Jungle Jim
Guest
Saturday 2 December 2017 we discovered EIGHT Olive Ridley Sea Turtle nests and a dead Vaquita Porpoise!
We hit the beach in our red Jeep TJ Wrangler at the south end of Salinas Point at high tide and motored north slowly following the receding water. About midway on the strand we spotted a bone picked carcass about four and a half feet long with the skull still attached. At first I thought it was a juvenile California Sea Lion but oddly it had no front or rear flippers. The head was a strange bulbous shape and had no canine teeth. I pulled around to take a closer look and saw that it was in fact some sort of dolphin missing most of the meat and front flippers. The head was short, missing the lower jaw but had a full set of teeth in the skull all small cone shaped teeth and spaced a bit between them making it kinda looking like a mini Killer Whale. The sonar emitting melon had been chewed off and all in all the skull was about the size and shape if a large coconut shell. There was still some bones and tendons left on the tail flukes. This find was about midway in the huge pre Colombian shell middens. I dragged the carcass over the sea facing dunes and down into the first deep shell covered swale and burried it in the sand and marked it on my GPS for recovery next year to add to my death bone collection next year after the mice, rats, roaches and ants clean it up a bit more.
At the very tip of the sand strand at Salinas Point we stopped for a lunch of Satisfied Frog fried chicken along with a styrofoam caja para llevar full of leftover french fries for the gulls and Ravens. As we were tossing the greasy taters to the beggars I noticed a large depression in the sand right next to our right front tire with Coyote tracks all around it. Upon a closer inspection I saw what appeared to be eggshells kinda like the soft ones from some snakes. I told my wife these are TURTLE EGG SHELLS! That nest was barely six feet from the previous high tide line.
We counted close to one hundred shells that had been split open in a kinda corkscrew fashion. I dug the sand out of the twenty inch deep hole looking for an unfertilized left over egg but there were none. It looked like the Coyotes had found the nest after the little Ridleys had dug themselves out and hit the surf as none of the egg shells were chewed up. We picked up a dozen or so egg shells, put them in a zip lock bag and started back south. Less than fifty feet from our first find I spotted another depression in the sand less that half the diameter of our first find. Again there were egg shells scattered around it with most in the direction of the water. That one had around fifty egg shells on the sand and down to about eighteen inches deep. Twenty feet later we found another one. Twenty feet later we found another one. All in all we found seven nests in that area. I dug up all of them looking for leftover eggs but there were none. I estimate that most of not all of those little turtles made it to the sea. Further down the beach at the shell middens I spotted one more nest right up against the upper most sand bank at least two hundred feet from the sea water. It was damp and had split eggshells right to the bottom.
We chatted with the guard at the panga camp and he told me that there were no dogs in their camp and he had seen a lot of Coyotes on the beach but believed they found the nests after the baby turtles had hatched and made it to the water.
Do a little math with this.. if half of those little turtles made it, it would add up to well over four hundred new Ridleys making it to the Sea of Cortez!
Wow, some good news for a change!
JJ
We hit the beach in our red Jeep TJ Wrangler at the south end of Salinas Point at high tide and motored north slowly following the receding water. About midway on the strand we spotted a bone picked carcass about four and a half feet long with the skull still attached. At first I thought it was a juvenile California Sea Lion but oddly it had no front or rear flippers. The head was a strange bulbous shape and had no canine teeth. I pulled around to take a closer look and saw that it was in fact some sort of dolphin missing most of the meat and front flippers. The head was short, missing the lower jaw but had a full set of teeth in the skull all small cone shaped teeth and spaced a bit between them making it kinda looking like a mini Killer Whale. The sonar emitting melon had been chewed off and all in all the skull was about the size and shape if a large coconut shell. There was still some bones and tendons left on the tail flukes. This find was about midway in the huge pre Colombian shell middens. I dragged the carcass over the sea facing dunes and down into the first deep shell covered swale and burried it in the sand and marked it on my GPS for recovery next year to add to my death bone collection next year after the mice, rats, roaches and ants clean it up a bit more.
At the very tip of the sand strand at Salinas Point we stopped for a lunch of Satisfied Frog fried chicken along with a styrofoam caja para llevar full of leftover french fries for the gulls and Ravens. As we were tossing the greasy taters to the beggars I noticed a large depression in the sand right next to our right front tire with Coyote tracks all around it. Upon a closer inspection I saw what appeared to be eggshells kinda like the soft ones from some snakes. I told my wife these are TURTLE EGG SHELLS! That nest was barely six feet from the previous high tide line.
We counted close to one hundred shells that had been split open in a kinda corkscrew fashion. I dug the sand out of the twenty inch deep hole looking for an unfertilized left over egg but there were none. It looked like the Coyotes had found the nest after the little Ridleys had dug themselves out and hit the surf as none of the egg shells were chewed up. We picked up a dozen or so egg shells, put them in a zip lock bag and started back south. Less than fifty feet from our first find I spotted another depression in the sand less that half the diameter of our first find. Again there were egg shells scattered around it with most in the direction of the water. That one had around fifty egg shells on the sand and down to about eighteen inches deep. Twenty feet later we found another one. Twenty feet later we found another one. All in all we found seven nests in that area. I dug up all of them looking for leftover eggs but there were none. I estimate that most of not all of those little turtles made it to the sea. Further down the beach at the shell middens I spotted one more nest right up against the upper most sand bank at least two hundred feet from the sea water. It was damp and had split eggshells right to the bottom.
We chatted with the guard at the panga camp and he told me that there were no dogs in their camp and he had seen a lot of Coyotes on the beach but believed they found the nests after the baby turtles had hatched and made it to the water.
Do a little math with this.. if half of those little turtles made it, it would add up to well over four hundred new Ridleys making it to the Sea of Cortez!
Wow, some good news for a change!
JJ
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