Keys Beach Clean Up

 

This weekend I participated in the Keys Beach Clean up because the Leatherback Turtle breeding season is about to begin and Keys beach is a favorite laying site for the females.  The students have to opportunity to be assistants on the watch team, helping take vitals and various measurements of the turtles while they are laying their eggs.  Don't worry, after the turtle has begun laying the eggs in the nest she is in something of a trance and isn't disturbable.  Lets hope I can be in something like a Turtle trance too when it is my time to give birth! 


Anywho, hopeful the next season (next year) I will be adjusted enough that I will be able to participate.  It is long nights (4:30pm-8am) of monitoring and patrolling the beach and taking records but I bet the experience is exhilarating.  Oh yeah I will be cranky but it will be worth all the photos! If we can take any. 

There are a few other species that nest on the beaches of St. Kitts like the Hawksbill and Green I believe, but anyway, there are a few months of nesting that occur so there are plenty of students that are on the teams to schedule patrols and such.  Then there is hatching! Oh, yeah where you get to monitor the hatchlings and make sure they all get to the ocean!  HOW CUTE!  Oh, yeah a site that I can't wait to experience. 
All in good time but for now here are some more pictures to let you know I am alive!
You...would not be surprised at the vast amount of hidden trash the we found on this beach.  When you scanned the beach it just looked like it had some sea debris and dried seaweed and such everywhere.  When you flipped the piles of blown and bundled dried seaweed you got a plethora of plastic. A lot of bottle caps and toothbrushes.  I am not sure where all of this is coming from (what part of the island) but apparently the sea is the dump for toothbrushes.

Lunch after the clean up at home. Yep, these are my lunches these days.  Simple and small. I love PASTA!