St. Catherine's Island (Sat June 20 - Mon June 22)

Group shot on the dock at St. Catherine's

The modified topless pickup called "The Popemobile" that we drove around the island in, and our tents in the background.

Saturday

We started the day nice and early and practiced putting up mist nets for capturing birds, taking the birds out of them, and doing PEs on the birds we had. Terry Norton, the veterinarian for St. Catherine's Island (and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center) showed us some PE techniques and how to take blood from the birds. After working at various wildlife rehab centers and the Cornell Wildlife Health Center, and a few labs with bird handling and PEs during Block 7, I felt pretty good about my bird handling skills. Although I still don't think I could hit the jugular to take blood. We went out with some of the St. Catherine's Island staff to place traps for different reptiles and amphibians in the manmade lakes on the islands, and we'll check on them tomorrow early in the morning.

The most exciting part of the day came when the staff sat us down with a bucket full of compasses, maps, and gps devices, and proceeded to explain to us that they were going to drop us off somewhere on the island and we'd have to find our way to a certain meeting place to get a ride back for dinner. I am notorious for my lack of sense of direction, so this was a little bit intimidating for me. But actually, after listening to the explanation of how to use the various compasses and how to get the bearing for our target location, I felt a little more confident. We started out at the site of the mission of Santa Catalina on the island, and had to make our way to the "tree with the red yarn" at Wamassee Pond. Checking our heading every 3 steps or so, we skirted around a few big stands of trees and forded through the "stream of death"--so treacherous that each of us got at least one foot a little muddy from stepping over the entire thing. Stephen got a nice colony of seed ticks on his pants, but we all made it to the pond in only about 30 minutes--the first group to get to the destination! We took lots of pictures of the birds nesting in trees around the pond, and saw an alligator peeking its eyes and nose out of the water. With a high today of 104 degrees, and a heat index of 110, it was pretty intense being bundled up with our long pants tucked into our socks to protect from ticks and chiggers.

Terry, Val, and Kimberly demonstrating the funnel trap for turtles and amphibians

Once it got dark, we took a pickup truck ride down to the beach to see the bioluminescence in the water. It was amazing--little blue sparkles anytime the waves broke, and if you moved your hands or feet around in the water, it lit up with a million little points of light. There was also a dead crab on the beach that had the bioluminescent bacteria all over it, and was glowing like a torch. The stars were beautiful, but there was actually more ambient light than I expected so the sky wasn't all that dark. After spending the night last night in a tent that was 90 degrees at its coolest, I moved inside to the air-conditioned building under construction where lots of us were sleeping on air mattresses and sleeping pads on the floor.

Sunday

We started the day by checking the herp traps, and found a few small amphibians and a lot of giant predaceous water beetles. For the afternoon, we went into the field to help with a health assessment project on gopher tortoises that Terry Norton was doing. We split up so that there were two people working on each tortoise, and we had to first identify--by microchips (called PIT tags) and notches in the carapace)--and then gather physical exam and basic health data. The tortoises were big, and really strong, and everything was a little bit complicated by the fact that they kept urinating and defecating all over us. I was working with Jenny, and our tortoise was healthy, except for diarrhea that we suspected was brought on by the stress of being captured and examined, and a small lesion near the cloaca. We each successfully took blood both from a vein in the tendon around the elbow, and the subcarapacial vein. It was the first time I got blood successfully on my first try in any animal ever!

Also on Sunday, we got radio telemetry units and used them to track the troops of Ring Tailed Lemurs that are living on the island. We found the troop that was out without too much trouble and got a chance to take lots of adorable pictures. Some of the lemurs had babies on their backs, making the whole experience even cuter.

Ring-Tailed Lemurs on St. Catherine's Island

Later that night, we got a chance to take a quick swim in the ocean, which was really warm and very pleasant. We also heard from Al Segers, at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, about his research and tracking of sea turtles. I talked to both Terry and Al about the possibility of doing externships or working with them on their projects in some capacity--both sound like a lot of fun, and some nice southern weather will be great come March in upstate New York.

Monday

We got up and broke camp on Monday morning, and headed out to the beach for one last activity before taking the boats back to Midway. We met Gayle Bishop, who talked to us about Sea Turtle nesting habits, and how to find nests on the beach. Since he didn't find any nests from the previous night on the beach that morning, he actually built one so that he could show us how to find them and relocate them if need be.

From there we drove south and back across the causeway out to Jekyll Island to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, where Terry is the head veterinarian. We got a tour of the patients, and Terry took us back into the hospital and we watched him work on one Loggerhead--named Cerrata Hope--who had Debilitated Turtle Syndrome. We said goodbye to Terry and headed back to White Oak for dinner and a lecture from Mark Stetter (from Disney Animal Programs) on vasectomizing African Elephants.

Terry and his techs, with a few Envirovet students, at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, cleaning Cerrata Hope's shell and checking her out