Its Turtle-Time again. If anyone wants to stay up all night making astrotimelapse of sea turtles nesting, we'll be in Melbourne Beach from June 17 to the 27th around the full moon. You can camp out at the beach house if you shoot at night and donate a copy of what you shoot. Roger Lai and Mike Cheng are planning on coming from California again to contribute footage. If anyone else is interested, email me at Sciencelookers@aol.com

how did it go this year?

Got some more good clips to add to the pile, thanks for asking. Added slightly to the list of unknown behaviors and stuff never before photographed. Greg Lovett came for a few nights and let me use an awesome 400mm F2.8 lens. he also helped set up a great opportunity for photographing hatchlings which we'll do during the July full moon (so still fun to be had if you want to do something near the end of July). The last night I was out in June had another turtle at dawn. I actually managed to get some full motion 30 frames per second shots of it covering the nest and going back to sea. Frank finished the computer (with all 10 hard drives) just a few days after I finished, so I'm just now sorting files and rendering the first movie clips.

James,

I'm glad you got some good images this year. I'm hoping for a better season this coming summer.

Kit

Thanks, I hope you don't get any hurricanes this time. They're really exciting, but no good for timelapsing. Have you heard from Colin? Is he planning on joining you this year?

I just put a sample on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP4ZoVsJam0

Great work James!

If I can get anything vaguely approaching that quality this year I will be well pleased. The real-time passages work very well.

I haven't heard anything from Colin and, thanks to my carefully loosing a whole load of un-backed-up emails (yes, I know!), I don't have his details any more. Maybe he'll pick up on this and get in touch.


Kit

Greg Lovett came through and introduced us to the S.T.O.P. Sea Turtle Orientation Protection group in Fort Lauderdale, FL. They rescue sea turtle hatchlings that get disoriented by city lights. For millions of years turtles have nested on these beaches. Baby turtles instinctively crawl to the brightest part of the horizon, which would normally be toward the sea and safety. Recent construction along the beach now floods the area with artificial light in the direction of land. Baby turtles crawl toward the artificial lights and die in roads, parking lots and lawns. They dehydrate soon after sunrise.

The STOP volunteers mark every nest laid. They keep track of the date it was laid, mean temperature, whether it is in the shade of a building, and other variables which determine how long it will take before the eggs hatch. Nests which are due to hatch are checked throughout the night and cellphones summon more volunteers as signs of hatching become evident at the sands surface. This allows them to be present for every hatching and rescue any hatchlings which become disoriented and crawl the wrong way. Rescued turtles are put in the sea.

Photographing the adult turtles is relatively easy because they are large, weighing 600 pounds or more, and climb the beach slowly to nest. The adults nesting takes from 45 minutes to several hours. In contrast, the hatchlings are tiny and the entire event is over within minutes. We've tried to find hatchlings further north on undeveloped coast for years with no success. The amazing cooperation of the STOP volunteers allowed us to finally record the event. Greg rented an infrared converted 5Dmark2 for the occasion. Roger lai and I ran up and down the beach with him carrying infrared floodlights as we moved from one potential hatch site to another. In all, we managed to record five hatching events in three nights.

Here's a link to some of the infrared video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTssRh7w ... wxV7LdxMAg