Team Behringer: South Florida wild life

Oops, I meant WILDLIFE. Big difference between south Florida wildlife and south Florida wild life. As you can imagine, much of our time was spent on the beach, mostly swimming or beachcombing. We came across plenty of interesting things so I asked Grant and Olivia to post their favorite findings.

Grant's Fave - can you see it?

Blue buttons
(Porpita porpita)

These were new to us. They look like jellyfish but they aren't. Whereas jellyfish are single organisms, these creatures are colonial - the tentacles are individual zooids; each of which is specialized for a particular function, such as digestion, prey capture, or reproduction... making them more like a Portuguese-Man-o'war. They are a beautiful blue and were washed up everywhere for only one day.

Olivia's Fave

Sea Turtle Nests

Tis the season for sea turtle nesting and they were everywhere. We saw mostly Loggerhead nests and a few Greens. Almost every morning we found a new nest that had been made the night before. At different times, Don and I used to work for the agency that manages the Broward County Sea Turtle program. I happened to run into the manager at the conference and he said this is only the 2nd year that they have left the nests in place. They used to relocate the eggs to hatcheries because bright lights from businesses, residents, and cities confused sea turtles (mostly hatchlings) on their return to the ocean (they rely on moonlight) . Many lighting ordinances are in effect now so more nests can be left in peace.

For those of you who have never seen a sea turtle make a nest or really never even thought about it before, I've included some pics below. At night (typically), the female crawls from the ocean, digs a hole, drops the eggs in, covers them and heads back to the ocean. What's most fascinating to me is that an individual turtle will nest within 5-35 miles of the region of where it was hatched from and/or previously nested.

Dig girl, dig!