Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / July 28, 1994, edition 1 / Page 11
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under the sun . INSIDE THIS SECTION: THIHMEMfKKftftKON B2 ? People in the news, 4 WUKO" MV " "" UP B Calendar of events , 6 A MOTHER LOGGERHEAD turtle (in photo above) makes her way out of the surf at Hoide* Beach to dig a nest and bury her eggs in the sand. Below, hatchling turtles, just minutes after emerging from their buried eggs, crawl along a trench dug by Turtle Watch volunteers to help guide them toward the sea. VOLUNTEERS with the Brunswick County Parks and Recreation Departments " Turtle Watch " program pose with the cooler and dig ging implements they use to move threatened sea turde nests. Shown (from left) are Tracy Spencer, Kathy Kakas, Minnie Hunt, Judy Brian and Gloria HiUenburg. Volunteers Make The Turtle Watch Program Work BY ERIC CARLSON Tracy Spencer, a teacher at Supply Elementary School, will never forget the night he caught tur tle fever. Spencer was working a summer job at an Ocean Isle Beach restaurant one night when some friends came in covered with sand When he asked what they had been doing, be heard about the volunteers who ?bod watch along Brunswick Island beaches during hatching season to help threatened and endangered sea turdes make their first mad dasrn from their nest to the sea. As a boy growing up in Missouri, Spencer had always been fascinated by turtles. His grandfather, a Cherokee Indian, once told him the legend of how the world grew from a grain of sand on a turtle's back. Spencer has food memories of mucking around in streams and marshes, watching the activities of tbese peaceful armored rep tiles. Consequently, he jumped at the chance to join his friends in their seaside adventure. "The next night I went with them," Spencer said. "I got to see a hatch the first time out ? which is extremely unusual After that I was addicted!" Nowadays in the summer Spencer spends nearly all his waking moments ? sometimes 18 hours a day? do ing what he can to improve the survival chancts of the sea turtles who nest and hatch each year along our beaches. He is one of the scores of dedicated volunteers who work with the Brunswick County Parks and Recreation Department "Turtle Watch" program. Beginning in May, Spencer walks the strand at Ocean Isle Beach each morning, looking for "crawls," the tell tale tracks left by female turtles as they crawl up from die surf to lay their eggs. Other volunteers do likewise on all the Brunswick beaches, some on foot and others aboard small all-terrain vehicles. The landward end of these easily recognized tracks is carefully examined to determine whether the mother tur tle has actually left a nest or turned back, leaving a "false crawl." If a nest of eggs has been left in a bad spot ? loo close to high tide or in a heavily trafficked area ? the hundred or so ping-pong-ball sized eggs are carefully dug up and returned in a safer spot. The location of each nest is carefully recorded and hopefally "adopted" by a host volunteer Then, after about SO days, the vigils begin. Groups of turtle watch ers stay near the nest each night until they spot a "boil," the frenzied emergence of baby sea turtles poking their way through the sud's surface. BBS# Word of a hatch quickly spreads, often attracting hun dreds of curious onlookers. Became the hatrhlmga are sometimes confused and extremely vulnerable to preda tors, volunteers dig a trench from the nest to the water's edge and shepherd the baby turtles toward the relative safety of deep water. All of which is standard operating procedure for vet erans of the T\irtle Watch program who coordinate pro tection efforts on their home beaches. Not surprisingly, each of these women is more than a "turtle person," vol unteering their time and energy to numerous other com munity projects. Besides keeping watch on turtles and their volunteer protectors at Holden Beach, Judy Brian is an active member of the town's beautificatioe committee and a member of the Cottrtme Volunteer Rescue Squad. Gloria Hilkuburg has been keeping informal records of sea turtle activities on Ocean Isle Beach for 10 years, long before there was an official Turtle Watch program. She also volunteers her time at the island's Museum of Coastal Carolina and helps collect contributions for the Hope Harbor Home domestic violence shelter. On busy Sunset Beach and pristine (for now) Bird Island, community activist Minnie Hunt coordinates the turtle watch volunteers. But she is also a leader of the Bird island Preservation Society and an active board member of the N.C Coastal Federation and the N.C Land Trust "That's about all I do these days," says Hunt, who was accustomed to working round-the-clock as a com puter specialist before "retiring" to the equally demand ing arena of volunteer environmental work. Kathy Kakos, like Spencer, is typical of the newer Turtle Watch volunteers. A former resident of New York State's Hudson River shoreline, she moved to Brunswick County in May 1990. After reading about turtle protection efforts in he Beacon, Kakoa joined the program the following month and has become what Hunt calls "an essential member of the Sunset Beach team. Her volunteer spirit has spread to other areas. Nowadays Kakos says she "practically lives at the Museum of Coastal Carolina," where she helps out at the front desk and conducts tours for visiting school groups. Coordinating all those coordinators is Brunswick Parks and Recreation specialist Tina Pritchard, who or ganized the county's Ttortle Watch program in 1989 after supervising a similar effort on Oak Island the previous year. While she regularly earns praise for her work with turtles, this year Pritchard received special recognition for managing the people who make the program happen. Next month, Pritchard will fly to Las Wgas, Nev, to accept the National Association of Counties' Annual Achievement Award for organizing what it considers to be the top volunteer program in the country. But wfass yes ? bcr sfcc it, Pritehud will quickly brash aside the praise and say that more volunteer help is still needed? especially folks willing to "adopt" one of the more than 230 sea turtle nests getting ready to hatch between Oak Island and Bird Island. So if you want to get involved in one of the troe woo den of nature, why not become a turtle watcher? You may find a new excuse to walk the beach every morn Those interested in the T\irtie Watch program can call Brian on Holden Beach at 842-7242, HiDeaburg on Ocean Isle Beach at 579-9513 or Hunt on Sunset Beach at 579-2124. Una Pritchard can be reached through the Brunswick County Parks and Recreatioo Department at 253-4357. HOME OF ANCESTRAL LAND UFE The Important Intertidal Zone BY BILL FAVER Most of ut think about the "beach" a> the smooth area between the sand dunes and the water: This is where most of us lie in the sun, play with a Frisbee. build sand castles, look for sheik or enjoy a brisk waft. The beach is mote than We have three distinct the subtidal zone, the intertidal zone and the supreti dal zone. The subtidal zone is that area of the beach always coveted by water: Organisms in this zone cannot sur vive if they become c.xpoaed to air. They must have the constant pro tection of water and wet sand for RMn their environment. Fish, crabs, jellyfish, sea stare and many mol iusks inhabit this important zone. On the other extreme is the soprabdal zone, the land area above the high tide line which is rarely covered by water. Most creatures living in this zone are land ani mals to us. The ghost crab is one unusual resi dent, but these crabs do need to "wet their gills" a day to survive. Usually there is severe heat in this zone during the summer months, and survival is difficult The land between these two zones is the mtrrtidal zone, where organisms surviving must adapt to the al ternating inundation by water and exposure to air. In many ways this is the harshest of the three zones be cause of the exposure to the elements, the wave action and the constantly changing conditions. In The Womderfid World of die Seashore, Albro Gaul says of the land between the tidea: Even though the beach area between the high and low tide marks an our beaches and mudflats wi the first home of nearly all of our ancestral land life, it is a very difficult place to live. When die tide is high, die plants and animals must avoid being washed away and the terrestrial creatures must either adapt to a life under water or drown. At low tide, the marine creatures must somehow avoid death by drying out.. The important intertidal zone ? that land between the tides ? is not just the place for people on vacation, but one of the most interesting "fn in the ptex area where land, sky and sea come together.
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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July 28, 1994, edition 1
11
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