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come ashore at about 22:00pm to nest. We were happy to discover that this was the first time this individual had been recorded to nest on our beach as she did not have any flipper ID tags. She was found while she was in her oviposition and still in a state of torpor, so we were able to tag both her right and left front flippers with ID number tags which will enable us to recognize her again in the future. We allowed her to go though all the phases of nesting before she was captured and her clutch of 119 ping pong ball sized eggs were dug up and relocated to our egg hatchery.
Picture shows the Turtle Patrol Team and Nicole (AKA hissing roach) excavating egg chamber to relocate turtle eggs.
After the Olive ridley's eggs were relocated to our hatchery and safely re-buried, we started work on the mother herself. I still had two Platform Terminal Transmitter (PTT) left over from last nesting season which I was not able to deploy. Last nesting season was the first time PTT's Tracking devices were ever attached to marine turtles in Angola and the information and data we have collected has been invaluable to our turtle conservation project by helping us better understand the movements of this unique Olive ridley population.
Isn't she just gorgeous! Turtles excrete unwanted salt from their eyes!
We normally attach PTT's at night after the turtle has nested, allowing for at least 3 hours of drying time for the expoxy to harded and reach full strength before the turlte is released the following morning.
hissing roach and Harley walking down the beach.
Once a PTT has been attached to a sea turtle, I upload the data on the seaturtle.org site and add her to the adoption program were people can adopt this turtle by making a donation to seaturtle.org which supports other turtle conservation project. Before I can add a new turtle to the adoption program the turtle has to be given a name. This beautiful girl was named Harley by one of our colleges on the project.
Picture shows me doing a final check to confirm the PTT is actually transmitting before we let her go.
The Olive ridley sea turtle is known to often enter major esturies and in this case the mouth of the mighty Congo River on the Angolan side.
Every time the turtle comes to the surface to breath, the PTT antenna will break the suface and send a signal and GPS location. Note the DRC in the far backround.
Nicole (AKA hissing roach) standing in front of an obvious Olive ridley track.
I hope many of you will find this post intresting as not many herp enthusiasts ever have anything to do with marine turtles as do not many turtle biologists have anything to do with other reptiles. We will be adding to this thread periodically as we get more nesting turtles and follow through right up untill hatchling emergence to compleate the story. Enjoy, Regards HH
