Lorraine’s work experience travel log

The Land crab ( Johngarthia lagostoma ) is a species of which is found on Ascension. This species is only otherwise found on three small Brazilian islands – Trinidade, Atol de Rocas and Fernando de Noronha. Land crabs evolved from marine ancestors and now inhabit terrestrial environments. They are still linked to the ocean as they must migrate to the shore to release eggs into the sea and the eggs hatch in the water (spending a brief period as zooplankton) before emerging onto the land to spend the rest of their lives on terrestrial ground.  The land crabs on Ascension are also the second largest native animal found here on Ascension. Land crabs are important keystone species of island communities as predators, litter controllers and seed dispersers. Through these functions they form a key part in the food web and help cycle nutrients through the environment.  Land Crab Surveys    There are three possible origins of the land crabs on Ascension – America, Afric

Time is flying by so quickly! Here is my round up of February highlights of my time on Ascension so far. Lots of things have happened this month some highlights include passing my driving test on the 8th February! So, I’ve been enjoying driving and doing stranding checks on my own 😊, camping at Garden Cottage on the 11th February, and trying out Kung Fu with Abi at Two Boats School on the 20th February - I really enjoyed it and can’t wait to go back next week!  On the 11th February Anna and I got to go on the sea rescue boat for the first time! As part of our Saturday training session, we joined the rest of Port Crew for some boat driving practice where they were practicing coming alongside the steps of the pier to drop off and pick up people. Anna and I even got a short go at driving the boat towards Pan Am after the exercise. Being out on the boat was so much fun, it was really weird heading out to sea away from the island – the furthest we’ve been off island since arriv

On the 2nd February we held our first official Turtle Tour, Abi was acting as spotter and was out on the beach looking for turtles at suitable stages (digging and laying) for us to take visitors to see the laying process. I was leading the tour and Anna was assisting me with the group of people and then also in between us and helping Abi once we were all at the beach.  For our first tour we were fully booked; 12 people, although a couple didn’t turn up. The tours start at the conservation office at 21:00 where we give short briefing, hand out red torches, and play a short video on sea turtles on Ascension before heading down to long beach to see the turtles.  Here is an example of the information we give about the turtles on Ascension/some of my notes:  General Turtle Info:  The seven species of sea turtle are descendants of small species that wandered out of freshwater marshes and entered the sea. Turtles moved into and out of the oceans several times beginning in the Jura

Tuesday 31st January marked my 24th Birthday 😊 (Definitely the warmest Birthday I’ve had yet!) I spent the morning from 7:30am at work carrying out our usual turtle work – counting nests and tracks at long beach/raking and stranding checks. Abi went and did stranding checks whilst Anna counted tracks and I counted nests. We also had Mel with us to assist with raking so I showed her how to bash/rake the nests. Whilst we were raking we saw a turtle who was still making her way back down to sea after nesting which marked my first birthday turtle.  We then went back to the office and entered in our data before heading back to the Bungalow to pack our lunch. Abi, Anna and I had all taken the afternoon off so we could enjoy my birthday afternoon, we headed to the AIG beach hut which is about a 10-15 minute walk from our Bungalow and ate our lunch overlooking the beautiful blue sea.  We then made our way down onto the beach and to the rockpools below Scouts beach hu

Turtle night work – deploying temperature data loggers Night work is my favourite part of working with sea turtles. 23rd January marked our first evening of turtle night work of the season. Here on Ascension we are deploying five temperature loggers at each of the three mainly monitored nesting beaches each month, which usually takes around one week each month to complete, and will continue through until around June.  Monday 23rd January– Toby showed Anna, Abi and I how to launch the Tiny Talks (the data loggers) and what equipment we needed to bring with us. This included two buckets each containing a measuring tape, marker pen, data sheet, tinytalk dataloggers, pencil, radio and GPS shared between us. I then spent the afternoon creating spreadsheets to collate all our night work data and keep track of ID numbers of temperature loggers being deployed. Monday’s night work took place on Long beach.  We met Toby at the conservation office at 8:30pm as we had a tour with gov