Puerto Rico: Turtle Troop and El Yunque

Okay, I'm back. Brace yourselves; this post is going to be a long one. Last time, I covered the first three days of my trip to Puerto Rico, during which I pretty much stayed in Luquillo and saw what I could see there. Only I forgot, my family did actually go to Old San Juan on day three and visit the Castillo San Cristóbal. Here are some pics so you know it happened.

These views are from the top of the castillo (castle). The Castillo San Cristóbal is the largest fortification built by the Spanish in the New World, covering 27 acres. Construction on the fortress began in 1634 and wasn't completed until 1790. It is one of two fortresses in Old San Juan. The other is the Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which is visible on the horizon in the last photo. While San Cristóbal guarded from enemy approaches by land, El Morro was designed to protect the city from attacks by sea.

Blah blah blah history. Moving on.

Day 4:

So, day four started out just like the previous day—I got up and hit the beach. Only THIS time I met some awesome people who were part of a volunteer conservation group called the Tortugueros del Corredor Ecológico del Noreste. I'm just going to call them the Turtle Troop because it's WAY easier to type. They patrol the beach to find and tape off sea turtle nests so people don't step on them. They also monitor the nests and keep track of how many babies they produce.

The nests in question are leatherback sea turtle nests. The leatherback sea turtle is the largest turtle in the world, with adults typically measuring 6-7 feet in length and weighing around 800 pounds. One of the Turtle Troop described them as being "the size of a Volkswagen." Leatherbacks are the only sea turtles that don't have a hard shell; instead, the shell is covered by thick, leathery skin. They have the most hydrodynamic bodies of any sea turtle and are one of the fastest-moving reptiles, capable of swimming over 20 MPH. They are also one of the deepest-diving animals, having been recorded diving to depths as great as 4,200 feet following the jellyfish they eat. The species is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, and several subpopulations are Critically Endangered. Threats facing leatherbacks include beach development and ocean plastic (plastic bags are confused for jellyfish by the turtles, which can lead to intestinal blockage, resulting in death). Additionally, some people still raid sea turtle nests for their eggs, which are considered a delicacy, particularly in Southeast Asia.

The Turtle Troop invited me to walk with them as they patrolled the beach for new nests, and I was happy to do so. It wasn't hard to spot where a nest might be; you just had to look for the tracks.

This is what we were looking for. The turtles lumber up past the high tide line in the night, spin around "like a dog," dig their nest, lay and bury their eggs (usually around 110), then head back into the water.

When they find a nest, they use a measuring tape on the tracks leading there to determine the "wingspan" of the turtle. They determined that one track they measured was made by a turtle with a wingspan of 8'4"!

These eggs were laying unburied over one nest. Brad, the knowledgeable leader of the group, told me these were "false eggs." They contain no yolk, and are laid above the "real" eggs. False eggs are laid for two possible reasons. One is that if a predator raids the nest, they will find the false eggs first, and this will hopefully distract them from the viable eggs below. The other theory is more interesting. Since false eggs contain no developing embryo, they dehydrate and shrink, freeing up space in the sand above the real eggs. This loosening of the sand above may make it easier for the hatchling turtles to dig their way to the surface.

Finding the exact spot where eggs are buried is not always easy and sometimes involves guesswork. Here Brad is sticking a pole into the ground to test how soft the sand is. Sand that has been dug will be softer, and this can indicate the nest location.

When they've located the nest, they pound stakes into the ground around it and tape off the area.

In this photo, Chris (yellow vest) tapes off the nest while Brad plots it on his GPS.

Before moving on, the tracks leading to the nest needed to be destroyed. This was to prevent confusion; if they didn't cover up the old tracks, another Turtle Troop (I gather there was at least one other group that operated on different days) might mistake them for new tracks later. I was happy to help with this, and kicked over the tracks before leaving each nest.

Toward the end of the couple-mile stretch of beach the group monitors, we found this: baby turtle tracks coming from an older nest!

Baby turtle tracks! Somehow, Brad was able to estimate 40 sets of tracks.

With this discovery, the nest had to be excavated; there could still be babies that didn't make it out!

No baby turtles were found, so they filled the hole back in and marked it with a stake with a blue ribbon. This indicated that they had checked it once, but they would check it again in a few days; even though the eggs are all laid at once, they don't all hatch on the same day.

And that was my morning with the Turtle Troop. They found nine new nests that morning—pretty amazing!

Here they all are: the Tortugueros. In the back are Chris (left) and Jake (right), while up front are, from left to right, Ricky, Greg, Jayne, and Brad. Thanks for inviting me to come with you all! Even though I didn't see any turtles, it was still awesome!

On the way back the way we had come, Brad and I talked about birding, and he pointed out a tricolored heron and scaly-naped pigeon. Two more lifers, woot!

The family and I went to El Yunque that afternoon, but we spent way more time there on day six, so I'll just save it till then.

Day 5:

Snorkeling day. I was on a boat. There were piña coladas. Then snorkeling! I saw fish. Also coral, most of which I think was dead. It was kind of depressing. But the fish were cool. There were yellowtail snappers, sergeant majors, yellowtail damselfish, and bluehead wrasse, among others. Sorry, I don't have an underwater camera.

Day 6:

El Yunque! El Yunque National Forest is the only tropical rainforest in the national forest system. Not only that, it's one of the oldest reserves in the Western Hemisphere. In 1876, while Puerto Rico was ruled by Spain, Alfonso XII designated 12,000 cuerdas (1 cuerda = .97 acres) of land in the Luquillo mountains to be a forest reserve. Spanish colonizers derived the name "El Yunque" for these mountains from the native Taino people's word for them, "Yuké."

Our first stop was the visitor center. There wasn't much to see there, just information and a gift shop. But there was a feral red junglefowl cock strutting his stuff in the parking lot.

Next we went to La Coca Falls, which made me wish I knew anything about waterfall photography.

Along the roads and parking areas were huge stands of bamboo.

Think bamboo only grew in Asia? Think again. It actually grows on every continent except Antarctica. Also, it's a grass. So giant pandas are black and white and eat grass—they're basically cows.

But the main thing we did in El Yunque was hike the El Yunque Trail to the top of Pico El Yunque, a mountain with an elevation of 3,461 feet!

I quickly learned that when you are in a rainforest, you hear a lot of birds, but you don't see a lot of birds. I only saw six species on the hike, and was able to identify five. Bananaquits and scaly-naped pigeons were everywhere. Those two species, at least, weren't hard to spot. There was also an unidentified pink pigeon or dove that I glimpsed only briefly and I REALLY want it to have been an endangered Puerto Rican plain pigeon but I just don't know. The other three species I saw were all endemics, so at least there's that: Puerto Rican tody, Puerto Rican bullfinch, and Puerto Rican tanager. The tanager is by far the least exciting to look at, so of course it's the only one I got a photo of.

Puerto Rican tanager, AKA the drabbest tanager ever.

Besides birds, there were also lots of lizards. There were lots of lizards everywhere in Puerto Rico, in fact. Mostly anoles. This one is a yellow-chinned anole.

Look at that dewlap! Wow!

There were also huge snails everywhere.

And check out this bromeliad, just chilling in midair! It's an epiphyte, meaning a plant that grows on another plant for support. You can see others lining the tree branch above. The one in the center of the frame must have fallen off and is being supported by a long aerial root. Bromeliads like these get all the water they need from rain and the air. I wonder if it's still hanging there.

As we neared the summit of Pico El Yunque, it grew foggy. This picture was taken by my sister with her iPhone.

The trail ended in a rocky slope, which we climbed up to the peak. At first, we stood surrounded by fog, but eventually it cleared and we saw this.

No view I'd seen before was comparable. Out of everything we did in Puerto Rico, hiking El Yunque was my favorite.

Day 7:

This was the big grand finale: our last full day in Puerto Rico. Which means we did TWO expensive things. We ziplined, and kayaked through a bioluminescent bay.

Ziplining took place in an area just outside the El Yunque reserve. I picked up a few life birds there, including smooth-billed ani and the endemic Puerto Rican flycatcher. After three ziplines, our guides gave us a short rainforest tour pointing out some cool plants en route to the last two cables. 

 A very old mango tree

Mangoes

Trumpet tree leaves in the canopy

 A fallen trumpet tree leaf. The leaves can grow to over a foot in diameter.

A bromeliad

The last cable was the longest, measuring about 900 feet, and ended at a platform in a West Indian locust tree, 50 feet off the ground. We then got to rappel down to the ground. The views from the cables were breathtaking; I had entertained thoughts of recording video on one of them, but decided it wasn't worth the risk of dropping my camera.

Similarly, I had wanted to take pictures/video of the bioluminescent bay, but I didn't want to get my camera wet. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't take my camera on the kayak, because there's no way it would have stayed dry. But take my word for it, if you're ever in Puerto Rico, it's something you don't want to miss. Apparently there are only five bioluminescent bays in the world, and three of them are in Puerto Rico. The brightest of them all is Mosquito Bay, but we would have had to leave the main island for that, so we settled for the next best one, Laguna Grande. We kayaked about a mile through a mangrove channel before coming out into the bay where the magic happened. The bioluminescence was caused by zooplankton called dinoflagellates, which flash blue-green when disturbed. Dipping paddles or hands in the water was enough to set them off. It was really cool.

Day 8:

On my final day in Puerto Rico, I woke up and hurried to the beach one last time. The Turtle Troop had told me this was the next day they were meeting, and I wanted to go on turtle patrol again. They met at 7 AM, but I didn't make it out until about 7:30, so I had to run to catch up. I caught up with them just in time to see Brad dig up the nest he had excavated last time. All the babies should have hatched by then, so he was checking for babies that hadn't made it out, and bad eggs. They did find one dead hatchling and about two dozen unhatched eggs, which I gather was pretty normal. After that, it was the long walk back down the beach to my condo and the drive to the airport. That was Puerto Rico. All told, I listed 37 bird species, 33 of which were lifers (most of which were beach birds I could have seen in Ohio if I spent enough time at the lake, but hey). Good vacation.

Here's a cattle egret on a hookah bar sign at Los Kioskos in Luquillo.