A canoe may have saved Allison’s life

Allison, a 5 year Green turtle, joins 20 year-old Loggerhead turtle, Yu-chan, in making history with regards to turtle rehabilitation.

Allison the one flippered turtle, photo Eric Gray

Allison has spent most her life swimming in circles. Not surprising considering that she only has one flipper. At only 5 years old, she has finally been given a new lease on life after being fitted with a black neoprene “ninja” suit. The suit which looks like a wetsuit, covers about three-quarters of her body and has a carbon-fibre dorsal fin attached to her back, allowing Allison to glide gracefully across her 12-foot pool along with the other turtles at Sea Turtle Inc, a Texas not-for-profit group that rehabilitates injured sea turtles.

“That’s a sea turtle doing what a sea turtle does,” said Dave Cromwell, a worker at Sea Turtle Inc. who joined the cheering crowd gathered around the 3,000-gallon pool. Allison moved along tranquilly, cutting lazy arcs, diving to munch lettuce and nipping at other turtles. The fin was acting like a rudder and giving her stability, and she could change direction by varying the strokes of her front right flipper. The first time Allison dove down to feed at the improvised salad bar of waving Romaine. Some people watching wept, Cromwell said.

Rescuers at Sea Turtle Inc. believe that a shark probably chomped her three flippers. According to curator Jeff George, 2-flipper turtles can be adopted by zoos while 3-flipper turtles can be safely returned to the wild. With only one flipper, a turtle spins and struggles to break the surface to breathe and is therefore, usually euthanized.

Allison doing her best to impersonate the shark who took 3 of her flippers, photo Eric Gray

When Allison arrived at Sea Turtle Inc. in 2005, she was a hand-size, bloodied turtle with little chance of survival. Allison, however, recovered from her injuries and wormed herself into the hearts of her rescuers enough that, in 2007, a team of scientists spent months trying to develop a prosthetic flipper to counter the thrust of her remaining paddle.

They made casts of hind flippers and high-tech prosthetics, but there was not enough of a stump remaining to attach it and it would either wobble loosely or cut off circulation if clamped down. Tom Wilson, a 21-year-old intern at Sea Turtle Inc. who stayed on to fine-tune Allison’s new gear, watched the failed attempts with the prosthetic and began thinking of a simpler solution. He thought of paddling a canoe and how its long keel allowed it to cut a fairly straight path through the water even if paddled from one side.

After fashioning a harness for Allison, the team experimented with various fin shapes and length and it soon became clear that this would work. Allison has gradually worked up from a few minutes swimming in the suit to two hours. Eventually she should be able to spend six hours a day gliding through the large pool, as she is gradually builds strength in her underutilized flipper. Her quality of life has improved dramatically and Allison shows her pleasure/displeasure by trying to swim away from the staff of Sea Turtle Inc. when its time to take the suit off.

Allison being fitted with her ninja suit for another swim round the pool, photo Eric Gray

As Allison is expected to live over 150 years and could reach a weight of 500 to 600 pounds, its is important to refit her with new suits on a regular basis. Plans are underway for a figure-8 shaped pool with a shallow end where they will be able to get her in and out of the suit without carrying her from small pool to big pool as they do now.

Text and photos courtesy Sea Turtle Inc.

Getting Ready for the Wheaton Show

We just finished packing and taking inventory for the show in Wheaton on Sunday. Supreme Gecko will be adding a new item to our stock. Breeder boxes by Exotera. They are stackable and very affordable for the hobbyist. The small box will be fine for a new hatchling of a crested gecko and the medium box will house a juvenile crested gecko.

A lucky break for our turtles

The turtle eggs rescued by Adam and Elke hatched out 10 days after the nest was relocated. Elke was enjoying one of many happy shopping sprees in South Africa, leaving Adam to celebrate an unofficial father’s day all on his own, as he watched his babies head off into the horizon.

As mentioned in the previous blog, 115 eggs were relocated to protect them from being washed away by the encroaching sea. Only 62 hatched, with the others being checked to confirm they had not been fertilised.

A close call. Two days after relocating the eggs, the beach area where the nest had been located was washed away, photo Elke Talma.

The 10 weird shaped eggs had been kept separate to see if the hatchlings were deformed, but luckily all was well, and the eggs that had been fertilised gave rise to a number of healthy looking baby turtles.

This season, we appear to have been having issues with low survival rates. In this case, a significant number of eggs did not appear to be fertilised while in other cases, continue rainfall meant that embryo’s from nests dug in poorly drained soil, died mid-way through the incubation period. The silver lining, however, is that if we hadn’t moved the eggs, 100% would have died!

Hawksbill hatchling on Intendance beach, photo Elke Talma.

Watching the incubators at Supreme Gecko Facility

Today I found a leopard gecko that had hatched. The little guy thought he was so tough hissing when I misted his tub and jumping around.
This is one of my favorite parts of working in the facility. I check the incubators multiple times throughout the day in order to get the new hatchling in its new home as soon as possible. It is also fun to find the new babies before Wally does :)

Working in Supreme Gecko facility

Worked in the Supreme gecko facility today. Feeding, cleaning, misting, and my favorite part collecting eggs. I collected 8 batches of eggs this afternoon.

Supreme Gecko Hatches First Raptor!

While checking the eggs in the incubators tonight we discovered our first hatch of a raptor. Wally is very excited to have this animal hatch successfully. It is beautiful.

Thanks for helping out!

MCSS would like to thank everyone who helped with turtle monitoring and beach profile mapping while Elke was on annual leave.

Vanessa Zialor, Nanette Port-Louis and Nigel Simeon from the Environmental Engineering Section in the Ministry of Environment with the assistance of Kirsten Gilray, an ex-MCSS volunteer, carried out weekly monitoring on behalf of MCSS in the South of Mahe.

Vanessa Zialor with a turtle on Curieuse island, photo Pierre Andre Adam.

Additional monitoring was carried out on Intendance beach by Adam Abdulla, while Christopher Adrianne from the Tourism Police, the officers at the Grand Police Army base and David Deny, a resident of South Mahe, kept a lookout on neighbouring beaches.

Christopher Adrianne with a his first ever hatchling, photo Elke Talma.

Unfortunately for them, there was no turtle nesting activity during the 3 weeks that Elke was away, but Vanessa and Nigel did see some hatchlings ... however, they didn’t have a camera handy to document the event!

Hatchling Jungle carpet pythons

Hatchling jungle carpets, father is Krauss stock. Hatched on 29/12/08. Should colour up nicely. All are feeding well on fuzzy rats. Some are good handlers for jungles. Both sexes available. Snakes are located in Eastern Sydney and are pick up only, will freight for pairs if buyer pays all costs associated with freight. $200ea. E-mail klassicreptiles@hotmail.com for more photo's of individual snakes or call 0408 865 284.

Many of you have heard bits and pieces of the proposed bill HR 669, in fact there is an excellent thread here click here . Please read this for more details on the bill.

Yesterday, I was listening to Gary Orner's Blog Talk Radio show and found out that Brian Barczyk from SnakeBytes.tv planned to provide a video on the subject. Brian has shared so much information to the hobby and has now provided an easy way for you and I to take quick action on bill HR 669.

The video is short but to the point! Again, I would strongly suggest that you read the thread above first, educate yourself, and watch NO HR 669 Video.



I will be the first to admit that I'm not as engaged as most on this topic. This is something, as a reptile breeder, reptile keeper, or even small mammal/bird/fish keeper we should all be concerned about and should voice our opinion on. The bill HR 669 WILL affect us all. We need to be more informed and be in a position to support this bill. I hope you feel the same.

Brian has made it that much easier for us to understand and to react!

Available animals

Supreme Gecko added new crested geckos to the store. Check out the quality cresteds at www.store.supremegecko.com

First time hatch of Pictus!

We were very excited at Supreme Gecko to find our first hatch of Pictus today. There are 2 hatchlings and they are very active. Their patterns are very distinctive and clear. They are very small but fiesty.

469+ days and still transmitting!

Carol, the satellite tagged turtle released by MCSS on 20th December 2007, is still transmitting data to MCSS via the Argos Satellite system. It has been over 15 months now since Carol was fitted with an MKF10 satellite tag. The tag’s battery life was expended to end after about 3 months, but researchers at MCSS who have been closely following Carol’s progress have been pleasantly surprised by the tag’s long life.

Previously, the longest recorded satellite track in Seychelles was from 3 turtles tagged in 1999 in the Cousin Nature Reserve, which according to Dr Jeanne Mortimer, transmitted data for over 13.5 months.

Satellite tracks from five nesting Hawksbill turtles tagged on Cousin Island, figure from Mortimer & Balzas, 2000

The Cousin turtles remained on the Seychelles plateau and it was assumed that turtles nesting in Seychelles remained on the Seychelles plateau between nesting seasons. Carol disproved this theory, by swimming some 2612km to Nosy bay in Madagascar, where she has remained for the past 7 months.

Carol’s journey from Seychelles to Madagascar, vie Coetivy island, courtesy www.seaturtle.org

Hopefully, she will be making her way back to Seychelles soon to nest during the 2009-10 Season. With any luck, the tag will continue to transmit, allowing us to track her journey to her birth place.

Save dollars when feeding your reptiles

Looking to save some money on feeding crested or leopard geckos, or any other reptiles?
Check out the new article in Ezine by clicking on the image below.

Saturday - Wally went to Wheaton for the Animal Expo. He and Jordan sold animals, supplies, and food. It was a very busy and profitable day for them.

Testing photo ID of Hawksbill turtles

Following a recent visit to Seychelles by scientist from the Kelonia Marine Turtle Observatory in Reunion, MCSS is looking at regional cooperation in a new project to test whether or not Hawksbill turtles can be identified through photographs.

Photo-id, using natural marks on the body, has proved to be an effective means of identifying animals over their life span. Indeed, MCSS has been using photo-id on whale sharks since 2001. This method of identifying wild animals minimises stress to the animals, and allows researchers to track an individual longer than with conventional marker tags, which are prone to falling off and becoming fouled in the marine environment.

In turtles, this method is still being tested. Results from Green turtles photographed by divers around Reunion, Mayotte and Glorieuse islands have shown that individual animals can be reliable identified in their foraging grounds using head shots. To date, 42 Green turtles have been identified by researchers at Kelonia, with at least 5 individuals being re-sighted a few months later.

Each turtle is given an individual fingerprint based on the scale patter on its “cheek”, photo Kelonia.

The team at Kelonia have also used the photo-identification on Hawksbill turtles, but because this species is not abundant in Reunion, they have only been able to add 12 animals to their database. This is were MCSS comes in!

Seychelles host between 475 to 875 nesting females, which regularly visit our beaches to lay their eggs. If one assumes a 1: 1 ratio for males to females, then there are likely to be as many as 1,750 Hawksbill turtles just waiting to be photographed.

Over the years, Elke and various MCSS volunteers have photographed a number of nesting individuals, as well as foraging juveniles. While most of the photographs were not aimed at photo-id, a quick check has shown that there are at least 40 individual turtles that can be added to the database, allowing the Kelonia team to test and hopefully validate the Hawksbill photo-id database.

We just finished feeding the crested geckos, moved some males around in our breeding project and collected day gecko eggs.

We are very busy maintaining animals enclosures and collecting eggs at this time of the year. I have become much more involved in helping with feeding and egg collection. It is fun to see how many eggs I can collect on a daily basis.

Nanette

Our bearded dragons are breeding now and I noticed one of the females laying eggs. It was fascinating to watch her dig a spot and then over the course of several hours lay her eggs, then bury them. I collected the eggs and now we will wait to see the babies hatch out.