Dem bones, dem dry bones

by Jackie Schwartzstein, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

Most of us remember the song from childhood:

‘Toe bone connected to the foot bone, Foot bone connected to the leg bone, Leg bone connected to the knee bone…’

But here at MLML the students in the Marine Birds and Mammals class (MS 112) are quickly finding that what we learned as kids just doesn’t seem to apply anymore! The skeletons of birds, marine mammals, and turtles are MUCH more complicated than the sweet little bones ditty implies. Have the animals changed since I was in fourth grade?! What exactly IS the ‘foot bone’, anyway?!

Rear limbs of the California Sea Lion.
Photo by Jackie Schwartzstein
Can you find the foot bone?

Staying Healthy: a Tough Part of Tropical Fieldwork

Studying letherback sea turtles in the field can be a taxing undertaking!

Deasy Lontoh

by Deasy Lontoh, Vetebrate Ecology Lab

Kamdo! That’s “Good day” in Abun, the language in this region of Indonesia.

The number of turtles coming up to nest is starting to go down, a sign that the nesting season is coming to an end. I met one big mama a couple of weeks ago that went back to sea after daybreak.

Staying healthy in the field is a real challenge.  One of our crew members had to go back to the city to receive malaria care ten days ago, and he’s still not fully recovered yet. Another had a fever last night, and we’re still waiting to see if the fever is due to malaria or infection. Almost everyone I work with has had malaria. The symptoms include fever and body aches. They have to go back into the city to receive proper care, which is a half-day trip by a ship.

Infection usually starts with sandfly bites. Most people are allergic to them, including me, so every night I end up with about 20-30 very itchy welts. No kidding! I haven’t found a bug repellent that works. If I scratch them too hard, I’d end up nursing the scrapes for a few days. Cuts and scrapes heal slowly in this humid region. If my immune system is down, I may end up fighting infection.

Hard physical labor, lack of sleep, and limited diet are the reality here.  We walk about 10 km a night on sand. Sleep during the day is difficult and often divided into two to three-hour chunks. We subsist on a mainly carb-based diet and canned meats because we have no means of refrigerating veggies and fruits. We do our best to make weekly trips into nearby villages to get veggies, but the amount doesn’t come close to the recommended daily servings. Besides collecting data, staying well definitely gets my full attention!

A nesting female leatherback returns to the ocean at daybreak after a hard night's work

At the Business End of a Sea Turtle

Catcher in the sand: Deasy Lontoh counts a leatherback sea turtle's eggs while she lays them on a beach in Indonesia

Deasy Lontoh

by Deasy Lontoh, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

Greetings from Papua! I’m back to study leatherback sea turtle reproduction for my thesis, this time for three and a half months. There are no hatcheries this year so I have to count turtle eggs as they are dropped into the nest while the females are laying.

When a female leatherback digs her nest, I dig a body pit for myself directly behind her.  My body pit must be deep enough so I can comfortably place my hands underneath the female’s cloaca throughout the laying process. I tally the number of yolked and yolkless eggs in my head, and pass some eggs to a partner who measures and weighs them.

The eggs have to be returned into the nest before the female covers her nest, so we work very efficiently. Oftentimes the female drops more than one yolked egg at a time. Typically she drops the yolkless eggs at the end of the laying process, but sometimes she drops them at the same time as the yolked eggs. To keep the egg counts straight, my partner and I hardly talk to each other during sampling.  It’s definitely a handful!

Read more about Deasy’s sea turtle work in Indonesia:

• Turtle Talk from the Tropics
• Meeting the giants – measuring up to a nesting leatherback
• Turtle Power: Paddling 12,000 miles across the Pacific

Turtle Talk from the Tropics

Leatherback turtle at sunrise

Deasy Lontoh

Authored by Deasy Lontoh, Vertebrate Ecology Lab; Edited by Brynn Hooton-Kaufman

You may remember my story from last year, when I traveled to the Jamursba Medi beaches to see and learn about leatherback sea turtles. Well, this past summer I was able to go back. I spent about three months from June to August all the way across the Pacific, in the Bird’s Head Peninsula which is in the northwest coast of Papua, Indonesia. It’s close to the equator, so it’s hot and humid!

he island of New Guinea: Papua comprises the western half of the island, and the Bird's Head Peninsula, where Deasy spent her summer, is marked with an "A"

This time, I went back to collect data for my thesis. I am studying the variation in reproductive output of leatherbacks that migrate to different foraging locations.  In other words, I want to know if where they go to eat before the nesting season influences how many eggs per clutch they lay, how many clutches of eggs they lay, how many years there are between breeding seasons, and how many hatchlings hatch.  In general, leatherback turtles lay three to eleven clutches per breeding season, and their breeding seasons occur every two to three years. Unlike birds and mammals, leatherback moms do not guard their nests or provide food for their hatchlings. Instead, they lay multiple clutches of eggs spaced out over time and space to ensure that at least some the hatchlings make it to the sea.

Warmamedi beach, the easternmost beach of Jambursa Medi. It is one of the beaches patrolled at night for turtles.

To gather all of this information may sound simple, but it takes a small army of people walking the beach nightly. I worked closely with State University of Papua students and alumni who monitor leatherback activities during the breeding season. Some of them were getting their first field experience, and others were collecting data for their undergraduate thesis project. In addition to general nightly leatherback monitoring, they helped me find my focal females. These are a proportion of the nesting females that I focused my data collection on. The beaches of Jamursba Medi are long, so each person is usually responsible for patrolling a stretch of beach about 1.5 – 2 km long from about 9 pm until 4 am. We go back and forth with only 15-30 minutes rests in between so as not to miss any turtles nesting.

Deasy measures the carapace of a nesting leatherback turtle

When we encounter a focal female, we wait until she starts laying eggs to collect data. To identify each individual female, we insert a PIT tag, a small uniquely coded chip, into her shoulder. We also measure her carapace length and width, and collect a very small skin sample from the base of her hind flipper for stable isotope analysis. Using stable isotopes, I can figure out where she migrated from before arriving at the nesting beach.

Some of the clutches from my focal females were carefully moved into a hatchery. Many clutches in Jamursba Medi don’t hatch because pigs and dogs eat the eggs. For some clutches, sand temperature is too high, which causes the developing embryos to die. By moving them into a hatchery, we protect them from predators and high sand temperature. During clutch relocation, eggs were removed from the nest, which allowed us to count the number of eggs in a clutch, and measure and weigh a sample of 20 eggs. When these eggs hatched, we counted the number of hatchlings that emerged, and measured and weighed another sample of 20 hatchlings. We transported hatchlings down by the surf line as soon as we were done measuring them. We tried to find and encounter each focal female three times during the breeding season to discover differences in the number of eggs laid, the size of eggs, and the size of hatchlings among clutches.

Deasy releases baby leatherbacks from the hatchery near the waterline on the beach

We did A LOT this past summer! The work was physically exhausting, but the experience was well worth it. The friendship with the local students and villagers truly enriched my experience. Thank you for letting me share my stories with you! Tune in for future posts!

Meeting the giants – measuring up to a nesting leatherback

What an armful - Deasy measures a nesting leatherback turtle in Indonesia.

Deasy Lontoh

by Deasy Lontoh, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

In July 2009, I went to see the leatherback turtles in Papua. After a five-hour flight from Jakarta to Sorong, West Papua, and a six-hour boat ride east, I finally arrived at Jamursba Medi beach. It is the home of leatherback turtles and Birds of Paradise. Jamursba Medi consists of three beaches, and together they span approximately 18 km. The Tamrauw Mountains covered in pristine lowland rainforest give the beaches a lush emerald backdrop.

I patrolled one of Jamursba Medi beaches for three nights, and not a single leatherback appeared. On the fourth day, I went to Wermon, another nesting beach about 30 km from Jamursba Medi, with a small crew of people. That night around 10 pm, my walking partner’s keen eyes spotted the dark silhouette on the sand yards away and we rushed to it. I didn’t make out the silhouette right away, but I heard her front flippers hitting the sand as she pulled her heavy body forward and her laborious breathing. She was breathtaking! A leatherback’s carapace can get up to two meters long and their weight up to 900 kg. But the enormity of this giant was beyond my expectations. Such girth around the body! How strong must her front flippers be to pull such a heavy body! Her carapace was 167 cm long and 118 cm wide, and she could easily weigh more than 800 kg. She had smooth skin, and her muscular flippers reminded me of muscles of an elephant.

A female leatherback digs a hole with her flippers, then lays and covers her eggs in this hiding place.

Once she located a good place, she started excavating. She dug with her hind flippers, which are surprisingly flexible and maneuverable. She scooped a handful of sand with the tip of her flippers and tossed it to the side. As she scooped, the flipper grazed the side of the nest, effectively smoothing and compacting the nest wall, which prevented it from collapsing. Once an appropriate depth was reached, she started to lay her eggs. While she laid her eggs, one flipper covered the nest opening to prevent sand from coming into the nest. Female turtles are in a trance-like state when they lay eggs, which allows researchers to mark individuals, measure carapace length and width, and attach transmitters. When she was done laying her eggs, she covered the nest with sand using her hind flippers. Then with the weight of her whole body, she packed the sand above the nest. But it was not over yet. With her powerful front flippers, she moved the sand towards the back of her body. Sand was flying everywhere! Then she started to circle, dramatically tossing the sand back. She was camouflaging her nest. Once she was done, she headed back to sea. It was definitely a meeting to remember.

The Jamursba Medi coastline, Indonesia - the site of Deasy's memorable turtle encounter.

Turtle Power: Paddling 12,000 miles across the Pacific

Visitors from the Western Pacific: Some leatherback turtles travel across the Pacific Ocean, from Indonesia to North America, to feed on jellies (photo: D. Lontoh)

Deasy Lontoh

by Deasy Lontoh, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

It usually takes me 17 to 20 hours to fly from San Francisco to Jakarta, Indonesia, which covers about 9,000 miles of distance. Most of my family members live in Indonesia and I come to visit them every few years. Long hours in a plane seat and missing a day because of a 15-hour time difference are not my favorite things. But my journey is comparatively fast and plush. In 2007, I learned that a leatherback completed a similar trans-Pacific journey in 647 days covering 12,477 miles! On flippers! Scientists put on a satellite transmitter to track this turtle when it was nesting in Papua, Indonesia, which is about 2000 miles northeast of Jakarta.  It traveled all the way from Indonesia to Oregon to feed on abundant jellies.

We know now that the leatherback turtles that feed all along the west coast of North America, including Monterey bay, CA in late summer and early fall, come all the way from the nesting population in Papua. Their satellite tracks show that these leatherbacks spend one season to forage on our west coast, spend the winter in Hawaii (probably because the water here is too cold), then come back to our west coast and eat more jellies. The body of a jelly consists of mostly water, although their gonads are a richer source of nutrients.  Can you imagine how many jellies they need to eat?  They have to eat enough jellies to fuel their return migration to the nesting beach in Indonesia and to produce eggs.   Scientists predict they can their weight in jellies per day to get that much energy – about 800 pounds!

To learn more about the leatherback visitors to Monterey Bay, check out Scott Benson’s great blog through the TOPP project.

Balloons are no party for marine wildlife

Danielle Frechette

by Danielle Frechette, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

Hi, my name is Danielle. I am a graduate student in the Vertebrate Ecology lab, and I need your help with a problem we are having in our ocean right here off the coast of California. I noticed this problem when I was working on a whale watch boat in Monterey Bay.

The winter months (December through April) is gray whale season here in California. Gray whales spend the summer in Alaska, where they feed in cold, nutrient rich waters. At the end of the summer they head down to Mexico, to give birth to their calves and mate in the warm, shallow waters of Baja California. Here in California we are lucky, because they travel right along our coast on their way to and from Mexico. On February 15th and 16th I was out on the whale watch boat, looking for gray whales. We found whales, but we also found balloons. LOTS of balloons.

Each time we saw a balloon, we stopped the boat, and our deckhand used a gaff hook (a long pole with a hook on the end that is normally used for grabbing the lines we use to tie the boat to the dock) to grab the balloon out of the water. During those two days alone, we picked up 14 balloons! Each balloon was either pink, or a heart shaped Mylar balloon, which means they were all probably released on Valentine’s day, either accidentally or on purpose. We only traveled across a small part of Monterey Bay, and if we had traveled across more of the bay, I do not know how many more we would have found!

Fourteen balloons is a lot to find in only two days. It is not unusual, however, to see one or two balloons on an average day of whale watching in Monterey Bay.

Balloons can kill marine wildlife like this Northern fulmar. Note the balloons wrapped tightly around its wing, and hemorrhaged leg (BeachCOMBERS)

One of the problems with balloons is that they can look a lot like jellies. Animals like endangered sea turtles eat jellies, and they can accidentally eat balloons, thinking they are jellies. This seems surprising, that a balloon could be mistaken for food. More than once though, I have looked over the side of my whale watch boat to see a large jelly floating near the surface, but as we got closer, I

realized that it was not a jelly at all, but a big Mylar balloon. If I, with my human brain, can mistake a balloon for a jelly, it is easy to understand how a hungry turtle can make the same mistake!

I don’t only see balloons out in the ocean. Almost every time I go for a walk on the beach, I see balloons all tangles around kelp, driftwood, and even wildlife, like the northern fulmar in this photograph.

I need you to help me figure out how the balloons get out into the ocean. Also, I need you to help me figure out how the balloons affect wildlife like sea turtles, birds, and marine mammals. I would also like you to help me figure out what we can do to help decrease the number of balloons that make it out into the ocean.

You can use these websites to answer the following questions, and help me keep our oceans free of balloons!

Websites:

http://www.longwood.edu/cleanva/balloons.htm

http://www.mcsuk.org/mcsaction/pollution/balloons

Questions:

1. How do balloons get into the ocean?
2. Give three examples of how marine animals are affected by balloons.
3. What are the laws in California regarding balloons?
4. What can you do to help prevent balloon from harming marine wildlife?