BEST DAY EVER. Little Farmers Turtle Tagging

2/25/18

At Little Farmers Cay we got an amazing opportunity to work with green turtles. We had been swimming with the turtles the day before with a local named Carsel. These are the same conch eating green turtles I wrote about in the Bimini to George Town Post. The day before, Carsel had told us to meet him at the dock in the morning to swim with the turtles more, but as we were heading into the harbor in the dinghy, and chasing two spotted eagle rays, we saw him standing on the bow of a Bahimian style workboat with two other people in the boat with him. We thought that maybe they had hired him to help them spear lobsters or fish. He was waving us over so we drove over too see what was going on. Inside the boat there were about eight or nine large green sea turtles laying on their backs. They had hired Carsel to help them catch turtles. It was a little scary at first seeing the turtles like that, but we were all fine with it when the lady who was in the boat with him, named Barbara, explained what they were doing. She and her husband were working with the University of Florida, Bahamas Sea Turtle Research/Network, Family Island Research and Education and they were tagging turtles throughout the Bahamas. We told Barbara and her husband Steve (who was driving the boat) about the shark science/marine biology club we are in at home called The Gills Club and how much we love marine science. The reason the turtles were on their backs looking dead was when you put them on their backs, they go into a sort of trance. They told us that if we could catch any turtles for them, it would be great. They had seen us, and Dad with the turtles the day before and knew we were comfortable with them. I do not think that they really expected us to actually catch any, but Dad got really into it. We took the dinghy over to an area of shallow water in "Big Harbor" where we had seen lots of turtles. We headed back to try and catch some more turtles and all had jobs, Jessie was the spotter, Mom drove the dinghy, Dad did the catching and I took care of the turtle once it was in the boat (Stan's job was to not get bit and stay out of the way at the bow). On the third turtle, when dad was bringing it back to the boat, he thought he stepped on a stingray, so he dropped the turtle and ran back to the boat. We went back and found the same turtle, and dad got it again. The second time, he felt the same thing that he had thought was a stingray before, but he realized that it was remoras that had been stuck to the bottom of the turtle. Remoras are fish that suck onto sharks, turtles, boats, and just about anything they can catch a ride on. When dad picked up the turtle out of the water, the remoras were dropping off of the turtle and sticking onto the nearest thing they could find, which was him. They sucked onto his legs and sides. He said that it hurt a little, and felt really weird. This time he held onto the turtle, but started running and trying to shake the remoras off. This turtle was the biggest of the ones that we caught and he took up a lot of the room in the dinghy. They had as many turtles as they needed so they told us to take the turtle we had to the dock at Little Harbor. It was time to tag the turtles and record data. Scientists Steve Connett and Barbara Crouchley went through the processes and procedures with us in detail. They started by putting just four turtles on the dock (so we kept the big one we caught in the dinghy with a wet towel over it.) Jessie got the job of writing down all of the data, and I got to help collect the data. I held the turtles on my lap, read the scale, held up the turtle for the pictures of their shells, and calmed down the turtles when they started freaking out. Some of the turtles were stressed, Barbara taught me how to calm them down by placing a hand on their chest, pressing down gently and saying a loud "shhhhhh". Carcel’s family came to watch and help, and a lot of other locals did too. Jessie had the job of naming the turtles and named them after everyone who was at the doc and for our great grandparents Dolly and Bernie who recently passed away. It was amazing getting to learn from and work with real scientists and live animals. We learned so much about data collection and Green Sea Turtles. We tagged 17 turtles in all. Stan and Jessie also made some friends. Stanley played hide and seek with some boys that lived there, and Jessie became friends with Carsel’s daughter, Mariah. I became friends with some turtles. I am so glad we got to have this amazing experience, it has been the highlight of the whole trip.