In case you are wondering how Easter Day is on Sanibel.....
It was sunny today and the temp got up to 87 but at 4:30 it's 76. We had a very light rain for about 15 minutes this evening. Otherwise a perfect day!
At Pointe Santo de Sanibel on West Gulf Drive......
I was sad when I saw that the sand hole situation is already beginning, and so is sea turtle nesting season. We don't begin our weekly turtle walks until first of May, but there has already been a Kemp's ridley turtle nest , which is unusual here on island.
Part of my day was spent playing peek-a-boo with Puffin. :)
Today was our 8th turtle patrol of the season. There are still just 2 nests in our zone and there was no new turtle activity to report. (There were two bags of trash, however.) It was a little warm with a slight breeze. The only thing that saved us from a meltdown was that the sun didn't show for the entire walk. The low for the day was 82 degrees and the high ended up at 90. The Gulf temp is also 90.
A mermaid and a sea turtle.
YES, Pooky had been there.
Along the way, I found a little drill and a juvenile horse conch.
By the time our walk was over, the sun was trying very hard to peak out from behind the clouds.
This video was taken in front of Sanibel Moorings. Best viewed in HD on YouTube by clicking the screen below.
I am pretty sure I saw is a Sea Cucumber on the beach this morning. It's the first time I've seen one, but someone had described them to me before. I looked it up and learned several new things about them.
They are related to the starfish and the sea urchin and there are hundreds of different species found throughout the world. Sea cucumbers are usually a dull, dark colour and often warty. They have leathery skin, embedded with bony particles and have several rows of tiny tubular feet along the length of their body. The tube feet are hollow, muscular projections that are used to move themselves along. The species that don't have the little tube feet, move by muscular movements of their body. Some sea cucumbers hide in grassy beds and some dig into the mud and sand. They have a mouth at one end of their body that has tentacles to gather food. The other end is the anal opening that is used for both respiration and discharging wastes. It feeds on tiny marine animals and organic matter.
When a sea cucumber is threatened, it can shoot sticky threads from its waste hole. Enemies, such as fish and crabs, get caught in the threads. They can continually grow new sets of these threads. Some sea cucumbers can mutilate their own bodies as a defense mechanism or out of fear. They violently contract their muscles and spew some of their internal organs out of their anus. (That is what I think the stuff you see on the sand near the end of the sea cucumber, probably is.) Some scientists think they also do this to protect themselves from building up too much waste in their bodies. They they can grow new innards in about six weeks.
Another tidbit of information I found was that scientists have determined that the sea cucumber uses the same ordinary processes to repair its brain that it does to heal small injuries. They feel that the Sea cucumbers will probably provide them with the key to deciphering how to regenerate our tissues, or at least find out what is needed to do this.
The one I saw this morning was still alive, so we put it back out in the water.
I've looked at the tall bushes or trees, along the side of the Buttonwood Lane beach access for a couple of years and wondered what they are. Sometimes the flowers are yellow, sometimes they are red and sometimes I see both colors. Today I searched online until I finally found it.
They are Hibiscus tiliaceus. Some of the more common names are Mahoe, Sea Hibiscus, Cotton Tree, and Majagua. It is an evergreen shrub or spreading tree that grows to around 25 ft high and nearly as wide. It is salt tolerant and produces flowers almost all year long. The dark green leaves are large 4 to 8 inches long, leathery looking, and heart shaped. The flowers look like Hibiscus flowers, funnel shaped with five petals. The flowers start out yellow in the daytime and turn red by evening. That explanation sure put my curiosity to rest. The different colored blooms had me confused.
I thought I might like to have one of these and keep it trimmed to a smaller bush. But then I saw the Warning: Mahoe is listed as a Category II pest plant by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council, which means that it has the potential to be invasive and to disrupt native plant communities by displacing native species. (Category I species are KNOWN to be invasive.) Mahoe is not on Florida's list of prohibited plants, however, and is sometimes sold by commercial nurseries. It is not recommend for use in Florida landscapes.
Today is another very warm one, with almost no air moving. There was only a very slight breeze on the beach, early this morning and it was very humid as the temperature was climbing.
It was already light out as we walked out onto the beach. I could see a lot of people already out, in both directions.
There was some Manatee Grass at a high tide line, but you can easily avoid it. Where it was in a deeper pile, it did have a little odor, but not enough to be a bother. The noseeums were, "The Bother", today. I had bug spay on and still had to keep moving or they would find me. Grrrr! How can such a tiny little black speck cause so much misery?
The water was very calm today and clear. There were small shells that were scattered on the beach, near the water's edge and you could see some shells through the water.
We hurried on down the beach, to see the new nest that was found in our zone a few days ago. The tracks left as it made it's trip from and back to the water were still plain to see. :-) The nest is toward the back side of a Snowy Plover nesting area.
Best viewed in HD on YouTube by clicking the screen below.
The low tide had left some nice long tidal pools.
The sunrise was making the sky beautiful with bright shades of blues and pinks.
There were a lot of holes on the beach this morning, from 1 to 2 feet deep.
There was something on the beach that I hadn't seen before. Shelling and pulling a cart along, with a plastic box on it. I suppose that would be handy if you found lots of shells. You could then pull it back to your abode and simply spray the shells with water to get the sand off, without needing to take them out. Then you could dump them into a bucket for soaking or just let them dry. There would have to be LOTS of shells to make it worthwhile for me to drag it around. No more than I pick up, these days I can simply stick them in my pocket.
There was a fishing boat floating, just off shore. A man waded out and climbed onboard, while his wife waved goodbye from the beach and wished him good luck.
Sanibel Stoopers were out in force.
The photo below was taken between jumps being made by Mullet. I tried several times, as there were 2 or 3 out of water at the same time, but just couldn't catch them at the right time. We had been seeing schools of them and I watched as they kept jumping a couple of feet high out of the water. It looked as though they were traveling in a straight line, parallel to the shore. I love watching and always wonder why they jump. I have seen dolphin chase them before, making them jump, but that isn't always the case.
Mullet live in the shallow Gulf waters, bays and creeks. I've heard stories of mullet leaping back and forth over fishing lines and even into boats. They eat plants, near the bottom in shallow water and they could be jumping to clear mud from their gills. They don't eat other fish, but larger fish try to eat them. So, they may be jumping to escape predators. Sometimes it just looks like they are having fun.
A local fisherman told me that there are two mullet species in Florida and both will hit flies. Adults grow form 1-2 feet long and can weight up to about 10 pounds. The black kind is a little larger than the silver Mullet. The blacks are for eating and the silvers are bait. Although most anglers don't bother with them, both are a real hoot and a challenge to catch on flies.
We saw the Plover family with the 3 chicks. Mom and Dad were still keeping a very watchful eye on them. The other Plover family that had the 2 chicks seemed to have lost both of them.
The temperature today has reached 91, but as of 3:00 this afternoon, it has dropped a couple of degrees. Hopefully the evening will be much more pleasant.
The first thing I noticed was the moon, as I walked out onto the beach this morning at 6:15, to go on our 6th turtle walk of this season. There was a huge cloud, straight in front of me.
This was the view to my left and toward the Sanibel Lighthouse, that always gives me a welcoming blink, when I arrive.
Right away, I was surprised at the size of the piles of manatee grass.
As the sun was coming up, the clouds gradually began changing color. That's one of my favorite parts of the sunrise.
There was a deep row of manatee grass at one of the high tide lines. It was as much as 1 to 2 feet deep in places.
The deep manatee grass was not pleasant to walk in and someone had made a path through this pile of it.
Those scattered clumps along the high-tide line actually have a name - beach wrack - and are an important part of the beach ecosystem. Today there was a lot of beach wrack. There were some curiosities that came in along with the sea grasses.
These things had come in with the newer clumps of sea grasses and were still alive.
I thought this was a piece of some kind of sea grass at first, then I saw it move. Another one of these was swimming in a tidal pool. I saw around 30 or 40 of these. I've been searching, but haven't found a name for this yet.
The two treasures found today. A teeny tiny Turkey Wing and a pretty hibiscus bloom laying on the beach. I'm just not going to discuss the bad things like a nasty pamper floating in a tidal pool and the two full bags of trash that we carried away. These two things made up for that. :-)
Most of the walk was very pleasant today. At first it was cool enough, but about 10 minutes before leaving the beach, it had begun to warm up quickly. We had some rain during the night, so the noseeums were bad at first; but after using the bug spray, they stayed away.
There were no new turtle tracks today. The only tracks were raccoon tracks over the top of the one sea turtle nest in our zone. Thank goodness, it had done no digging into the nest. If all goes well, our nest should hatch around July 10. We got to see the little Plovers again this morning, and I always love watching them and counting to see if they are all still there. I'm not sure, but I think one chick was missing in the second family. Maybe it had just wandered further away from the parents.
Best viewed in HD on YouTube by clicking on the screen below.
This video of the Plover chicks is so cute! I think they will soon be a little too big to squeeze under their Mommy's wings.
Late afternoon we went out to Blind Pass, where we met some friends by the outflow pipe. This is where all the material from the dredging operation ends. We've been hearing reports of some very nice shells being found there. I thought the Grand Daughters would enjoy seeing this. You can see how much sand this operation has been accumulating to re-nourish the beach.
When we first arrived, the outflow pipe was shut down for about an hour. When it restarted it was flowing a little slow, but soon it picked up and the shells started rolling past us. But, seriously we didn't find more than a few of nice quality shells. If you were desperate to get shells, you could have picked up quite a few that had chips out of them, broken edges, etc. We were there about an hour while the water was flowing and I brought home only a few. Now, that doesn't mean that a great shell didn't go floating by someone else. :-)
After we were there for about a half hour, a guy on a Bobcat came and raised the pipe. Although we ended up with only a few treasures today, it was a fun time with the girls.
I am a retired, grandmother who is living a dream in this tropical paradise, called Sanibel Island.
My blog was created to share some of the beauty I see around me each day. This tranquil place is a haven for wildlife and the natural beaches are spectacular. I will post pictures now and then, that I snap quickly with my cellphone.
Since I am on 'Island Time' and consider myself to be a 'Slacker', my posts may not be on a regular basis. But,I hope you enjoy my adventures and come back to visit often.
