The Continuing Biodiesel Adventures in
"Putting the 'Bean' in Caribbean"
"Putting the 'Bean' in Caribbean"
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"The following report is provided here in Capt. Jim MacNeil's own words. MacNeil and Rebecca Payne are burning a 20 percent blend of biodiesel fuel aboard their ketch "Beyond" as they cruise the Carribean. Their reports are sponsored by the Ohio Soybean Council in conjunction with the Maryland Soybean Board, and by the biodiesel manufacturer NOPEC Corp. of Lakeland, Fla." |
CULEBRA, PUERTO RICO--It seems some shipbuilders will go to great lengths to keep the black, sooty exhaust of diesel engines and generators away from passengers. This became apparent when we sailed into the large bay of Ensenada Honda, Culebra, and 15-year old Cory Brown drew my attention to the masts of Legacy, a large 4-masted sailing cruise-liner anchored off the town. Cory had just completed a trip through the Windward and Leeward Islands on his family's 40' Moody sloop, Orontes , and had seen many ships of this type.
He rattled off the names of each mast like a boson on the Pequod. "From bow to stern," he said, "they are called the fore-mast, the mainmast, the mizzen, and the spanker." I was duly impressed. "But," he continued, "look carefully at the mizzen and spanker; see anything strange?"
A closer look revealed puffs of smoke coming out of the tops of the two rear masts. My jaw dropped. Those huge smoke stacks, it seems, are necessary to keep exhaust smells away from passengers and black soot off of the pretty white sails.
"Well," I announced and looked at Cory. He immediately gave me one of those "I know what's coming" smirks that teenagers are so good at. "If they only knew about BioDiesel the nasty odors and dirty soot would disappear for good and they would have no need for those huge smoke stacks."
We all got a chuckle out of that as we were seated in the cockpit of Beyond , where we were completely unaware of the clear exhaust from our own engine which was exiting the boat just a few feet away. After a year and a half of burning diesel blended with high performance, non-toxic, biodegradable fuel made from soybeans, the exhaust hardly has any odor (in fact it smells like a birthday candle), the transom is still clean, and the engine is running like a top.
One of the wonderful things about cruising is being able to see the kind of marine life that many people only get to see on Jacques Cousteau programs. So far on our voyage through the Caribbean we have sailed among breaching whales, snorkeled with turtles, and even got to swim with a huge manatee who surprised me while snorkeling in Culebrita. Weíve even seen dinosaurs. . . sort of.
These ancient reptilian creatures ranged the globe millions of years ago. With thick leather covering a dense muscular system and a movement slow yet purposeful, the cold-blooded creatures would tip the scales as much as the entire offensive line for the Washington Redskins. And you think they only exist in museums of natural history and in the minds of creative writers like Michael Crieghton, right? Wrong! A relative of now extinct dinosaurs, the leatherback turtle is the largest of all sea turtles and one of the oldest living reptiles. They are endangered, but not extinct.
Puerto Rico's island of Culebra may not be Jurasic Park, however, it the site of a scene which has been taking place for 20-million yearsóas long as this dinosaur cousin has been selecting tropical sandy beaches as nesting sites for burying their precious eggs. This five-mile long island is also home to the Culebra Leatherback Project, a conservation organization conducting leatherback research in order to better protect and understand these large turtles, their nesting sites, and habitat.
After cruising the south coast of Puerto Rico aboard our 41' ketch, Beyond , we selected Culebra as a convenient layover and safe anchorage on our sail to the Virgin Islands never expecting to play an unforgettable role assisting Australian zoologist Neil Mattours study the egg laying habits of female leatherbacks on this small island between San Juan and St. Thomas. This experience turned out to be the closest thing I can think of to seeing a real live dinosaur.
Shortly before sunset, we teamed up with Mattours at Happy Landing, a restaurant at the end of a tricky runway which requires planes to negotiate a sharp turn before lining up to land. An outdoorsy, Crocodile Dundee type (or Turtle Dundee perhaps), Matters has trotted the globe chasing green turtles and is now a field researcher in Culebra. Yes, he gets paid for spending night after night on tropical beaches, but there is no reclining under a palm tree and sipping frozen rum drinks out of coconut shells for a turtle watcher. As we found out, the late night hours make you googly-eyed, the beach walking leaves you huffing and puffing, and some nights are a non-stop series of exercises. The researchers are not always assisted by helpful volunteers either. The night of our turtle watch there were three researchers and three volunteers to watch two beaches. Fifteen year old Cory Brown, who was sailing on Beyond for a week, along with Rebecca and I, was asked to help Mattours cover the larger of the two beaches.
After a steep climb over the mountain in a US Govt. 4x4 truck, we hiked to the beach and set up a rudimentary camp. It was shortly before midnight when Mattours woke me and Rebecca. It was our turn to hike up the beach searching for the evidence that a turtle had come ashore. As we headed off down the beach, we could make out the glimmering lights of St. Thomas, the apparent destination of a few brightly lit cruise ships steaming along in the distance.
We hadn't gotten very far at all when I saw ìcaterpillar tracksî leading up the beach. Because of a full moon, I did not need to turn on my flashlight which was equipped with a special red lens that is not supposed to spook the turtles. I stood staring at a path of sand smoothed by the femaleís heavy carapace. The trail was bordered by the scalloped ridges created by powerful flippers as the large mother-to-be pushed herself across the loose sand in a line roughly perpendicular to the surf. Wide as a car, these tracks snaked out of the water and up the slight incline of the beach to a plateau near the vegetation line 50 yards away. It looked as if a small bulldozer had gone past. I followed the track a bit, and was soon able to make out a large dark shape in the sand near the vegetation line. Rebecca was walking near the tree line. I signaled for her to stop and alerted Mattours by radio.
This impatient female had wasted no time digging her nest and was already laying eggs by the time we sneaked up behind her. No wonder, she was used to this exercise by now as we found out when Mattours waved an electronic device not unlike a TV remote control over her left front flipper, registered her identity via a computer chip which the conservationists had embedded beneath her skin earlier in the season. "I know this one," the bespectacled Aussie said, "she's already nested here several times this year."
Most leatherbacks only nest every three years or so. It takes them this long to build up enough fat to produce thousands of eggs. During a single nesting season, however, they will visit the beach every couple weeks or so, laying up to 150 eggs each time. Three out of four will hatch after about two months and scramble into the sea. Many of the vulnerable juveniles fall victim to prey, however, and it is estimated that only about 1% survive to adulthood.
Here we are at midnight, watching a huge turtle fill a hole in the sand with her slimy eggs. While she was pre-occupied with her egg-laying, we took a tape measure to her carapace as if fitting her for a new dress. We then double checked her identity with the stainless steel tag on her left-rear flipper, held a number next to her head and took her mug shot. The leatherbacks have a unique, pink, starburst pattern atop their head (which is about the same size as a human head) which is like a fingerprint for a turtle. With this one exception, photographs are strictly forbidden unless special equipment is used without requiring a flash (hence we don't have photos of themóbut if you call them they may be happy to send you file photos for promotional purposes). Mattours showed us how to tag the turtles and also insert the identification chip beneath the skin of their left front flipper. This is accomplished much the same way as giving a dog a rabies shot. Luckily, we were not visited by any untagged females and were spared the task of jabbing a 1,000 lb. turtle with the large needle.
Cory went off down the beach to look for more turtles while Rebecca and I recorded the exact position of the nest using a portable GPS satellite navigator and also taking hard measurements from markers located at regular intervals along the beach. He soon called with the location of another female making her way up the beach and for the rest of the night we always had at least one turtle on the beach. Sometimes three! We got no more sleep that night.
Earlier that day, we had anchored Beyond behind a nearby reef on Culebra. Snorkeling a cut in the reef, I watched a hawksbill turtle (much smaller than leatherbacks) swim beneath me, not knowing that 12 hours later I would be watching eggs drop out of huge turtles like candy out of a gumball machine. This hawksbill "flew" by quite gracefully, waving his front flippers like wings and using his rear feet as rudders he banked a turn to the left like a submarine and then came to rest in a hiding spot under a huge boulder.
Powerful in water, Leatherbacks are able to swim to depths of a quarter of a mile in search of jellyfish, the major component of their diet. Out of the water, though, their massive weight in the soft sand becomes quite a handicap. They crawl along the beach like a man might struggle across the desert with a refrigerator strapped to his back. All four legs ìswimî forward and backward in unison. She will only gain about one foot with each effort. Once she gets up to the vegetation line on the beach, sheíll pause to catch her breath, grunting loudly.
With her rear flippers and uncanny dexterity, she will soon begin excavating an egg crater or hole in the sand about the size and shape of a bucket. Alternately inserting one rear flipper then the next to remove a bit of sand, she uses her tail for balance. Cory and I sat in the sand, mesmerized by the process. Rebecca, feeling somewhat impatient at this point, desperately wanted to help them dig. Each time the turtle would curl her flipper upwards to pick up sand and flick it, more than half would inevitably fall back in the hole. Snorting like a pig the whole time, it can take them better than half an hour to make a satisfactory nest. Sometimes they donít like the nest for some reason and leave it to dig another nearby. At first we thought we had startled one turtle and scared her away when she abandoned the nest she had been working on only to start another one nearby. It's just a turtle thing.
We noticed that one nesting female had a damaged rear flipper (perhaps a shark took a bite out of it) and we did help this one a little. Not because she couldn't dig her own nest, but because the researcher wanted us to get an accurate egg count as they dropped out. We elongated the hole a bit - just enough for Rebecca to stick a penlight in the crater and for me to stick my head in and count. Bent over in the sand with a clicker in each hand like some sort of home base umpire, I counted 88 fertilized and 14 unfertilized eggs as they dropped into the sand. The slimy eggs drop out about 4 or 5 at a time and look like cue balls (fertilized) or ping-pong balls (unfertilized).
After she is finished laying eggs, filling in begins. Using her rear flippers (covered with thick leather soft as felt), she pushes sand into the hole then tamps it down with her tail. Using a motion like a kid making a snow angel, sheíll throw sand over a large area to conceal the location of the nest from looters. Sometimes animals such as dogs, rats, or pigs will dig up the nests and in many areas the eggs are used for human consumption, which is a criminal act due to species protection and endangered status. Some female leatherbacks will wander around "messing up the beach" in a few spots before and after egg laying which may be to confuse potential looters as to the actual nest location.
Nest depth and location is important. On a turtle watch earlier in the year, Cory had to excavate a nest that was too close to the surf and safely relocate it further up the beach. The temperature of the nest ends up determining the sex of the hatchlings; higher temperatures yielding females. Throughout the night, we recorded temperature readings at various nests in which a thermocouple (an electronic temperature device) had been planted. This will help the researchers determine the sex of the Bava Beach Leatherbacks "Class of 1998."
As the sun was just starting to peek above the horizon we watched the last turtle return to the sea and realized this is a scene sheíll repeat a few more times this year. Nesting season on Culebra runs form February to mid-July. The first juveniles start digging out in April and they don't stop until August. Nights in May and June generally see the most nesting.
What can we do to help? Avoid purchasing souvenirs and ornaments made from turtle shells or eggs. Doní' buy meats or oils from wild turtles, which are still used in some areas for food and fuel. Respect the nesting areas. Development needs to be ceased or restricted in nesting areas. Some areas where turtles are known to nest at certain times of the year schedule blackouts for those residing near the beach. Not only will lights scare away the egg-laying mothers, they can also disorient the new hatchlings who may not be able to find their way safely to the ocean. Poaching is still a problem in many areas where the eggs are used for human consumption - please donít molest nesting areas or eat turtle eggs and keep dogs restrained during nesting season if you live near a turtle rookery. Don't pollute the waters. Plastic waste in the oceans can be easily mistaken for jellyfish, a main component of the leatherbackís diet. Mattours noted that plastic bags are often found inside dead turtles washed up along shorelines after being suffocated by the indigestible rubbish.
Commercial fishermen can help too. Nets often trap and drown turtles. Their bodies are designed to store oxygen which the animal metabolizes slowly. They can remain submerged for a long time but do need to surface eventually to breathe. Newly designed nets which allow by-catch to escape can help. Also, if a turtle is pulled up in a net they can appear lifeless but may still be barely clinging to life. Throwing an animal in this condition overboard will only ensure its demise. Oftentimes, according to Mattours, simply allowing the reptile to rest on deck for awhile before returning it to the sea will allow it to catch its breath and prevent drowning. In any case, all turtles removed from the sea should be reported to the nearest conservation organization. They will want to know the number on its tag (if present), location recovered, species, size, and the condition of animal when released. Some tags may list a toll free phone number and a reward may be offered for the animal. All of this information, including the recovery of dead sea turtles, helps biologist study turtle populations, habits, and migratory patterns. Information about male turtles is much more difficult to acquire as they do not come ashore.
Get involved in sea turtle conservation. Volunteers are welcome to participate in the Culebra Leatherback Project, General Delivery, Culebra, Puerto Rico 00775, tel. 787-742-3221.