What do volunteers do?

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What do volunteers do?

• 2 types of volunteers
• Different levels of commitment
• Regular volunteer
• Commits to 1 or 2 days per week from May 1
  through August 31 to walk a section of beach AT
  DAYBREAK
• Reports signs of sea turtle activity
• Permitted volunteer
• May have an assigned section of beach 1 day per
  week
• Commits to a year of training locally and by FWC
• Commits to being readily available to respond to
  calls from me

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What will you learn?

• The Regular Volunteer will hopefully learn to
• Tell the difference between a nest and a false
  crawl
• The Permitted Volunteer will learn to
• Identify different types of crawls
• Identify different species
• Locate eggs in a nest
• Relocate eggs if necessary
• Excavate a nest upon emergence
• Respond to dead or injured sea turtles
• Accept getting sandy

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• Turtle tracks lead volunteers to the nest site

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• Classic Loggerhead nest site

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Loggerhead tracks are easy to identify
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• Classic Green nest site

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• Green turtle tracks have distinctive
  characteristics

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• Classic leatherback nest site

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• Leather back tracks are very obvious

6 ft 8 in
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• What will I see on the beach?

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• Volunteers dig to verify the presence of eggs

Photo by Jennifer Kravassi
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• The nest is marked and monitored during
  incubation
• Eggs will incubate for 50 60 days

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• When they emerge, hopefully all the hatchlings
  will crawl to the water

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• Since almost all emergences happen at night,
  artificial beachfront lighting can disorient
  hatchlings, causing them to crawl all over the
  beach or landward into vegetation or local
  roadways

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• Three days after the nest emerges, volunteers
  will excavate the nest and take an inventory of
  the contents

Photo by Sandra Baker-Hinton
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• Sometimes a turtle stops development in the egg
• Sometimes live hatchlings are trapped in the nest
  and need to be rescued

Photo by Jennifer Kravassi
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• Live hatchlings that are trapped in the nest
  are collected and released to the water

Photo by Jennifer Kravassi
Photo by Jennifer Kravassi
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• The public is invited to our excavations
• Everyone gets excited when there are live
  hatchlings!

Photo by Jennifer Kravassi
Photo by Sandra Baker-Hinton
Photo by Sandra Baker-Hinton
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• The rescued hatchlings are released and they
  make their way to the surf

Photo by Sandra Baker-Hinton
Photo by Sandra Baker-Hinton
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• Swim on, little hatchlings.

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Our Volunteers

• Select a day (or days) of the week
• Select a section of the beach
• The south end is covered by ATV (lack of beach
  access)
• We frequently ride north to visit with walkers
• Walk that section at daybreak
  looking for signs of sea turtle activity the
  previous night

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• Call me! I, or one of the other permitted
  volunteers, will come and verify the crawl
• Walkers begin on May 1 and walk through August 31
• Hatchlings begin to arrive in July and can
  continue into October
• Volunteers monitor existing nests as they walk
  and report any disturbance or vandalism

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• Their future is in our hands.