So I took a week-long break to Hawaii (which I will talk about later), but I feel I must sum up my experience in San Diego at the International Sea Turtle Symposium.
Basically the last morning was filled with lots of running around, packing up the tabling supplies, loading the car, sitting around, looking for people, more sitting around and then sitting through a few interesting sessions. Tabling over the course of ISTS was probably the low point of the conference, and talking to people about my poster was definitely the high point.
I was so glad to be done with tabling. At times it was fun to talk to passer-bys and get them interested in what STRP is doing, having them sign our petitions and giving out free stickers. It was definitely a great deal more interesting to sit in on scientific presentations and try to figure out what in the world they were talking about. On the last day in particular, there were two sessions I sat in on. The first was "Population Assessments" and the second was "Threats."
In the population assessments session I learned that there are seven different breeding stocks of leatherbacks in the Atlantic, the largest of which breed in French Guiana. Some other guy started talking about hawksbill sea turtles found in Jumby Bay and Buck Island in the Caribbean—those two locations I only remember because of their funny sounding names. And there was a lot of confusing terminology being thrown around, such as neophyte and remigrant. After a while I caught on: a neophyte is a first time nesting sea turtle, and a remigrant is a sea turtle that has returned, or remigrated (aha!), to nest again at the same beach.
In the threats session the most notable memory I have is listening to this guy with an Australian accent say the words "bathymetric depth" over and over and over again. Also learned about el Niño and la Niña and how they influence hatchling success and sex ratios.
Friday morning we took down our beautiful posters. I was registered as a student, I was given the opportunity to have my poster assessed, but unfortunately I never got the results back. I felt like I did a really great job anyway. Mostly because quite a few people approached me to tell me so. I guess that was enough of an assessment for me. You can take a look at my poster and others by STRP here!
To finish off ISTS with a bang, they had Dr. Wallace J. Nichols give the closing speech, and as always he handed out Blue Marbles and encouraged us to pass them along to others. I think I ended up with three blue marbles over the course of the week.
I'm glad I ended up taking this opportunity to travel down to San Diego and publish this poster. To be quite honest it'll do wonders for my résumé, but I think it was more valuable for me to be meeting people and seeing what other activists, college students and scientists are working on and what I may able to research or work on in the future. Maybe next year I'll find an internship with sea turtle research?
Also thank you thank you thank you to the friends I stayed with in San Diego. They made the week so fun and less stressful for me!
Showing posts with label ISTS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ISTS. Show all posts
25 April 2011
14 April 2011
ISTS Day 3: Foraging, Physiology, and Movement... Among Other Sea Turtle Things
There was nothing special about today, but I managed to see most of the presentations dealing with foraging and movement of sea turtles. Most specifically I was able to see a number of presentations about leatherback sea turtles, my new obsession. These gigantic creatures are kind of freaky looking at first, but being the biggest and most unique of the sea turtle species I now find myself absolutely in love with them. I keep hearing Marc Ward of Sea Turtles Forever talk about one leatherback female named Rosie that he's seen nesting repeatedly, and oh gosh I wish I could be there to see her!!
Anywho, back to the conference. I had planned to be here since 8am watching presentations, but honestly I cannot get up that early no matter how hard I try. I arrived just in time to watch a presentations about conservation of leatherbacks and loggerheads in South Africa. It was supposed to be about conservation, but it also talked a lot about how the different biologies of the turtles allowed for one species population to recover faster than the other (the leatherback being better suited for recovery). The reason for leatherbacks having more success is because their nesting is less specific, and so they cover a wide area. The loggerheads return to very selective beaches. There were also several comments made about how now the population of leatherbacks in that area is estimated to be made largely of males now, an explanation for why not more females are coming to nest on South African beaches. Or something like that.
I saw another super cool presentation about loggerhead babies being tagged and released off of Western Florida, and they were observed following the Gulf Stream north, but also swimming away from the stream, unexpectedly. There was another presentation about Australian flatback turtles and their migration patterns, as well as those of Eastern and Western Pacific leatherbacks (yes, there's a difference). The West Pacific leatherbacks are so cool because depending on where they nest and at what time of year, they follow different migration routes. Those that breed in the winter tend to stay around Australia and tend to be larger in size, especially longer in length. Those that breed in the summer migrate across the entire Pacific ocean to forage off the Western U.S. coast, and tend to have a wider carapace (shell).
One last thing I learned today: the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Shelf is an important foraging location for juvenile loggerhead turtles born in Eastern Florida. It was observed in a study being presented that there are distinct seasonal and day/night trends in the sea turtle surfacing behavior. It was observed that loggerheads rarely dive deeply at night, which would make sense because there is less light for foraging so why waste the energy.
Sorry if I bore you, but you did have the choice to stop reading you know.
Now I'm just manning the table, protecting our merchandise with my life. We're out of free chocolate (bummer), but on the bright side I got a free poster of butterflies in Sri Lanka. I also got a free poster from a Nicaraguan organization. And speaking of posters I haven't been able to check out that other plastics one yet. It will happen tonight sometime! One hour until my last poster presentation!
Anywho, back to the conference. I had planned to be here since 8am watching presentations, but honestly I cannot get up that early no matter how hard I try. I arrived just in time to watch a presentations about conservation of leatherbacks and loggerheads in South Africa. It was supposed to be about conservation, but it also talked a lot about how the different biologies of the turtles allowed for one species population to recover faster than the other (the leatherback being better suited for recovery). The reason for leatherbacks having more success is because their nesting is less specific, and so they cover a wide area. The loggerheads return to very selective beaches. There were also several comments made about how now the population of leatherbacks in that area is estimated to be made largely of males now, an explanation for why not more females are coming to nest on South African beaches. Or something like that.
I saw another super cool presentation about loggerhead babies being tagged and released off of Western Florida, and they were observed following the Gulf Stream north, but also swimming away from the stream, unexpectedly. There was another presentation about Australian flatback turtles and their migration patterns, as well as those of Eastern and Western Pacific leatherbacks (yes, there's a difference). The West Pacific leatherbacks are so cool because depending on where they nest and at what time of year, they follow different migration routes. Those that breed in the winter tend to stay around Australia and tend to be larger in size, especially longer in length. Those that breed in the summer migrate across the entire Pacific ocean to forage off the Western U.S. coast, and tend to have a wider carapace (shell).
One last thing I learned today: the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Shelf is an important foraging location for juvenile loggerhead turtles born in Eastern Florida. It was observed in a study being presented that there are distinct seasonal and day/night trends in the sea turtle surfacing behavior. It was observed that loggerheads rarely dive deeply at night, which would make sense because there is less light for foraging so why waste the energy.
Sorry if I bore you, but you did have the choice to stop reading you know.
Now I'm just manning the table, protecting our merchandise with my life. We're out of free chocolate (bummer), but on the bright side I got a free poster of butterflies in Sri Lanka. I also got a free poster from a Nicaraguan organization. And speaking of posters I haven't been able to check out that other plastics one yet. It will happen tonight sometime! One hour until my last poster presentation!
13 April 2011
ISTS Day 1: "Well this is going to be interesting, isn't it?"
Technically day 1 was Monday, but nothing exciting happened except for that myself and the other members of the Turtle Island Restoration Network team arrived at the symposium safe and sound. Now we're all registered, and things yesterday really kicked off.
This morning was the welcome event, which I missed... whoops. But there were lovely talks by Jeffrey Seminoff, the ISTS President, Peter Pritchard, a well known sea turtle zoologist, and Karen Bjorndal, a Prof at U of Florida who is also a sea turtle conservationist. Or I guess they were lovely, I wasn't there but I heard good things. The lesson here is to get there at 8 am even if you are told you don't have to be.
I did arrive just in time for the four-hour-long special session on "Finding Common Ground in Fisheries Management."It was a panel session made up of a few fishermen, a few men from the commercial fishing industry, an economist, a random professor who somehow knew something about fisheries but not sea turtles, and two representatives of environmental organizations (STRP and the Sea Turtle Conservancy).
First off, this symposium has over a thousand people in attendance. For some reason they decided to make this whole panel a bunch of old white men (and one woman), and the most diversity obtained was from an old white Australian man. They couldn't have gotten anyone else from the hundred other countries in attendance to speak about artesian fishing communities? Really?
Well despite that, the panel was incredibly interesting because of the bickering that went between Todd Steiner (STRP Director) and the fishermen/commercial fishery fellows. The first panelist introduced was a man named Peter Dupuy, who is a bitter California fisherman. Bitter, because he is no longer allowed to fish in California waters, understandable. He made his point that he had never harmed sea turtles with his fishery, and then showed pictures of Ostional, Costa Rica and claimed that they were poaching eggs. For a little background: Ostional is a community that harvests sea turtle EGGS in low low numbers. In exchange they provide necessary protection for the rest of the eggs, and they do not harm any of the actual nesting mother turtles. Overall, it is a completely sustainable program that has actually been beneficial to the sea turtle population.
Obviously someone didn't do his research. He also started calling unnamed NGOs "eco-terrorists"
The next panelist that was introduced was Marydelle Donnelly from the Sea Turtle Conservancy, and she flat out said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was to blame for not doing enough to help endangered sea turtles affected by the fishing industry.
I have written down a bunch of notes from this panel, but for the most part all I have written for the men from the fishing industry is "blah blah blah." They literally did not answer a single question asked of them and they bounced around from topic to topic, offering nothing except their opinions and not encouraging discussion. I believe the entire point of this panel was to get these individuals to see each others points of view, and to find a "common ground" on which they could agree. Naturally, this was not accomplished. There was a lot of talk that managing sustainable fisheries in order to protect sea turtles needs to be a part of a multinational effort, but honestly a bunch of white guys (and a gal) saying this is not going to help matters.
The Australian guy didn't seem to care about much, he explained the scientific method to a bunch of scientists. Really? Necessary? I think not. He did explain that the change in fishing and improved conservation needs to come from within communities, especially artesian fishing communities in third world countries. He said something about reaching out to the witch doctor in order to get the rest of the population to follow. The lesson of this story is, "Always look for the witch doctor first."
I loved most of the points Todd made—I have to, he's my executive director. He confronted the fishery guys about the use of special hooks and Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs), supporting that these technological advances are not going to work to save sea turtles all by themselves. There also needs to be other regulations in addition, there needs to be critical habitat established where fishing will not be allowed, and also a collaboration of efforts on protecting sea turtle nesting beaches. Every stage of the sea turtle's lives needs to be protected in order for their populations to rebound.
After that very long session, I grabbed some lunch and sat at our Turtle Island table in the main room until my supervisor, Chris Pincetich, gave his talk on challenges faced saving sea turtles during the BP oil spill. It was a short presentation but he brought light to a lot of issues that need to be addressed. During the BP spill, he explained, there was no on-water rescues of sea turtles being conducted until much damage had already been done. The coast guard especially weren't concerned with the animals out at sea that might have been affected, they waited until the animals washed up on shore to help them out. Not okay.
After his presentation it was time for the poster presentations and the cocktail hour. I grabbed a glass of wine and headed over to my poster and chatted with several people about my poster. I'll probably do an entire post on my poster and the points made in my poster because this post has really gone on for way too long.
Today is "Student Day" so there is much to look forward too. Student mixer tonight (another free drink!) followed by the Wild & Scenic Sea Turtle film festival where we will be showing The Heartbreak Turtle Today. I'll be here at the symposium until around 10 tonight with free wi-fi access, so I think I'll survive.
Pictures to come! As soon as I find my card reader...
This morning was the welcome event, which I missed... whoops. But there were lovely talks by Jeffrey Seminoff, the ISTS President, Peter Pritchard, a well known sea turtle zoologist, and Karen Bjorndal, a Prof at U of Florida who is also a sea turtle conservationist. Or I guess they were lovely, I wasn't there but I heard good things. The lesson here is to get there at 8 am even if you are told you don't have to be.
I did arrive just in time for the four-hour-long special session on "Finding Common Ground in Fisheries Management."It was a panel session made up of a few fishermen, a few men from the commercial fishing industry, an economist, a random professor who somehow knew something about fisheries but not sea turtles, and two representatives of environmental organizations (STRP and the Sea Turtle Conservancy).
First off, this symposium has over a thousand people in attendance. For some reason they decided to make this whole panel a bunch of old white men (and one woman), and the most diversity obtained was from an old white Australian man. They couldn't have gotten anyone else from the hundred other countries in attendance to speak about artesian fishing communities? Really?
Well despite that, the panel was incredibly interesting because of the bickering that went between Todd Steiner (STRP Director) and the fishermen/commercial fishery fellows. The first panelist introduced was a man named Peter Dupuy, who is a bitter California fisherman. Bitter, because he is no longer allowed to fish in California waters, understandable. He made his point that he had never harmed sea turtles with his fishery, and then showed pictures of Ostional, Costa Rica and claimed that they were poaching eggs. For a little background: Ostional is a community that harvests sea turtle EGGS in low low numbers. In exchange they provide necessary protection for the rest of the eggs, and they do not harm any of the actual nesting mother turtles. Overall, it is a completely sustainable program that has actually been beneficial to the sea turtle population.
Obviously someone didn't do his research. He also started calling unnamed NGOs "eco-terrorists"
The next panelist that was introduced was Marydelle Donnelly from the Sea Turtle Conservancy, and she flat out said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was to blame for not doing enough to help endangered sea turtles affected by the fishing industry.
I have written down a bunch of notes from this panel, but for the most part all I have written for the men from the fishing industry is "blah blah blah." They literally did not answer a single question asked of them and they bounced around from topic to topic, offering nothing except their opinions and not encouraging discussion. I believe the entire point of this panel was to get these individuals to see each others points of view, and to find a "common ground" on which they could agree. Naturally, this was not accomplished. There was a lot of talk that managing sustainable fisheries in order to protect sea turtles needs to be a part of a multinational effort, but honestly a bunch of white guys (and a gal) saying this is not going to help matters.
The Australian guy didn't seem to care about much, he explained the scientific method to a bunch of scientists. Really? Necessary? I think not. He did explain that the change in fishing and improved conservation needs to come from within communities, especially artesian fishing communities in third world countries. He said something about reaching out to the witch doctor in order to get the rest of the population to follow. The lesson of this story is, "Always look for the witch doctor first."
I loved most of the points Todd made—I have to, he's my executive director. He confronted the fishery guys about the use of special hooks and Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs), supporting that these technological advances are not going to work to save sea turtles all by themselves. There also needs to be other regulations in addition, there needs to be critical habitat established where fishing will not be allowed, and also a collaboration of efforts on protecting sea turtle nesting beaches. Every stage of the sea turtle's lives needs to be protected in order for their populations to rebound.
After that very long session, I grabbed some lunch and sat at our Turtle Island table in the main room until my supervisor, Chris Pincetich, gave his talk on challenges faced saving sea turtles during the BP oil spill. It was a short presentation but he brought light to a lot of issues that need to be addressed. During the BP spill, he explained, there was no on-water rescues of sea turtles being conducted until much damage had already been done. The coast guard especially weren't concerned with the animals out at sea that might have been affected, they waited until the animals washed up on shore to help them out. Not okay.
After his presentation it was time for the poster presentations and the cocktail hour. I grabbed a glass of wine and headed over to my poster and chatted with several people about my poster. I'll probably do an entire post on my poster and the points made in my poster because this post has really gone on for way too long.
Today is "Student Day" so there is much to look forward too. Student mixer tonight (another free drink!) followed by the Wild & Scenic Sea Turtle film festival where we will be showing The Heartbreak Turtle Today. I'll be here at the symposium until around 10 tonight with free wi-fi access, so I think I'll survive.
Pictures to come! As soon as I find my card reader...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)