An update on the 2017 season since I suck at blogging
I've sat down to write a blog post about 6 times in the past 2 months, but it just hasn't happened.
I arrived on Ossabaw Island on May 4th where I was welcomed by biting winds and chills in the morning that had me leaving the house at 05:30 wearing three layers just to keep warm. For the most part, there are only about 3-4 humans that call this island home at any given time while other staff members come and go on a daily basis. It's a little strange but also lovely to know that there are only 3 other people sharing 26,000 acres of undeveloped barrier island with you.
Ossabaw technically has 5 distinct beaches--(creatively named) north beach, north middle, middle middle, south middle, and south beach--that make up 17.1km of coastline suitable for sea turtle nesting. Every day two Georgia DNR turtle technicians and myself navigate out to these beaches where we look for new sea turtle nests.
Here on Ossabaw it's a little bit of planes, trains, and automobiles to get around to all of the beaches. We can only drive to north (a 45 minute commute from the Turtle House) and south (30 minute drive) beaches which cover about 9km of the total 17.1.
Getting to the middle beaches is a little tricky. North middle beach is accessed from north beach via a paddle-yak (not quite a kayak yet not a full paddle board). We keep a bike on north middle beach, but I honestly hate it so much, I usually just monitor the 2km of beach on foot. The adventure to south middle and middle middle beaches starts with a canoe ride up a tidal creek. Once we get to where we've stashed a Kawasaki Mule in the dunes of south middle, we get out of the canoe and drive the almost 5km of south middle. We can then walk over to middle middle beach assuming the tide is low. When we have a high tide, there's a trusty albeit rocky kayak we use to get to middle middle beach where we monitor on foot.
While driving out to the beaches, we encounter all kinds of animals in the road. The island is home to 8 Sicilian donkeys that seem to think they own the road.
Feral hogs, deer, alligators, nighthawks, snakes, frogs are a few animals that we encounter on the road on an almost regular basis. The alligators can be especially stubborn as far as clearing out of the way goes. It's not out of the ordinary to encounter a gator while commuting to work.
Did I mention that the island is undeveloped? This makes us our own mechanics and tow company. We've had to get crafty more than a few times when the beach has tried to take our vehicles. This environment is constantly breathtakingly beautiful, but it can also be dangerous. Fieldwork is no joke, and it's not always the most fun. Thus far, we've encountered gators in the road (thankfully Mondo, the 14' gator hasn't graced us with his presence in the road), exhausting heat, drying winds, driving rains, venomous snakes, flat tires, Mules stuck in soft sand, and I've personally sunk in the marsh mud up to my hips.
It's not any kind of 'normal' job--I never know what the day holds when I wake up at 04:45--but I can't imagine doing anything else right now.
As of yesterday, 7/14/2017, we had 278 nests on Ossabaw and the earliest nests are beginning to hatch. More to come on my project, sea turtles, DNA data, and much more in the coming days.
