I attended The Island School as a student in the fall of my junior year in 2011 and I’m lucky to be back this spring as an intern with the Sea Turtle Research and Conservation team. It’s truly amazing to be back at a place that had such an impact on my education and overall growth as an individual. No matter where I walk on campus I’m flooded with memorable experiences, lessons I learned, and friends I made while at The Island School. The reason my Island School experience was so memorable is the same reason I found myself applying to be an intern for this spring. The unique nature of this place fosters an exceptional learning and professional environment that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else in the world. Not to mention the ability to learn and experience rich Bahamian culture through the organization’s efforts to connect with the greater community. It was especially cool to arrive on campus and see how the organization has already grown over the past few years to include Hallig House, CSD, and the new intern housing under construction. I’m excited to see what the next several months will bring.” -James Murray

Sea turtles are on the endangered species Red List. The most common species of turtle found in the Bahamas is the green turtle, which we are studying. Previous studies in the Bahamas have included nutrition, grazing, growth rates, and abundance, but none have been conducted on Eleuthera. Our study is currently being conducted just north of Rock Sound in Half Sound, on the Atlantic side of the island. The purpose of our study is to investigate the abundance, size, and distribution of green sea turtles in Half Sound and our hypothesis is that areas with an abundance of sea grass will have dense turtle populations. We have two main methods that we’ve used so far in order to catch these turtles. The first is by boat, in which we take a small skiff to Half Sound. We ride with a spotter at the bow, two swimmers sitting ready at with fins, mask and a snorkel on either side of the boat behind the spotter. When a turtle is spotted, we follow the turtle in the boat until it comes up three times for air. After its third breath we send a swimmer after the turtle until they can scoop it up under its flippers. We then bring the turtle back to the boat where we measure, weigh, tag, and release it. The second method we have used is netting. We place a net in shallow water, and then try to herd the turtles to the net where we can again measure, weigh, tag, and release them. By dividing Half Sound into six zones, we will be able to answer some of our questions through capture-mark-recapture. We are looking forward to answering some of our study’s questions and gaining more knowledge about sea turtles in the Bahamas and how we can protect them. Go team turtle!

After learning about the turtles and how Lucie conducts her studies, we headed out to Jack’s Bay to do our first survey.  We hiked in to the beach and got picked up to go out to the seagrass beds where the turtles usually hang out.  Spotting turtles requires two people to stand on the bow deck of the boat and look in the seagrass for turtles.  It is not an easy job, but once we all saw one turtle, it was much easier to spot them.  We saw a few from the boat (and we were all really excited!), but when we got in to snorkel with them, they had all disappeared!  We were a little bummed to miss swimming with the turtles, but Lucie assured us that the next day would be even better at Half Sound.

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Today (Tuesday), we woke up and completed a run-swim for our morning exercise.  This consisted of swimming across a marina cut, running the peninsula in between, hopping back in the water on the other side to swim the next cut, and repeating this seven times.  At one point, we even got to jump off an 8 ft wall into the water, which was pretty fun.  Most of us thought the run-swim was a great way to wake up and get ready for our busy day.

For our morning activity, we went to 4th Hole Beach to snorkel and do some patch reef fish ID.  We all thought that 4th hole meant a blue hole, but we learned that there used to be a resort on the south end of the island and that resort had an 18 hole golf course.  The resort is now in ruins after going bust after 10 years, but the fairways are all still visible and serve as landmarks.  We saw tons of fish during our snorkel–rainbow parrotfish, mahara, damselfish, flamingo tongues, and more.  And then we tried out the tree swing at the beach–fun!

In the afternoon, we traveled with Lucie out to Half Sound on the Atlantic side of the island for another turtle survey.  We were all excited, since this time we were not only going to count the turtles from the boat, but also try to catch one to collect biometric data.  We counted a total of 40 green turtles in the sound during our transect and then split into two groups to try our hand at turtle wrangling.  It was not easy!  The first group was unsuccessful, though they did try hard, and Brian was our turtle whisperer, managing to snag a juvenile green turtle and bring it aboard the boat.  We were all cheering!  We took turns taking photos with the turtle and all admired how beautiful the animal was up close.  It was amazing.

We are now back at school after an amazing and busy day, playing Catch Phrase before lights out.  Because today was so busy (and we all can’t seem to stay awake in any moving vehicle, van or boat), we get the morning to sleep in before another busy day of aquaponics and aquaculture.