Turtle Season 2006 comes to a close, with new developments
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For the recently nested giant leatherback females, there is of course, no ‘end' to the cycle. They are out there in the mid-Atlantic, feeding, and heading, well, who knows where? Back in Mayumba, however, April more or less sees the last of any notable turtle activity on our beaches. There will be occasional females coming ashore throughout the year, but these will be impossible to predict and as impossible to see. During April, there will also be a few groups of hatchlings emerging from the their sandy nests and dashing to the sea, however even these will be getting very rare. At this time of year we reflect on the nesting season gone by and plan for next season's activities. In Mayumba, we already have one data set on nesting females from this season entered into our computers, and a preliminary report produced (watch this space for details!), and we are hard at work assimilating the lessons learned in preparation for October, and the arrival once again of turtles to our shores. |
| The research year started late for us, due to the slow arrival of funding, but we eventually saw teams moving into the field in mid to late November. This year, as in the past, the bulk of the turtle research was carried out by Aventures Sans Frontiers (a Gabonese Conservation NGO), and Gabon Environnement, another group committed to environmental protection. Each group set up 2 research camps apiece, and began the arduous business of walking the beaches by day and night, tagging turtles and counting the total number of tracks found each morning, in order to gauge if the numbers are up or down from previous years. The local staff of these groups are extraordinarily dedicated individuals, spending almost 6 months a year living far from the village and ‘normal' life, dedicating themselves to the work at hand. Time wasters last about a week in these circumstances, so after a full season, you can be sure that the survivors are folk of the highest caliber. True conservation heroes. |  |
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This year, the park marked a new initiative by working with these research and conservation groups to ensure the cleaning up of the research beaches at the end of the season. Mayumba's beaches offer a fabulous wild environment to our human visitors, and a perfectly shaped coastline to nesting turtles, However, we suffer our own litter problems in the shape of plastic water bottles, fishing floats and other man-made packaging washed up on the beach from towns far to the south. This litter is less dangerous to the wildlife than it is unsightly, but the spirit of maintaining a more pristine environment spurred us on to getting the trash cleaned up. |
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Over the course of 2 weeks, both NGO's worked hard to collect all the trash from the beach and the vegetation behind, piling it up near the vehicle track for collection. At the end of the period, we collected the rubbish in trucks and took it to central burning pits. The group ASF collected 5 pickup truck-loads in 7.5km (including almost 2000 plastic mineral water bottles). All of this melted down to a few kilograms of glass, metal, and cinders. The groups found the experience extremely satisfying. The beach is now spotless, and we trust that the wildlife, and our visitors will also appreciate the effort. |
| The end of the turtle season usually leaves something of a void for Park staff, knowing that for another 6 months, our beaches are empty of turtles, and the whereabouts of the leatherbacks unknown. This season, however, thanks to a new collaboration between the Park, Exeter University 's Turtle Research Group, Aventures Sans Frontiers and The Wildlife Conservation Society, we are receiving regular postcards back from 8 of our nesting females. During the season, turtle expert Matthew Witt, with the help of resident staff, attached 8 small satellite tracking devices to females coming ashore in Mayumba National Park . Held in place with something akin to an aquatic backpack, these units record parameters such as dive time and depth, and the geographical position of the animal each time it surfaces. The information is beamed to a satellite and downloaded each day. If you want to track the whereabouts of Eve, Bella, Nellie, Pauline, Audrey, Jodie, Tchizinga, and Amy, just go to http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?project_id=104&dyn=1150482247 . This excellent site will show you the current positions of all the Mayumba turtles, plus a detailed map for each female, giving the straight line distance they have swum from the coast, and their total journey length. Information of this kind is not only interesting, it is invaluable if we are to begin better addressing such issues as turtle/fisheries conflicts, and migration patterns. Most of what turtles do happens at sea, so this is currently our best way of following them and working out how we can best protect their passage to and within the open ocean. Big thanks to Brendan Godley, Matt, and everyone else involved in this project. |  |
