Daisy is BACK!

Daisy at Matura Beach, Trinidad, wearing a new satellite transmitter

We are overjoyed!

A quick recap:

1. We satellite tagged Daisy off the coast of Nova Scotia on July 11 in collaboration with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). Daisy already had one flipper tag when we found her. It had been applied at Matura Beach, Trinidad, in 2014.
2. DFO sea turtle biologist, Dr. Mike James, was carefully following Daisy’s movements as she approached Trinidad. On the night of March 22, he could see from the satellite data that she was ashore at Grand Riviere on the north coast of Trinidad. He contacted colleagues at the Grand Riviere Nature Tour Guide Association. They responded and found her nesting.
3. Leatherbacks typically nest approximately every 10 days during their nesting years (they’ll do this an average of about 6 times in Trinidad). And, 10 days later, Daisy returned to Grand Riviere to nest in the early morning. (She wasn’t encountered by humans that time.)
4. Mike then expected her to nest again on the night of April 11/early morning of April 12. The satellite data early in the day on April 11 showed Daisy hovering near Grand Riviere beach. But, her transmitter went suddenly and completely offline midday. She was not encountered on the beach that night.
5. We did not hear from Daisy’s transmitter again. Because she went offline in one area of Trinidad’s coastal gillnet fishery, we worried she had been accidentally caught and potentially drowned in that gear.

Last night, the volunteers who are taking part in the CSTN Field Trip to Trinidad, were—as they are each night of the trip—on Matura Beach working with the nesting leatherbacks. Matura Beach is almost 9 kilometres long, so the volunteers scatter across it in small groups, measuring and flipper tagging the turtles, inserting microchips where necessary, and monitoring the nesting process.

Around 11 p.m., Francis Superville—one of the senior members of the Nature Seekers staff—radioed from the southern end of Matura Beach that he had a turtle with flipper tags matching those from a list of turtles captured in Canada. This set a series of events in motion, including pulling Kyle Mitchell, the Nature Seekers’ chairman and system administrator, out of bed to race to the beach with a satellite tag before the turtle was done nesting. (The nesting process takes about two hours.) Some of the Field Trip volunteer team who were close to that section of beach were able to watch the satellite-tagging process.

Early this morning, back in Halifax, Mike checked the information Kyle had given him against the Canadian tagging database. The turtle was Daisy! She was nesting at Matura instead of Grand Riviere (where she nested earlier in the season), and—most importantly—she was alive and healthy! We are incredibly relieved that Daisy is okay. We don’t know what happened to her previous satellite transmitter and probably never will.

I love when leatherbacks surprise us. (Particularly with good news!) I love that even with all of our tracking equipment and our scientific vigilance we just don’t always know what they’re up to. I can’t wait to watch Daisy’s next move!