Moved to the Atlantic!

surf breaking on offshore sandbar

It is wet, wet, wet rainy season with somewhere between 15-25 inches of rain this month!  Yes, it is the rainy (monsoon?) season in Florida, but every day of July has been wet, grey, daily thunder and lightning storms, flooding and whitecap seas so rough we have been told it looks like the East coast of Florida - ie the Atlantic.

Blustery would be too gentle a description as the wind howls straight through our condo and we can hardly get the front door open.  Hum looking at the grey skies, have I moved back to Britain I wonder?  Check it out for yourself on this short video shot this morning.

Mad Beach nest (note stakes) being washed by surf

'cliff' at sunrise

This is not so good for the 2014 beach re-nourishment south of us as you can see - the ocean has taken lots of sand away already. Nor does it help the turtle nests some of which have been washed out. White caps abound today and now both nests in front of our condo have been washed over potentially depriving the turtle eggs of needed oxygen.  We shall have to wait and see . . .

Balanced view of  Civil War

Send up the wine!

Meantime we are back from our travels to North Carolina and Virginia where things are lush green with lots of rolling hills - a bit like England (but warmer) so I can see how the colonists settled here.

It was an interesting time to travel through the Old Confederacy as South Carolina at long last took down the bar and stars -- the old battlefield flag from the Civil War. We visited family, attended a family wedding in Williamsburg at the College of William and Mary (a University to my British friends), traveled the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah Valley (in the mist!), inspected Monticello -- the home of Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence and incongruously a slave owner) -- visited a number of Civil War (1861-1865) sites and learnt about tobacco.  Native Americans taught colonists about tobacco, so they Europeans back for colonization!  One of my favourites is Jefferson's ingenious wine dumbwaiter - no electricity required!

hatchlings seen by our
 turtle tracking colleagues

The season for sea turtle nest sitting has begun.  To protect the turtle hatchlings from unthinking humans and light pollution, we babysit the turtle nests that are about to hatch (50-60 days after they are laid).  Our job requires watchfulness, patience and tact (to deal with the curious and sometimes raucous public).

Tuesday night (28th), our nest sitting was 1/2 successful.  No hatchlings and the lightning was so strong/frequent/near we couldn't sit on the beach (not to mention the rain).  We sat in the car and ran out to check the nest every 20-30 minutes looking for the 'hole drop.'  But it didn't happen.

Hole Drop 

However, a mama turtle was spotted down the beach nesting so off we went to watch her for about 1 hour from midnight.  What a treat! Back to nest sitting tonight and it looks like another wet one.

From Beach Beacon
July 30, 2015 page 10A

We have the Great Bay Scallop living in Tampa Bay -- a 3 inch creature that lives 12 to 18 months and as a filter feeder pumping 15.5 quarters of water per hour which improves water quality and helps grow seagrass beds - great for turtles!





   Yum, Yum Lionfish; A Little Info on Our Invasive Species

Some are a bit more orange/red and
remind me of clown fish.

Here's a tasty treat of an invasive species - Lionfish!  Mini Me has yet to try one, but there is a local festival, so it is on her list of 'To Do's in Florida.'  Eating them provides a sustainable food source and helps to control the population which is messing with the ecosystem balance in many oceans.

They are beautiful, even if the spines are poisonous!

Haven't posted one of these pictures for awhile - mini me must have thousands of beautiful sunset pictures now (and some sunrises too), especially with the summer thunderstorms that create colourful images off the clouds. It is from a few weeks back . . .