Wayne Sentman’s got it rough, doesn’t he? Traveling the world
leading eco-tours and volunteer research groups for the Oceanic Society,
the roving biologist has to catalog colorful corals in pristinely clear
waters, stroll palm-fringed beaches to rescue baby turtles, and look
for lions and leopards in Africa. Yet he finds time to tell us about it
in his Animal Beat blog, “Where in the world is Wayne?”
Saving baby turtles and watching for jaguars in Suriname by Wayne Sentman
Recently I spent a week in Suriname—my tenth year leading a group of volunteer researchers in the Galibi Nature Reserve for the Oceanic Society. Suriname is part of the Guianas, a region in South America (Suriname, Guyana, and French Guyana) that has the world’s second largest nesting grounds of the endangered leatherback sea turtle.
Four species of sea turtle nest there—the leatherback, green, olive ridley, and hawksbill. Our main focus for the five nights we were in the field was to monitor the leatherback turtle nesting activities along a three-kilometer section of beach in Galibi. During the daylight hours we would walk along the beach looking for any hatchlings that may have emerged and gotten trapped in vegetation.
Our 2010 team consisted of five students from Averett University in Virginia with their biology instructor (and her husband), two employees of the Riverbanks Zoo in South Carolina, and three Surinamese ecotourism graduate students.
1,000-pound leatherback turtle
This season we sighted 20 leatherbacks nesting along the beach. Of those, seven had been tagged in previous years allowing us to record the turtle as re-sighted, and get a growth rate from the new measurements taken. The largest turtle we measured was 169 centimeters long and 122 centimeters wide, probably weighing well over 1000 pounds!
The photos shown are from the few nesting females we saw during the day as no flash photography is allowed at night (normal nesting time). Light might disturb nesting females.
Jaguars, monkeys, and more where rainforest meets the sea
Galibi is a remote area of coastal Suriname. You get there by taking a two-hour boat ride downriver. It is an area where rainforest meets the sea.
While there we encountered many other interesting animals: camien, squirrel monkeys, sloths, parrots, and most impressively jaguar! We never actually saw a jaguar, but we did see signs of it on the nesting beaches when we went out in the mornings. The signs consisted of jaguar pug or paw marks on the beach.
Jaguars have been sighted on the nesting beaches since the early 1960’s but fairly infrequently. Over that last few years it appears that jaguars are being sighted more regularly on these beach areas. The reason they are here is that they will sometimes feed on nesting green turtles.
You realize the impressive strength of these feline predators when you see where they have dragged a 400-pound-plus green sea turtle 100 feet up a beach into the vegetation.
Given that there may be as more than 3,000 green turtles nesting on these beaches each year and that the jaguars are probably only taking about 15 to 25 individuals a year, jaguar predation of sea turtles is likely insignificant to the population as a whole. However researchers are concerned about how vulnerable the jaguars themselves are to being killed by local villagers.
Trapped turtle hatchlings rescued
Our main mission in Galibi, rescuing sea turtles, was accomplished. Early one morning our team found many individual green turtle hatchlings from part of a nest trapped in thick vegetation high on the beach, where they could overheat and die in the rising sun. We disentangled 50 hatchlings and released them into the ocean.
With only a few days in Galibi this season, we still managed to have an impact by saving those 50 hatchlings that might otherwise have been lost.
I look forward to returning next year to continue helping the sea turtles, and to find out more about the powerful, elusive jaguars who patrol those same beaches.
