The Jumby Bay Hawksbill Project: 24 years later and the return of Nina

A hawksbill in the early morning light is ready to return to the sea after laying her eggs. (Photo by Kate Levasseur)

From the Daily Observer

June 23, 1987
A hawksbill turtle emerges from the surf. She is not aware, however, that she is about to make history. She pulls her large body up a ledge of sand and crawls toward the bushes backing the beach. This sea turtle has left the weightlessness and comfort of her marine habitat to haul her body up the beach and lay a clutch of eggs. Her body’s design has been shaped by millions of years of evolution to move effortlessly through the water. It is covered by a flattened, torpedo-shaped shell and propelled by flippers in place of feet. The only occasion sea turtles leave the comfort of their marine environment is to lay eggs, ensuring the survival of their species.
This particular hawksbill is being observed as she begins the nesting process. She is named Nina. After digging a 50cm-deep hole in the sand with her hind flippers, she takes a deep breath from the labor and becomes still. Just behind her tail is her cloaca, where her ovipositor descends, ready to push out about 150 eggs. During these ten minutes of egg-laying, the researchers pierce her left front flipper with a metal tag inscribed with the serial number PPN001. She is the first nesting hawksbill tagged in a new sea turtle monitoring program located on Long Island’s Pasture Beach.
July 20, 2010

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A hawksbill turtle emerges from the surf. She is making history again. It is Nina, still with her PPN001 tag, reproductively active for 24 years. Over the last two decades, the turtles tagged in the initial years of the project have been slowly disappearing from the nesting beach. Researchers are again by Nina’s side to document this unexpected event. It is Nina’s tenth nesting season on record over these 24 years. They measure her, take photos, record the nesting location, and count her 170 eggs as they drop into an expertly excavated nest chamber. They also take a small piece of tissue from her back flipper to include her in a genetic analysis of the     population. How many of her daughters have joined the nesting population in recent years? Since monitoring began, 370 hawksbills have been tagged. The 2009 season was the busiest on record, with 77 hawksbills laying 324 nests, and an estimated 36,000 hatchlings scurrying across the beach into the surf.
The population has slowly but steadily grown over the last two decades, one of the few hawksbill populations in the Caribbean witnessing this trend. The critically endangered hawksbill continues to decline on a global scale, depleted by hundreds of years of harvest and increasing habitat loss. Today, fishing nets present an indirect threat, entangling and eventually drowning air-breathing sea turtles. The project received news this season of a hawksbill found dead, entangled in fishing gear off the coast of the Dominican Republic. She was identified as one of the younger hawksbills in the JB population, tagged in 2008. Although unfortunate, this turtle provides a clue about hawksbill migrations, telling us that a hawksbill nesting in Antigua travelled at least 1000km, most likely feeding on coral reefs in the Dominican Republic. This also shows us that to be effective, conservation efforts of long-lived, migratory animals like sea turtles must extend past geopolitical boundaries and promote partnerships at local, national and international levels.