My wife works in the Biology Lab of a local Junior College, so our vacations revolve around the academic calendar. While my wife's students were at South Padre working on their sunburns and hangovers, we visited Padre Island National Seashore. Sixty miles of undeveloped beach accessible by four wheel drive vehicle, and we explored every inch of it! When you're sixty miles from the nearest road, the crowds really thin out! We birded, fished, crabbed, and built sand castles. On our way back to civilization, we met a very nice local couple the turned out to be prime examples of citizen science in action.
As we were driving north on our last day on the island, we approached a large SUV that had a platform mounted on its roof. On top of the platform was a man with a sport fishing rod, and it was REALLY bent. It was obvious he had hooked something big. My wife (who has far more patience than me) is an avid angler, who hadn't had much luck on this trip. She wanted to stop and watch. She is also much more social than me, and had soon struck up a conversation with the man's girlfriend, and learned that he was pretty sure he had hooked up a Bull Shark. Sure enough, slowly but surely, the man, who identified himself as "Oz" brought to shore a 5-6 foot Bull Shark.
At this point I was steeling myself to witness some sort of chest-thumping, kill-the-monster, macho display. Instead, Oz and his girlfriend worked rapidly and efficiently to measure, tag, get tissue samples, photograph and release the shark in less than 5 minutes. It turns out that Oz has been participating in ongoing shark conservation research for many years, and gathered data on, and tagged over 100 sharks!
I'm going to send the two of them an iNaturalist invite!
This one-legged Willet patrolled the beach close to our campsite for a couple of days. He seemed to be coping rather well. We named him Pogo.
Lots of Pen Shells and Angel Wings on our part of the beach. More than I recall having ever seen before.
Several Man o' Wars (Men o' War?) on the north end of the island, none on the south end.
Multiple solitary Long-billed Curlews along the length of the island. Then on the last day, we saw a flock of about 20 LBCs hanging out together near Big Shell Beach.
We saw MORE than just one Sanderling. And more than just one Willet.
Royals and Sandwiches seemed to hang out together. The big one is the Royal.
The little one is the Sandwich.
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.
Very alert, and shy. At Mansfield Jetty.
Specled crabs spaced out about every 2 meters, in the swash zone.
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?
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FANTASTIC observations! Wow! Great stuff.
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