So here's my opportunity to be completely all about me.
This is me.
Here's something about me.
I like sea turtles. Especially loggerhead sea turtles. Each year I spend a week monitoring loggerhead turtle nests.
This is made possible through The Caretta Research Project. Since 1973, the Caretta Research Project has been a hands-on research and conservation program dedicated to protecting the Loggerhead Sea Turtle, Caretta caretta.
The project's goals are:
1. To learn more about the population levels and trends/nesting habits of loggerhead turtles
2. To enhance survival of eggs and hatchlings on a nesting beach, and
. 3. To involve people in turtle preservation.
2006 will be my third summer doing this. In past, I have timed my visit so that I can monitor the nesting females in July. This summer, I would like to help with hatchlings, so I am going in early August.
LOGGERHEAD TURTLE FACTS
- Only one or two out of a hundred loggerhead turtles survives its first year.
- When hatchlings emerge from the nest, it's called a "boil" because that's what it looks like they are doing, "Boiling" up out of the nest.
- Up until relatively recently, no one knew where loggerhead turtles went when they were through nesting. By identifying seaweed, called sargassum, stuck to a nesting female's flipper, scientists determined that the turtles swim to the Sargasso Sea in the Caribbean.
This is fascinating stuff, I know. I'm going to change the subject now from turtles to birds, because I am currently creating a unit about Birds for my first, second and third graders.