bryanpwallace's Identifications

We first spotted this dead turtle on the 17th, and took the dorsal photos them. When we relocated the turtle on the 18th, it had been dragged down the beach, and flipped over. It was surrounded by coyote tracks, overlain with gull tracks. We took the ventral pictures then.
No pores on bridge scutes, no interanal scute, so not a Ridley. Not a Hawksbill. Green?

Easy to catch a glimpse of, HARD to photograph! I've seen these guys at the Mansfield Jetty every time I visit.

After some more research, it turns out that 97% of turtle sightings at Mansfield Jetty are Green Sea Turtles. And head photos of immature Greens appear identical to the photos I have taken. So I've changed my ID from Kemp's Ridley to Green Sea Turtle.

Our last few days in Trinidad and we are in the Sangre Grande area. Leatherback Sea Turtles are well known for nesting on local beaches, but is just at the very tail end of their season. Apparently with some of these later nests, the young turtles emerge from the nests in the afternoon instead of while it is still dark, and nearly 100% fall prey to Black Vultures and Magnificent Frigatebirds as they make their way across 100 meters of sand to the sea. One of the local guys gathered up a bunch of turtles as they were emerging and saved them in a bucket for a few hours, and as it got dark they were released on the beach and allowed to make their way to the sea. It was fun to watch. One of the shots shows one of these babies in my wife's hand for size perspective.

In several hours at Hanauma Bay, I saw turtles twice - both on the edges of the snorkeling activity and both farther out than most were going (but still before the breakline of the waves). Still, these guys seem fairly habituated to peoples. Unfortunately, despite the 'look don't touch' mantra of the mandatory video we watched before entering this very popular snorkeling bay, the young guys attached to the pictured legs were swimming down to try and touch this turtle.

Lots of sea turtles hauled out on the black sands. I wasn't really aware that sea turtles hauled out before. Apparently this happens rarely outside of Hawaii possibly because there's so much harvesting for turtle meat elsewhere in the world.

Several of these turtles were seen in 'turtle town'...an area near Maalea Bay and off of Kihei, Maui,Hawaii. This one was said to be a female due to the short, stubby tail observed (mature males have long, thick tails).