Reflections From the Field: Julia Serra, Sea Turtle Technician
Reflections From the Field: Julia Serra, Sea Turtle Technician
While we eagerly await the return of sea turtle moms on BHI and the start of another great nesting season, I’ve been reflecting on my last summer with the Sea Turtle Protection Team as an intern. I’m looking forward to many more moments spent with these amazing creatures on the beach and excited to see what this summer has in store!
One of my favorite parts about this job is that no two nights look exactly the same, and you never know what surprises are going to pop up each evening. Last year we saw alligators hanging out in the tide line, bioluminescent waves crashing on the beach, and even came upon a stranded shark that was having trouble getting back to the water. Some mornings we were lucky enough to watch dolphins leap through the waves during our last patrol and on many cloudless nights we could see the milky way and a sky full of stars.
Julia with a nesting sea turtle mother
Even the less peaceful moments can be exciting when working with a team of people who are passionate, positive, and motivated about the work we are doing. Last year our team had to race off the beach to avoid incoming lightning storms, work up turtles while surrounded by clouds of bugs, and search for tracks in the pouring rain. All these moments add to the adventure of the job and make the successful hatchings all the more rewarding.
Julia with Summer 2025 STPT
A moment that stayed with me from last summer occurred while we were doing a routine nest excavation on East Beach. We had just started wrapping up and were packing up our things when there was a sudden commotion about 100 feet down the beach. A small crowd of people started jumping up and down and were frantically waving us over. To our surprise, a nearby nest had unexpectedly started hatching in the daytime! Sea turtle hatchlings typically leave their nest at nightfall to reduce the threat of predation and heat exposure, so to see these hatchlings leave their nest in daylight was extra special. And for these hatchlings to do so when we were just down the beach felt like perfect timing. We, alongside a lucky group of nearby beachgoers, got to watch these babies make it to the water in perfect daylight. This made it easy to see them crawl up and out of their nest chamber and down the beach where they safely headed to the waves!
Summer 2025 STPT
Another special part of this job is getting to share moments like these with other people. Through our Ride Along and Turtle Walk programs, I’ve seen many people get the chance to witness their first nesting mom, nest hatching, or excavation. Moments like these make our nights extra special, especially hearing people say they traveled from across the country to get a chance to witness these events. Or, the opposite, that they’ve been coming to the island for years and had never seen a sea turtle before.
Julia presenting her Summer 2025 Intern Project
As an intern last summer, I also got the opportunity to conduct a research project looking at the impact and accuracy of the nest relocations we perform on the beach. It felt very rewarding to be able to design my own research methods, collect the data, and create a presentation of my findings all based on the work we were completing every night. This year I’m excited to expand upon my project and what I learned last summer. Looking into our relocation decisions and seeing the impact of high tide events on our beaches and nests opened up a new but related avenue of interest for me. Many of our nests were washed over, or inundated, at the end of August, right as my internship was wrapping up. Sea turtle eggs rely on gas exchange to breathe and too much exposure to water during incubation can cause the embryo to drown. Despite this, over the next couple weeks, these inundated nests proceeded to have varying levels of hatch and emergence success. This opened up an interest for me in studying the impact of wash over duration on our hatch success. I’d like to find out how long our nests can endure inundation before it significantly impacts nest success and what these impacts are. This summer, using water level data loggers, I’ll be able to look into the relationship between inundation and nest success on our beaches. I’m really excited to see what we find and hopefully these findings can have a positive impact on our beaches’ success in the future.
This job has allowed me to see countless sunsets and sunrises and help contribute to the understanding and protection of this really special species. I’m very eager to see what new moments await us this summer and to meet this year’s cohort of moms!
Julia Serra, Sea Turtle Technician
