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Doug Perrine, Spring 2012

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Grand Prize Winner: Turtle Time by Kristopher Landers.
Guy Harvey Outpost Photo Contest, Summer 2014
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Doug Perrine, Spring 2012

June 25, 2015 Published by hailstudio
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Australian fallback sea turtles are reclusive and elusive critters and finding a photo of them is virtually impossible. However, photojournalist extraordinaire, Doug Perrine, who is one of the few humans to ever photograph adult fallbacks in the wild, is publishing them here for the first time ever.

A female flatback covers  her nest after laying her eggs; most sea turtle nesting occurs at night, but at some beaches it is quite common for fallbacks to nest during daylight.A female rests on the sand just off a nesting beach while waiting for the right conditions to come ashore and lay her eggs; she has likely flittered the coating of sand onto her shell and head in an effort to camouflage herself from the large sharks and crocodiles that prowl the nesting beaches.The female flatback has a congenital deformity of the snout and nostril region; such defects are common in hatchlings, but the turtles rarely survive to adulthood. An adult female fallback swims across a shallow coral reef that fringes the nesting beach and separates it from deeper, soft-bottom areas that the turtles use for feeding.Native islanders butcher a green turtle on  nesting beach used by both greens and flatbacks; flatbacks are also sometimes taken for food, but less commonly, as the flavor is considered less desirable; taking of flatback eggs for consumption is much more common; harvest of both eggs and adults by Aboriginals is allowed under Australian law.At night, ghost crabs and saltwater crocodiles stalk the nesting beaches, preying on hatchlings; this crab was in the act of seizing a baby turtle when it was startled by an incoming wave and jumped up, releasing the turtle which escaped.As with other sea turtles, most flatback hatchlings emerge at night, but at some nesting beaches, it is not unusual to see baby flatbacks scrambling for the water in late afternoon; survival is lower for daylight nest emergences due to predation by birds, lizards, fish and other animals.Baby flatbacks hatch out of their eggs and dig upwards to the surface to emerge onto the beach.A flatback drops her eggs into the egg cavity carefully excavated within the body pit of her nest; after incubating under the beach sand for a little under two months.A tiger shark scavenges a green turtle in an area frequented by both green and flatback turtles; massive bite scars on the shell of fallbacks show that they, too, are victims of tiger shark predation.Flatback hatchlings, unlike the hatchlings of other sea turtle species, remain in coastal waters, where the seawater is typically green and turbid.Flatback hatchlings are larger than those of other sea turtles when they enter the water; this is likely an adaptation for living in coastal waters with high densities of hungry fish.Biologist Kendra Coufal measures the carapace of a flatback turtle at the nesting beach on Curtis Island.Volunteers count and measure the eggs from a flatback nest; flatback eggs are larger than those of any other sea turtle in proportion to the adult body size, but the average number of eggs produce larger hatchlings—an adaptation for spending the early life stage in predator-rich environments.
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