Employment: Fun jobs

I honestly believe I have one of the best jobs on the planet. I am a turtle girl. No, that doesn’t mean I have leathery arms and legs and pull into my shell when I’m frightened, though there are times when that defense sounds quite appealing. I study sea turtles; I’ve been privileged to work with several species in the United States, Antigua, Barbados, Thailand and Malaysia.

Sea turtle biology is still in its infancy. The first research started in Costa Rica in the 1950s with Archie Carr’s green sea turtle nesting site at Tortuguero. The next two studies started in the early 1960s in Natal Province, South Africa and Little Cumberland Island, Georgia. I was fortunate to start my sea turtle career on that same Georgia beach, learning at the feet of the masters. I was in turtle girl heaven.

Turtle work is not for the faint of heart. I spent my first three years on saturation-tagging projects, which means we spent all night, every night, walking or riding an ATV down miles of sandy beach. Hurricanes were the only reason we ever missed a night on the nesting beach, and then, only if the storm hit at night.

A saturation-tagging project is a bit like sea turtle boot camp. The physically weak, ill adjusted or undedicated will not survive the first week. We are responsible for finding every single sea turtle that crawls ashore to lay her eggs. There are no excuses, aside from the above hurricanes, but turtles don’t nest during hurricanes, so we’re back to no excuses. Each turtle is tagged, measured, and assessed for overall health. If necessary, nests are moved to hatcheries or more suitable habitat in the dunes. Mosquitoes and no-see-ums abound. I think I gave a pint of blood a month during those years, but I would go back tomorrow.

We developed two themes in my Georgia summers: “No Wimpy Women” and “Need a Band-Aid”. The first was born on our very first night on the beach. The tides in Georgia are rather high, and erosion is a constant problem. The wind and waves had eroded so deeply into the north point of the island that dead trees littered the beach. At low tide, this isn’t a problem. At high tide, it’s a difficulty. We simply had to get past the trees to look for nesting turtles on the other three miles of sand. Since there was no other option, and only two women, we learned the limits of our strength as we literally carried the ATVs over the lowest lying branches we could find. The “Need a Band-Aid” theme was directed at me, and came in conjunction