Sea Turtles Scramble

We were recently on the beach at Boca Grande Pass in Florida, 90 miles south of Tampa, watching young sea turtles scramble. It seems that a young girl, while digging a sand castle, had uncovered an unmarked sea turtle nest. Most turtle nests are found the morning after they’re created, since sea turtles dig their nests at night. They leave a broad track in the sand, like a tractor tire has passed over. So the turtle volunteers rope the nest off with pink ribbon and stakes. But somehow, perhaps because of storm, wind and tide, park rangers had missed this nest. Months later the little turtles came out scrambling—-their dark hideout uncovered by a young girl.

So the park rangers were called in, who brought along a turtle specialist, who dug and examined the nest. There were dead turtles preyed upon by ghost crabs—-a swift and efficient predator. There were eggs that shriveled and didn’t survive. And empty eggs where turtles had hatched and scrambled to the sea and freedom, where many another predator lurks beyond the surf.

We were there early in the morning before the tourists arrive, and watched the excavation. It was too bad my dad wasn’t there, a faculty member from the University of Miami who studied sea turtles in the Atlantic and also the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, where he helped discover a secret nesting beach covered with thousands of turtles, with the story and photos making National Geographic magazine.

We still have his boxes of files, letters and stamps from other countries, people who found his drift cards, which are plastic cards that drift flush with the water and currents, instead of the wind. They were dropped offshore where sea turtles congregate and nest, there to drift along with the turtles to their next stops. From Africa to South America, then around through the Caribbean. Even tiny Ascension Island in mid-Atlantic where turtles nest, had my dad’s drift cards float ashore. The idea of prevailing currents carrying sea turtles (which are weak swimmers) to favorite nesting sites was considered heresy by prevailing turtle “experts,” who were convinced each turtle was ingrained with the sands of their native beach, enabling them to somehow return and nest again. (Like salmon). As my dad used to say before he passed away, “an entire generation of turtle research students have been raised on this dogma.”

But we’ve gone off on a small tangent here. The park rangers at Gasparilla State Park, of which Boca Grande Pass is a part, showed us the young loggerhead turtles still in the nest—-ready to head offshore for an uncertain fate in the Gulf and Atlantic. Between the predators and underwater plumes of BP oil far offshore and undetected, these little turtles have many adventures ahead of them.  

Our visit to Boca Grande Pass was impressive, just from the sheer amount of wildlife visiting there in July Eight sea turtle nests, a dozen manatees passing by, the crab migration, and the fish.  

Amazing crab run

Many of us have bemoaned the loss of healthy populations of blue crabs on the Gulf Coast, mostly from excessive commercial harvest, with thousands of traps on the bays, and also countless lost (ghost) traps that continue to harvest. As kids we used to sell large, male blue crabs for a nickel each to the local Cajun grocery, when I lived in Port Arthur, Texas. But that was 40 years ago. 

We were shocked last week (like stepping back into time), at the sight of many thousands of large blue crabs migrating out of Boca Grande Pass, 90 miles south of Tampa. The Pass is famous for tarpon schools, and pictures of boats fishing only 10 feet apart, which turned me off from even visiting the place for a decade or more. We found it to be an amazing place full of marine wildlife, but it’s best to visit there on the weekdays—-and especially avoid all weekends in May/June when the tarpon tournaments take over.

Walking in from Gasparilla State Park at the tip of the island, we were impressed by the clear water and rolling tarpon. Snook were cruising by in ghostly fashion, in cloudy weather just after a thundershower, and we caught two. Few people were around that evening, though we did notice a mother and small son wading the shallows with a dipnet, who said they were looking for blue crabs. We thought that was odd, or at least just a youthful pursuit. They’d only seen one crab. But next day under sunny skies, the flood of crabs began.   

A few people appeared, but not many. An army of crabs walked by in the shallows, so many it wasn’t safe to wade deep. Perhaps the deep Pass isn’t safe for them to swim through, with hungry predators, including many big sharks. So the crabs walked. They were all large females, a few with egg sacks visible beneath them, which were dutifully released. With a single dipnet on a six-foot pole, I could have filled a pickup truck. When the tide ran out fast, they swept by in an unending stream, and you could dip away without taking a step. The park ranger said the bag limit was 10 gallons per angler, which seemed a little too generous.

I walked along the beach, amazed at the wealth of crabs. I followed a large manatee (one of 12 in one day) that was in shallow water, whose large bulk spooked the crabs   —-they tried to go around him. Up ahead, two more manatee headed our way on a collision course. When they met, nose to nose, they had a 10-minute conference. The river of crabs were forced to go around them. 

The two manatees from the bay perhaps had never met this big one migrating towards the Pass, out of the Gulf, for they conversed in some fashion for the longest time. 

Back to crab-gathering. I’d run to the local hardware store in downtown Boca Grande, grabbed up a dipnet and icechest, with a keen interest in a crab boil dinner this very night. It was easy enough to fill the chest with crabs, just plunk the net down on the seaward side of each crab. While parading by, they weren’t even afraid of the net, just keeping 1-2 feet of distance from their neighbors. They have a crabby disposition, after all…When the chest was filled, I passed the net over to a couple nearby, and the lady angler quickly filled their icechest by scooping up perhaps 40 big ones. 

Another day in paradise. Barefoot in white sand, witnessing the biggest procession of blue crabs I’ve ever seen in the shallows, rivaling our heyday back in the late 1960s. 

The biggest work was just untangling each crab from the net. You could dip out perhaps three before returning to the ice chest for removal process. These were certainly good-sized crabs, bigger than you often find in restaurants. 

There were also clean and colorful. Another guy stopped by and said that the Chesapeake Bay crabs he was quite familiar with, were more inclined to be silt-coated and not as tasty. So we kept filling buckets and coolers. A feast was had this very night; I ate boiled crabs until my hands were sore and a tremendous mess covered the table. 

Though we were staying in a motel 22 miles away, we had lucked out and found a top-notch place run by a British lady, a Days Inn on Highway 41, a mile south of the turnoff to Boca Grande. She also had a restaurant in the parking lot, with karaoke and bar. They have a cook there named Mike who accepted our heaps of crabs, along with several bags of Zatarain’s Crab Boil mix, all of which went into a large boiling pot while we showered and put on our best crab-feast attire. I will have to say their motel and restaurant were very satisfying, everything (including free breakfast) very top-notch at the motel, which is a pleasant change from so many we’ve seen on the road. 

As for the crab migration, I’ll have to check with a state biologist, to find out what might have prompted such an event. The park ranger suggested it was a crab spawning run, but mid-July seems a bit late for that. Only the crabs know for sure.