THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 TAG: 9608140331
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 96 lines
With a transmitter box glued to her back, a 250-pound loggerhead sea turtle was released back into the Atlantic Ocean Tuesday night, just yards from where she laid one of two nests found in Virginia this year.
Under a misty rain, scientists and volunteers set the giant reptile free in a heavy surf, hoping that satellite signals from the box will help them better understand the still-mysterious migratory patterns of her threatened species in the south Atlantic.
The dark-orange turtle was found Friday by a late-night beachcomber, who saw a big blob scratching in the sand at 61st Street along the Oceanfront and called city police.
Police in turn called the Virginia Marine Science Museum, which quickly dispatched a team. It took four staffers - eager for a chance to examine the turtle - to keep her from heading back into the ocean, including one young researcher who sat on top of the thick, 3-foot-long shell, said Alice Scanlan, a museum spokeswoman.
The turtle laid 137 eggs that night in a shallow sandy hole. They were recovered and taken to Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, at the southern tip of Virginia Beach, where they have been set in special cages and re-buried in sand dunes there, said refuge biologist John B. Gallegos.
Experts believe the loggerhead - named for its huge, square head - was the same female turtle that laid another nest last Tuesday, this one at 56th Street in Virginia Beach, which contained 123 eggs. They, too, were escorted to Back Bay for care.
The two nests, rarities in their proximity to resort crowds, have been the only ones found in Virginia this nesting season, which runs from late spring to September in the mid-Atlantic.
After museum staff calmed her down, the mother loggerhead was taken to a holding pool, where she spent the weekend feasting on blue crabs and horseshoe crabs. ``She's been eating the blue crabs like they were potato chips,'' Scanlan said.
Soraya Moein Bartol, a graduate student from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, drove to Virginia Beach Tuesday to install a special transmitter on the top of the turtle's shell.
The device, about the size of a Cracker Jack box, sends signals to a satellite and captures the turtle's location, the water temperature and the length of time between its dives underwater, Bartol explained.
The loggerhgead becomes the fifth sea turtle in four years that VIMS has tracked this way. Because the box runs on a lithium battery, an unreliable power source, data from the tagged turtles so far has been mixed.
The story is one of the few happy ones this year for sea turtles, which already are under government protection because of threats from pollution, loss of nesting habitat and predators, including humans.
Nesting activity from Virginia Beach to Ocracoke Island, N.C., is down significantly this summer, according to biologists and volunteers along the coast.
Virginia Beach is the northern edge of their migratory trek, which takes them north in the summer and south to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico in the fall and winter.
In addition, wildlife experts still are trying to determine why 20 loggerheads washed ashore dead this spring on the Outer Banks. Some had their flippers and heads cut off.
Turtles also have had to cope with Hurricane Bertha during their peak nesting time, although officials in Virginia and North Carolina said the storm likely did not destroy many eggs.
There was even one report that a female loggerhead climbed onto a beach at Duck, N.C., and laid her eggs the same day Bertha blew across the Outer Banks, said Bonnie Creech, a volunteer for the conservation group Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, or NEST.
The National Park Service, which manages much of the remote seashore that turtles like on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, reported just 36 active nests this summer - down from 60 last year and nearly 100 two years ago.
All but two nests were dug by loggerheads. Two belonged to green sea turtles, a rarer species, said Marcia Lyons, a field biologist for the park service.
Experts cautioned against reading too much into declining statistics, however, noting that turtle nesting has fluctuated dramatically from year to year. For example, at Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, south of Nags Head, rangers counted more than 40 nests in 1994, a record. This year, just eight have been discovered in the refuge.
There may be more, although refuge officials can't be sure. Abnormally high tides this spring washed away flipper tracks in the sand, called ``crawls,'' which indicate where a female came ashore to lay her eggs. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
JIM WALKER
The Virginian-Pilot
With a transmitter on the loggerhead turtle's back, scientists will
be able to track migratory data via satellite. The turtle was being
observed at the Virginia Marine Science Museum.
GRAPHICS
KRT; The Virginian-Pilot
How sea turtles nest
Hatchlings' rush to the sea
Sea turtle nests found this year
[For a copy of the graphics, see microfilm for this date.] by CNB