Sea turtle nesting grounds

It has been some time since anything has been posted to the blog. Since it is summer in the northern hemisphere a search for sea turtle beaches might be a worth while highlight to a summer vacation. First up let me tell you that sea turtle eggs hatch in the warm sands of only a few of the beaches in the world. Here is a list of some of them:

• the Brunswick Islands  North Carolina
• south west Florida coast
• north coast of Australia
• South Pardre Island - Texas

Almost all of them are located next to warm shallow ocean areas.

Watching sea turtles hatch is a night time activity. Conservation groups like to educate and help the general public learn and observe the nightly hatching events that take place a few months each year. You can view a video of sea turtles hatching in North Carolina at this website.

Generally no added light is allowed in the area of the hatching so keep your flashlights at home. A good idea would be to choose a night when the moon is bright enough to allow viewing of the event under natural night time light.

Enjoy the summer and remember to not harm the coastal wildlife. Take photos and memories with you and leave everything else alone.

Encounter with sperm whale

It has been awhile since I last posted so I thought it would be nice to post a video. Below you will find a video of a sperm whale

Unusual number of whale and dolphin deaths in the last few days

There is an alarming number of whales and dolphins that have died in the last week or so. They have either been beached or found floating near the shorelines.

85 dolphins have beached themselves near Cape Cod on Jan. 25, 2012

Several whale beachings - list to linked stories

• Ocean City Finback whale
• FT. PIERCE, Florida
• Cape Lookout National Seashore
• Washington Coast
• New Zealand's South Island
  
• New Zealand's Golden Bay
  

So what is going on? There have been several message boards that are discussing the events but none of them have a marine biologist chiming in yet. Just lay people with opinions that range from "so what" to "it is the end of the world" and "something to do with 2012"