Kiholo Tagging Trip- 9/10/2018

Monday, 9/3/2018

We will kick off the tagging year with a trip to Kiholo Bay next Monday (9/10/18)  We will have mostly experienced HPA students during this first trip because I haven't had the time to get new students trained yet.  They will be invited for our second tagging trip on Sept. 25 at Mauna Lani Bay.
Our goat at Kiholo is to take a look at the turtles to see how they are growing and what their health status is... particularly if they are getting enough to eat.  The reason we are particularly concerned about body condition is because we have picked up several dead juvenile honu along the west coast during the last two months that were very emaciated- they were starving.
I will post the results of our trip a couple of days after we get back.
If you want to know a little more about the area we will be working in you might want to look at this youtube video.

9/10/18- Monday

Laura Jim and Marc Rice took 12 students to Kiholo Bay to work with Rebecca Most and Barbara Seidel of The Nature Conservancy at the Kiholo fish pond area.  We set up our field station between the two ponds at 0915 and began working immediately.  We worked until 1530 hours and then took a break after packing our equipment for a short but refreshing swim in the ocean.

In all we were able to capture and work up (measure, weigh and do a health assessment) 33 green turtles or Honu.  Eight of the 33 were recaptures and 25 were new captures.  Since we had not been back to Kiholo in over two years, it was not unexpected to see a few new recruits... however, nearly 76% new turtles was way more than expected.  The turtles ranged in size from a tiny 7 pound juvenile to a 77 cm., 162 pound subadult.  Most of the turtles were doing very well... nice rounded bodies indicating well fed animals.  There were quite a few small juveniles in the sample of 33 indicating that there is good recruitment from the open ocean at Kiholo.

The largest turtle (named Kevin by the students) was 162 lbs. with a  Curved Carapace length (CCL) = 81.5 cm.  It was first captured and tagged at Kiholo on Sept. 23, 2000 and it weighed 62 lbs with a CCL of 65.1 cm.  It was subsequently recaptured  on 3/5/2003 and on 2/20/2007.  After 18 years it has grown from 65.1 cm CCL to 81.5 cm CCL for an annual growth rate of 0.9 cm/year.  This is a very slow growth rate and means this animal probably still has another 10 years to go to reach maturity!

At the end of the day, everyone felt very good about the work that we did and the data that was generated.  The data has already been sent to NOAA in HNL for recording in their master database.
The students did excellent work remaining attentive throughout the long, hot day.

Below are a series of pictures of the day's events.

The HPA and TNC tagging team.

The work area at Kiholo..

View of the southern fish pond where we captured turtles.

Mrs. Jim and students capture a couple of honu.

Bringing in a honu for measuring.

Carrying a honu for measurement.

162 poiund "Kevin" swims by under the bridge as students watch.  

A juvenile honu is getting a checkup.

Some of the team holding a honu for observation.

Our smalles turtle- only 7 pounds.

A honu on the table being measured .. the white mark means it has been captured so that we don't recapture it.

A juvenile honu ready to be returned to the water after being measured and weighed.

Doing an oral observation.

Putting in a couple of PIT tags.

Ami reading PIT tags for this honu.

Keeping an eye on a couple of our captive honu prior to measurement and wighing.

A juvenile honu.  The white paper on the back shows the weight of the honu.

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Our awesome data recorder entering tag numbers.

At the end of the day, everyone got to go for a swim.

                                               The black pebble beach was like landing on a bean bag chair in the surf.