After sending out the press release about my upcoming PhD defense, my research on seaturtles destroying their own habitat did receive some attention in Trouw newspaper and a science-radio program. Check these links here.
Category Archives: Green Turtle
Green turtle stuff around Derawan
In total now we captured and measured more than 800 green turtles around Derawan and tagged 500 of them. The WWF guys (Udin, Darjon), some locals (Jeffrey, Tiar) and we catched them using the rodeo technique. This year we recaptured some individuals that we tagged previously in 2009 on Derawan Island. These turtles grew 3-6 …
Loads of turtles around Semporna!
To get an idea of green turtle densities on foraging grounds around the Derawan Archipelago I hopped over the border to Malaysia to visit the islands around Semporna (Mabul, Sipadan, Pom Pom, & Pandanan). Steve Oakley and Celebes Beach resort were so kind to host me on Pom Pom Island. Read the blog post by …
And it flies!
After crashing my aerial photography plane directly after the first flight, we retrieved the bits and pieces (the plane from the top of a 70m telephone tower & the catapulted-rest by logging a 20m perimeter of bushes), and shipped the plane around the world to get repaired. But 1.5 months later DHL delivered it in …
Green turtle foraging in Raja Ampat
Our second destination in our quest to find the green turtle foraging grounds was Raja Ampat. Some of the tracks of the GPS tagged turtles show foraging greens that travel all the way from Raja Ampat to Kalimantan. We were based at Kri with papua diving and did 2 short expeditions; 1 to Batanta & 1 to Wayag …
Green turtle Foraging areas in Wakatobi
After spending so much time on Derawan where green turtles are so abundant we wanted to compare Derawan with other foraging grounds in Indonesia. Wakatobi was our first destination. In contrast to nesting sites of which a lot is known. It is unclear where the green turtles forage in Indonesia, so the majority of the …
The latest experiment on Derawan
Just got back on the mainland. Last month we succesfully set-up a large experiment on Derawan to look at interactive effects of hydrodynamics & turtle grazing on seagrasses. This involved building 30 cages and 15 large underwater wave-bunkers for which we almost used al the sand from the nearby sand spit. To determine the location …
Last Week Shark bay & Ningaloo NP
After some long days in the field we took in the camp kitchen. Fons and Tjisse worked all night to measure the photosynthetic efficiency of the seagrasses, which resulted in this cool picture: Check the slide show for a report of our last week of research in Shark Bay. Tjisse, Fons and Leon left after …
Visiting CEAB Spain
Last year I met Teresa Alcoverro and Rohan Arthur at the Turtle Symposium in India were we discovered that our research had a hudge overlap; we were both doing comparable work on ecosystems with very high densities of green turtles and declining seagrasses, and we only found this out just then. My lastest MS about habitat …
Mega Turtle
Although this animal is already been found in 1996, this giant Archelon ischyros Turtle fossil of 70 million years old keeps impressing me. Its “flipper-span” reaches 4.9 meters and its shell 4 meters across. Imagine snorkeling next to this this turtle. Did these ancient already …