First Night on Beach

1/7/2024

We arrived at the campsite of the nesting beaches at ~1730 h and the crew set up an awning to protect us and our equipment from the rain.  We settled in and sorted and stored all our gear and then had dinner.  It was a beautiful calm evening and, once we finished dinner we rested until our first beach walk at 1930.

Marc was stationed at the base camp for radio relay and Francis Hickey, his sone Nathan and one of the boat crew did Long Beach to the east of the camp site and Laura Jim, Luke, Zane and a member of the boat crew headed out to do the west beaches. At ~1945 the HPA team reported that they had a fresh track and could hear the female loggerhead up in the bushes.  Using a pair of IR binoculars, Luke and Zane located the nesting female and observed her behavior during nesting.  It took her approximately 

She made her way out of the "bush" back to the sea and Luke followed her track out to the beach where we "boxed" her at 2040 h so we could place a tag on her. We began working on the tag attachment at 2100 hours.  As you will note when you see the pictures below, there were a number of barnacles on her carapace in the area where the tag was to go so it took us almost 60 minutes to remove, clean and prepare the surface for tag attachment.  It took us approximately 1.5 hours to complete attachment take samples and apply metal tags.  Our beautiful hawkbill was released back  at 2330 hours and made her way back to the ocean without incident.  Telonics status report on the tage has her located West of the tag site which is a little further that the internesting home range normally encounted but it is possible that this was her last nesting of the season and she is already beginning her journey back to her forage grounds.  Hopefully she will continue to transmit successfully and show us what she is up to.

We will be headed out again at 1630 h for another evening of beach monitoring.. and, hopefully the deployment of another tag.

NOTE: I apologize for the blog in the sense that I don't have enough time or energy to really to it justice.  I will, when there is time, put together a more comprehensive video of the trip.

This map of Moso Island shows our campsite, the nesting/tagging site and where LM2 (Launmakala2) is located a few hours after being released. 




 



.Setting up camp

The HPA Team.

Dinner is served.

Chatting while eating.


Beautiful evening sunset.


Our captain Paul helping measure LM2.

Laura sanding the tag site.

The team as we apply layer of fiberglass cloth and resin.

The team near the end of the attachment process.


Side view of LM2 with her crown of turtle barnacles.

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