Marine Tetrapod Biology Field Trip to Florida!
This fall a group of MES students (and a few marine bio folk) are enrolled in a Marine Tetrapods Biology course offered by CofC and taught out at Grice Marine Lab by Professor Dave Owens. Part of the requirements for this class is a field trip to Florida during spring break in search of various marine tetrapods (sea turtle, birds, dolphins, etc).
The first stop for the field trip was the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge along the east coast of Florida. This refuge was designated to help protect the large numbers of loggerhead and green turtles that nest here. 25-35% of all loggerhead and green turtle nests can be found in this little 20 mile stretch of beach!!! Not to mention the refuge frequently hosts the largest turtle in the world, leatherback sea turtles. We were fortunate enough to be shown around parts of the refuge by Dr. Lew Ehrhart and Dean Bagley who have spent the majority of their careers working to protect the sea turtles that nest at Archie Carr. Lew also spent the better part of the night sharing with us the story behind what all has gone on at the refuge over the past 20 years. Despite how tired we all were after a full day of driving Lew's story was fascinating and managed to keep us all interested...until we finally got hungry and decided it was time to stuff our faces with some awesome seafood!
A small stretch of beach along the Archie Carr National Wildife Refuge
After checking out Archie Carr the following day the Tetrapods class headed to the west side of Florida and camped out in Fort Desoto county park. Just nearby is Desoto beach which is frequently mentioned as one of the best beaches in the United States. After doing some snorkeling the class was able to walk around and check out some of the local wildlife near the campsite!
A yellow crowned night heron that was hanging out near our campsite!
A great blue heron foraging in the estuary at Fort Desoto park
Our campsite was basically infested with these brown anoles. Which unfortunately are an exotic that have displaced the native lizards found here.
A roseate spoonbill
Probably everyone's favorite part of the trip was our visit to Mote Marine Lab in Sarasota. Mote features a huge public aquarium and also a large research lab that is involved in a wide range of awesome marine projects. Upon walking into the lab we were shown around to various areas by CofC alum and current Mote turtle biologist Kristen Mazzarella. The first thing we got to see was a huuuuuuuuuge half ton manatee named Buffet involved in research being conducted by Mote scientists. Mote is doing research on manatee hearing and vibrasse sensitivity to help answer questions that may prove valuable in helping out their endangered wild counterparts.
Num num num! Buffet the manatee laying on his back and eating some fruit after a job well done!
After we checked out the manatees Kristen showed us some of the various sea turtle projects that Mote is involved in. Along with a sea turtle rehab hospital that is pretty busy they are currently attempting to train captive sea turtles to react to sound stimuli to gauge how good sea turtle hearing is. Several grad students here are also doing various work with baby sea turtles and we were lucky enough to get to check some of them out! Afterwards we sat down with Kristen's boss, Dr. Tony Tucker, whom talked to us about the conservation work that Mote sea turtle biologists are involved with. Similar to the work done at Archie Carr, Mote works around several beaches in Florida performing sea turtle nest inventories, doing mark recapture studies, and satellite tracking.
Baby loggerhead sea turtles at Mote Marine Lab. Notice the guy up front about to bite his brothers head off!
Once the talk with Dr. Tucker was finished we stopped by the marine mammal hospital to see their current patient, Pete the pygmy killer whale. Pygmy whales are hardly ever seen by humans since they are deep water animals. Pete was found by some fisherman who noticed he was having some serious issues. Once they got him into the hospital the veterinarians at Mote were able to determine that he had several nasty infections and brain parasites that were impacting his ability to swim. Pete is currently under 24 hour supervision and on antibiotics to help improve the odds he can eventually be re-released into the wild. Once we were done at the hospital we made a quick stop by the Mote aquarium to see some other interesting animals before heading back to our campsite and returning to Charleston the next day!
Pete the pygmy killer whale (no relation to Shamu)
Some intriquing fish at the Mote aquarium!