So, apart from visiting and hanging out at Dr. Peter Pritchard’s Chelonian Research Institute while in Florida, he also took us to the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge.

The Archie Carr Information Center was a new building, but it was very well-equipped with information boards and interactive learning displays.

There were also huge posters put up on the walls of the seemingly small information center, but every inch of wall space was maximized.

After visiting the Information Center, we proceeded to Melbourne Beach where some students from the University of Central Florida do some turtle research work. Every night, loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and green (Chelonia mydas) turtles come up to lay eggs on the 20-mile (32 km) section of coastline from Melbourne Beach to Wabasso Beach. What is most interesting is that 25% of all loggerhead turtles and 35% of all green turtles nest in the United States occur in this 20-mile zone!

At night, we were scheduled to walk the beach to watch a loggerhead turtle lay eggs but a storm was rolling in our way, so we stayed in the field house and listened to a powerpoint presentation given by Professor Emeritus Ehrhart from the University of Central Florida. Not long after, some of his students who went on a beach patrol earlier brought back some loggerhead turtle hatchlings that should be released that night.

In the middle of the very interesting presentation, we received a phone call from one of the students that there was a loggerhead turtle nesting on the beach. Immediately, we stopped talking, grabbed our headlights, jumped into the field vehicles and went to the section of the beach the loggerhead turtle was. That night, we observed 2 loggerhead turtles and a green turtle nest, and we released some hatchlings into the ocean.

The next morning before we left, we went to Melbourne Beach. And what we saw was just so spectacular — lots of turtle tracks and body pits on the beach!

I was harassed by thousands of sand flies while sitting and watching the turtles lay eggs, but seeing how active the turtles were the night we were there made it all so worthwhile :)

More pictures taken at the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge.