Tech reveals ‘talking’ baby turtles
Officials monitoring loggerhead eggs also studied effects of water temperature
Peggy Cathey and Margaret Janes stood next to a sea turtle nest cordoned off with caution tape.
They were eavesdropping. “You hear that?” Cathey asked. “We like to hear those waterfall sounds.”
A speaker lying on a towel nearby broadcast the scratching sound of sand falling as baby turtles scrambled from their eggs underground.
It meant the nest was ready to hatch, she said.
Cathey and Janes are volunteers with Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, which is monitoring 21 nests this year from Oregon Inlet north to the Virginia state line. The group has upgraded its research this year: It’s taking DNA tests from eggs, inserting microphones in the sand and placing gauges to assess temperatures and water levels.
The group has documented intriguing details: loggerhead babies talking to each other while in the eggs and mothers nesting in different states in the same year.
“Everybody is really excited about it,” said Karen Clark, director of the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education in Corolla.
Clark is also science adviser for the network’s research on the northern beaches.
Every measurement enhances the sea turtle information available, especially for loggerheads — the most common species here.
“What we’re trying to do is build a database,” Cathey said.
Volunteers used a hydrophone — a microphone to capture underwater sounds — to hear the inaudible: turtles rustling under the sand and communicating with each other. On her cellphone, Cathey played back a recording of baby sea turtles still buried in the sand, mewing to each other like kittens.
Scientists believe turtles are telling each other when to emerge, Clark said. Similar recordings have been made of other species and the findings published, but never for loggerheads, she said.
Typically it takes 60 days of incubation from when the female crawls ashore, digs a hole and deposits about 120 eggs. She might lay three or four nests in a season. Baby turtles typically come out at once in a “boil” at night. Leaving as a group helps protect them from predators like ghost crabs and seagulls. The volunteers on watch use a broom to brush away ghost crabs as the babies crawl to the surf.
They also use temperature to learn about the sea turtles, using a gauge that sends readings to a phone app. Optimal nest temperatures range between 83 and 88 degrees Fahrenheit. Hotter temperatures mean more females, Clark said. On the Outer Banks, a mean temperature of 84.6 de- grees produces an evenly divided population of males and females, according to the network’s records. A mean of 86.9 degrees hatches 100 percent females, and 81.5 degrees yields all males.
DNA samples show some loggerheads nest exclusively on the northern Outer Banks. Some bounce between states. One female nested in Corolla N.C. in 2011, and in 2013, she made her home in Georgia, almost 500 miles away. Another one laid her first 2016 nest in Georgia, then made her second one that same year in Nags Head, N.C., 420 miles north.
The samples are part of a study by the University of Georgia in cooperation with North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, Clark said.
Volunteers were finding nests damaged by water even in dry,
Volunteers used a hydrophone – a microphone to capture underwater sounds – to hear the inaudible: turtles rustling under the sand and communicating with each other.
calm weather. So this year, they began inserting a gauge in the sand next to the nest to see if a rising water table might be inundating them. The results are inconclusive so far.
The sounds and temperatures recorded provide invaluable information to the volunteers about the turtles. But it also helps them predict when the eggs will hatch, so nest sitting is narrowed down to a day or two instead of a week.
The Kitty Hawk nest near the public beach access boiled on a Monday night, a day earlier than predicted.
But two days later, the hydrophone recorded more trying to climb to the surface. Six more emerged and crawled to the surf. Hampton can be reached by phone at 252-491-5272.
NEWPORT NEWS
Police investigating after man shot
Police are investigating a Saturday morning shooting on Wickham Avenue that left a 24-year-old Newport News man with a leg injury, officials said.
The shooting happened shortly after 4 a.m. in the 7200 block of Wickman Avenue near an overnight party. The man was shot in his left leg; the injury was not considered lifethreatening, Newport News Police spokesman Brandon Maynard said in a release.
The man was transported to a local hospital by medics for treatment, Maynard said.
Police say there was a house party at the location when the man saw several unknown men tampering with vehicles in the street.
He attempted to confront them when one opened fire, hitting him in the left leg, Maynard said.
After the shooting, the men fled the area on foot. There were also several vehicles found to have been tampered with at the same location.
NEWPORT NEWS
One displaced by apartment fire
At least one person has been displaced following a Saturday morning bedroom fire inside an apartment on Bellwood Road, a fire official said.
The fire began shortly before 8:30 a.m. inside a firstfloor apartment in the 500 block of Bellwood Road.
There were no injuries, said Lt. Jeff Senter, the Newport News Fire Department’s assistant fire marshal. As many as three other apartments were also searched for fire damage.
The fire was confined to the bedroom, but the apartment is not livable for now and the tenant will stay with family nearby, Senter said.
The fire appears to be accidental, he said.
— From staff reports