Honu Health Assessment- 22 PBR

 November 5, 2024

Ava Williams ('87) was kind enough to once again grant us access through her property at Puako to conduct our yearly capture, tagging and health assessment.  Along with three HPA Staff, 10 HPA students joined the team for the day long activity.  We arrived at the location at 0830  and set up our work site.  The tide of quite high so, once we went over protocol and safety instructions, we sent out an in-water capture team.  Within a few minutes, there were able to capture two honu and bring them safely in to the work area.  We worked them up (measuring, weighing, tagging and conducting a health assessment) and then carefully released them back into the ocean. We repeated this procedure 5 more times before lunch.  After lunch, the team was able to capture 5 more honu for a total of 12.  All 12 of the honu were in good shape and appeared healthy.  Eight of the 12 turtles were recaptures and 4 of them were new captures.  Below is a table of the growth rates of the 8 recaptured turtles.

It was a very successful day and we extend our appreciation to Ava for allowing us access and for the hard working HPA student volunteers.

Ms. Jim give instructions to the team before beginning work

Sammy carefull etches a "honu count" number in the scale of a honu.

Girl Scouts STEM Education Fair

 November 2, 2024

Laura Jim (HPA Marine Studies Leader) and three HPA volunteer students conducted a "Get to Know Sea Turtles" workshop as part of the Big Island Girl Scout STEM ED FAIR.  There were six different activities including including sea turtles and each group of Girl Scouts visited sea turtle table.  during the 20 minute activity period the scouts learned about tagging and measuring, turtle anatomy and facial recognition of sea turtles.  Below are some photos of the HPA students working with the Girl Scouts.

Charlotte and Adele conducted the workshop on facial recorgnition and the 7 different species of sea turtles and Madison and Ms. Jim taught about tagging, anatomy and measuring.

The scouts were asked to match facial scale patterns of different turtles to show that you can indeed identify a given turtle by its facial scale pattern.  They were also asked to identify the 7 different species of sea turtles by matching a picture of a sea turtle with sea turtle models.

Madison and Ms. Jim taught the scouts about various tagging methods, sea turtle anatomy, how to measure turtles and record data.

Matching turtles based on facial scales.

Charlotte and Adele listen to a question from a scout about facial scale patterns.