First Place: Anthropogenic Impacts/Conservation

Photographer

Lili M. McElhillFollow

Date Taken

Summer 7-19-2023

Category

Anthropogenic Impacts/Conservation

Preview

Description

"Morning Survey"

I work for the Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program (BCSTCP) on morning crew. I took this on my morning survey at 6:23 am on Fort Lauderdale beach. It was July 19th and peak season for nesting, so coming across nests were not at all uncommon. We came across this new crawl that a loggerhead sea turtle had laid the night before, this crawl in particular was located in a caging zone, so getting fresh photos of it was really helpful since we would have to come back on secondary survey to find the egg chamber (EC) to place the cage around it eventually. I took this picture initially for that reason, the tracks were clear and to find the EC for this species is uniform that you can follow the incoming tracks into the mound to find it. The sunrise was particularly beautiful this morning as well and the bike was positioned in the perfect way to highlight the incoming and outgoing tracks and what we were doing there in the first place. The nesting sign is also at the bottom showing that we would be marking this as a new nest. Finding perfectly undisturbed sea turtle nests and clear tracks from the ocean to the beach this is rare because there are so many people that come to Fort Lauderdale beach before we start survey/ during the night. It is common to find people on nests (unknowingly), foot traffic in the nest or messed up tracks from humans. With all those factors this photo was also too good not to take in the moment.

Comments

All activities were performed by authorized personnel under Marine Turtle Permit (MTP)- 23 214

Camera Specifications

iPhone 13

Disciplines

Life Sciences