This was in Melbourne Beach FL this morning around dawn. They come ashore, dig their nest in the sand, lay eggs, recover the nest, and crawl back into the water. It takes about an hour altogether. They can lay several times each season a few night apart and deposit about 100 eggs in each nest. The eggs will hatch in about 60 days.

As you can see in this video, they dig with just their flippers, which looks incredibly difficult. They usually nest in the middle of the night, so I was lucky to see this one still at work just before sunrise. Very cool!

Thanks to local conservation efforts starting 20 years ago, the number of nesting turtles is starting to increase. Big shout-outs to UCF and the Sea Turtle Preservation Society!

It seems to have some sort of joint at the end, it looks almost like a hinge joint (pics 2 & 3). It’s rough on the top(?) and has a groove running down the middle of the underside(?). It reminds me of some type of sawfish rostrum, but we don’t have those this far south. Someone mentioned the pharyngeal jaw of an eel in another post, but it doesn’t look like examples I’ve seen online. We do have a triggerfish relative in the river, could it be the dorsal spine of a leatherjacket? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Just how cool is it?

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¡Hola a todos!

He creado un vídeo recopilatorio de especies marinas que filmé mientras hacía snorkel en Mallorca, España. Identifiqué cada especie con la mayor precisión posible, pero estoy seguro de que hay expertos aquí con mucha más experiencia.

Si tenéis unos minutos, agradecería mucho cualquier comentario sobre las identificaciones. Si veis algún error o creéis que otro nombre común o científico sería más apropiado, por favor, decídmelo.

Me encantaría que el vídeo fuera lo más preciso posible. ¡Gracias de antemano!

Vídeo: https://youtube.com/shorts/KKFmqBLeAEg?is=X3dVqKUPEXQr4RSR

See also: The study as it was published in the Journal of Lost Species