been seeing tracks at Awili so no such shelter has been set up here yet. To top it all off, we were short of some very key supplies such as tents, cots, a tea kettle, chairs, and a spatula (essential for making pancakes ). So we did our best by using a tarp and tying it off the side of our truck which was just enough to shelter us when laying down at night in our sleeping bags. The really windy days we mostly just sat in the truck… let’s just say we were VERY ready to be home after 6 nights in these camping conditions. We also did not have any sort of bathroom set up at this site so we had to bring in a portable toilet. Basically you do your business in a bag and then have to haul it out….almost as interesting as the lua (bathroom) situation at Kamehame with the roaches.

There are some good things to report though! This is a very important fishing beach so we had a few groups of locals coming and going that gave us food. One group had two little boys (5 and 6 years old) that were incredibly cute and called us both auntie (a Hawaiian thing). They came over to our camp at 7 in the morning, juggling 3 tangelos each in their arms to give to us. In exchange for the fruit, they asked me if I would give them a kiss. We must have made an impression because the next morning we were awakened to them again, this time with an entire bag of tangelos, probably 20 or more. Of course they wanted a second kiss ;). On their way out they gave us pictures that they had drawn of us with the turtles…so cute!!

This particular beach has been a tricky one this season because we have been missing the mama turtle and only seeing her tracks in the morning. Because of this we have about 4 possible nests and only 1 confirmed so we were watching for hatchlings, but not entirely sure if they are there or not. A mama was finally spotted and nested a few days before we got there and so it was assumed that she had been the one making all of the tracks. Little did we know what we would find one morning on our 6am check! I happened to wake up one morning 15 minutes early and as I got up to watch the sunrise, I saw something very small moving in the distance. Sure enough it was a turtle!! Normally they are back to the water before the sun rises so this seemed very unusual, but not completely unheard of. I rushed back to camp to wake up Kelly and just had enough time to yell, “Kelly! Turtle on the beach, get the bag and phone, we can’t let her escape!” Poor Kelly was half asleep still and the zipper was stuck on her sleeping bag but I didn’t want it to get back to the ocean without us checking her tags so I left her there struggling. She eventually made it out….When we got close to the turtle we could see that she was already nesting and that she did not have tags which meant that she was a new mama!!!
eight: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FeJpPf7zllE/TOtf3F7GxUI/AAAAAAAAAFU/Once she was finished laying, we restrained and measured her, tagged her front two flippers and took lots of pictures for documentation purposes. The nest was in a bad spot (in the reach of the tide and under a cliff) so we had to do a translocation, my second one of the season!!!
Most people don’t even get to do one so I felt incredibly lucky. We dug up her nest carefully and made a new nest cavity in a safer place and then reburied the eggs. Feeling very proud of our work as surrogate mama turtles we napped the rest of the day.


The really interesting part of this story is that this turtle was not a Hawksbill, but in fact an Olive Ridley. This is an extremely rare occurrence as most Ridley’s exhibit massive group nesting behavior and only 2 or 3 cases of an Olive Ridley coming up on Hawaii land have ever been documented. So it was a very exciting yet chaotic day in the office as everyone was scrambling around trying to get things in order. Pretty crazy stuff in turtle world!
Lots of excitement and only 2 trips left before I return to the mainland. One more very exciting thing I should mention is that we saw flowing lava!! On my last time off we got to go with a few people that live on the island out to the place where the lava actually flows into the sea. It was incredible. It is currently flowing right now and we literally got within 30 feet of the lava and saw in bubbling and falling into the ocean.
It is a bit dangerous walking out to it though because we went at night and you have to feel how close you can get by how hot your shoes get on the lava that you walk over! If they get too hot, or it starts to crumble it’s a good idea to stop walking…This was hands down the most intense thing that I have ever seen.
Well hopefully you all enjoyed the photos, there should be more posted on Facebook and I hope things are going well at home! I should also be getting some videos up soon of lava and hatchlings and my dad doing the hula (heheh). Talk to you all soon!


Amy