The peak season for turtle hatchlings has coincided with another busy month. 22 nests have hatched this month yielding 258 hatchlings. The predation levels have still stayed consistent to the previous months findings as have the levels of predation to nests and egg chambers. The Day Research Season came to an end at the end of February. Jessica and Amy then spent the next couple of weeks refining the data. To briefly summarise, on the entire monitored section between GBN and BP9 522 females nested, with 291 false crawls (a false crawl being where a female has emerged onto the beach but has not laid a clutch of eggs). Two graphs at the end of this blog show the day teams results in more detail. All data was collected using the DEC track identification techniques. Jessica Leonard then travelled down to Geraldton to edit the final Day Teams finding with Gnaraloo’s Environmental Advisor Karen Hattingh. Jessica has since flown back to Canada and is preparing the study a Masters. We wish her all the best.

We were all kept very busy during the start of the month in preparation for the arrival of DEC (Department of the Environment and Conservation) representatives who were conducting a sight survey of the GTCP. As well as overseeing GTCP’s protocols and techniques by joining us during the night on the beach they were treated to a presentation of the project which underlined our protocols and the recent findings of the project. Only time will tell whether the visit was a successful but both Karen Hattingh and Gnaraloo leaseholder Paul Richardson were very happy with the contributions by staff and researchers and are looking forward to DEC’s feedback. The following day DEC representatives were replaced by representatives from CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation). Paula and Karen used this opportunity to open up the GTCP to other Gnaraloo site managers, and they were invited to sit in on the presentation and also join us for a short period on the beach whilst we conducted research. Sadly the turtle hatchlings were not obliging and both DEC and CSIOR left empty handed, but with hopefully a good feel for how the program is being managed and conducted.

As well as Jessica departing this month we also bid our farewells to night team researcher Sergio Jacomy. Sadly Sergio had to leave Gnaraloo for family reasons and we wish him all the best and thank him for all his hard work and effort during the first 3 months of the program. Day Team researcher Amy James has kindly filled his shoes and will be staying on site with us until the end of the night research season. Clearly she’s enjoying Gnaraloo so much she cannot leave. We are approaching the final month of research, and by this time next month we should be able to produce some final research figures for this blog.