A Journey to Beat All

Turtle watchers gather around the first of 44 loggerhead turtle nests to produce babies at Cape Hatteras Light.

One little soldier stuck her head up through the sand. The struggle to extricate herself from her sandy den seemed to exhaust her and she perched, head out, looking around for 10 minutes.

Tiny turtle pokes her head through the sand.

There are another 120 to 150 brothers and sisters in the pit. This one little turtle seemed to be the scout. She rested long enough and then made a break for the Atlantic. No muss, no fuss. She headed straight for the pounding sea. In another 10 minutes, another loggerhead popped up and followed his or her sister.

Four had launched themselves the previous night without being seen by any of the rangers and volunteers. All in the dark of night had made their break for the unfathomable ocean, leaving only the imprint of their flippers on the damp sand.

This almost anti-climactic event is but the earliest, faltering steps of a journey that is both astonishing and magical.

The mother loggerhead turtle had clawed her way up the Cape Hatteras beach on May 28 this year. She scooped a hole in the sand and silently deposited her clutch of eggs. Then, just as silently, she heaved her 200 pounds of body weight back down the sand and into the ocean.

She had come home. Between 30 and 33 years ago, she had been a newborn turtle, just like her newest offspring. She had begun a journey on a similar night back in the 1980s. Just as now with the newborns, there was no mother or father to guide and protect her. She was on her own in a predatory world.

Her first enemy on the beach were hundreds of ghost crabs, their eyes on stalks. They seem to have a singular goal: Eat the heads of the newborn loggerheads. To prepare for this event, the crabs build their nests around the loggerhead nest. They run back and forth to the ocean to fill their gills with seawater for they need the saltwater to survive. They’re fast and stealthy. 

When mom made it to the sea back then, her task was simple: get there before the break of dawn, for that is when the birds awaken and begin their morning patrols, seeking fresh crabs and choice morsels of turtle meat.  She had to get into the ocean and swim for her life.

In the ocean, however, lurk even more predators. So, with enemies all around, this little turtle must figure out, on her own, how she will feed herself to produce the energy necessary to make her way through the ocean.

If she is extraordinarily lucky, of course, she will come upon a piece of sargassum weed, a universe of food living within the weed: sea lice, tiny little crabs, and assorted other bugs. The little turtle can eat all of it, including the weed itself. Something in its DNA apparently guides it to make its way south along the Atlantic coast, living off the bounty of the ocean while making its way toward the Sargasso Sea, that piece of Atlantic above the equator where a million square miles of ocean feeds the ocean and the creatures living in the ocean.

The little turtle will linger there for many years, maturing, learning on her own how to survive and prosper.

When she becomes a teenager, but while only halfway to sexual maturity, she begins a journey that is easily the equal of the Pacific Sockeye Salmon. She rides the Gulf Stream north along the Eastern seaboard. She floats along, coming up to the Gulf of Maine, then heads out past Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

She’s in no great rush. But her journey is epic. She crosses the Atlantic, passing Iceland and then allows the Gulf Stream to take her along the west coast of Scotland. Down she comes, along the coast of England and Wales. She crosses the English Channel and makes it to France and then Spain and Portugal. But her journey is only halfway done by this time. Now she is in her 20s.

When she arrives on the west coast of Africa, she allows the equatorial currents to carry her past the Canary Islands and across the Atlantic. Eventually she come full circle and arrives in the Sargasso Sea. But she’s far from done. She reaches age 30-33. She is sexually mature at last. Now, her primary task is to find a male turtle. This is not a long-lasting relationship. She simply needs to mate.

After the male turtle fertilizes her eggs – and this happens multiples times with multiple males, incidentally, so she carries the eggs with a variety of DNA – she knows in her heart that she must now return to her natal beach. And that’s what brought her on May 28, 2014, to the beach where she was born. Up she came out of the surf, heavy with eggs. After depositing 120-150 eggs just below the lighthouse, she dragged her cumbersome body back down the beach and swam on up the beach another couple of miles before repeating her performance farther up the beach. Her second batch of eggs simply expands the probability of success for her brood. She might even manage a third trip up on the beach before, depleted, she swims off to seek food for the first time since the impregnation began.

And that is what brought us to the beach two nights in a row. When we arrived tonight, we could see an indentation in the sand, a sure sign that the babies had eaten their way out of their shells and were preparing to climb out of the nest and visit their brave new world.

A gaggle of visitors and other rangers gathered with us on the beach. There was great excitement when the first two turtles made the break for freedom. They were guided to the ocean by well-intentioned rangers, shining red flashlights on the sand. The turtles follow the light. The piercing white light of the Cape Hatteras Light can confuse the turtles. So the rangers try to give a helping hand.

Jo and I left them to it after there was an hour lull with no further turtles showing up. We’ll add a note on our Facebook page after we learn the outcome in the morning

Why I Love My Job!

A stunted deer peeks through the grass at Cape Hatteras. They are stunted because they have so much salt in their diet.

One week on the job as a National Park Service Volunteer and I have these thoughts about what I like about my new job:

I’m standing on the balcony at the top of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. There’s a brisk wind blowing (22 knots out of the northwest) and I spy an osprey coasting along, right beside me at eye level. She is carrying a foot-long fish in her claws. We came eye-to-eye for an eternal moment of togetherness.

I’m still at the top of the lighthouse and a young boy approaches. “How,” he asks, “does a person on a boat make use of this lighthouse?” I analyze his age and his eagerness for information and I tell him about how you take a bearing with your compass from your boat to the lighthouse. That gives you a line of position. You are somewhere on that line, I tell him. But you need another line of position to intersect that line. So you look around. You spy Diamond Shoals light structure off to your south. You take another bearing and where that bearing intersects the first line of position determines your exact position in the ocean. He is amazed and I can see it in his eyes he has tucked away this little piece of knowledge.  

Ranger Abby, a bright and vivacious young woman, had been the floater in the lighthouse and she had just come to the top to get a breath of fresh air. She heard this exchange and she expressed amazement that I knew this information. We chatted about my 52 years of sailing experience. Then, just as I was about to transmit the wind data from my anemometer (we record that every half hour) to the museum below, the young boy returned to my side. He had thought about my explanation and he was not done. “I understand how it works in the daytime. But what happens if you are on the ocean and it is dark?” he asks me. Those are the precious jewels that teachers treasure. I told him about the very specific light sequence that shine from the Hatteras Light – a flash every 7.5 seconds. I explained that the Coast Guard has shut down the light on Diamond Shoals so he would have to look for another light source at night. I told him about Bodie Island Light, up the coast. It has a different light sequence that he would be able to identify and then he would take a compass bearing on that. Off he went, to tell his parents.

It simply doesn’t get any better than that.

Our other duties at the top of the lighthouse include explaining how, in 1999, the 198.5-foot-high-brick lighthouse, weighing 5,000 tons, was picked up and moved away from the advancing Atlantic waves. You show where the light used to be and how it was moved 2,900 feet to its current location. People also want to have you shoot their pictures at the top.

 And, not the least important, you keep your eyes open for people who have made it to the top and who are in terror. You can usually identify them because they are pressing their backs to the black metal wall of the lighthouse. Their shoulders take on a concave look and they might be standing with their eyes closed. It becomes your job to help them relax a little.

A young woman, tall and thin, was in this position when I walked around the parapet. Her friends were cajoling her and urging her to not be afraid. But, I thought it best to talk to her while I leaned against the wrought iron railing on the outside of the lighthouse. I knew this is a mind-over-matter experience. Her fear, she told me, is that the lighthouse would fall over. I told her the lighthouse is built so it does not sway. I explained how it is double-walled at the base and stays that way for the first 130 feet up from the ground. Telling her the lighthouse was moved and several people were at the top where she stood while the lighthouse was being moved seemed to calm her. I saw her later in the day, while I was at the Visitor Center Information Desk, and she waved to me. She no longer was concave and she seemed to be having a great time.

It’s not all peaches and cream, of course. I came around the balcony at the top of the lighthouse and came upon a 12 year old boy whom I caught in the act of spitting off the balcony. “What makes you think that is a good idea?” I asked him. “How would you like to be standing on the grass below while I spit off the top so I can hit you in the face?” He hung his head sheepishly and I decided against finding his parents and telling them to get him off the top.

You also get argumentative types who challenge the National Park Service claim that this is the tallest lighthouse in North America. “There’s one in Put In Bay on Lake Erie that’s more than 300 feet high,” one old guy told me. I said I’d look it up – and did. Turns out the 100-foot-high lighthouse sits atop a 200-foot cliff overlooking Lake Erie. Not the same thing, fella!

Jo and I both find the work interesting. But we also find the days to be very long for us. We are used to working 4.5-5 hours a day. These are long, long days when we start at 8:30 a.m. and finish at 5:30 p.m.

Last night, our lead ranger asked if we would like to volunteer for some night climbs of the lighthouse. We decided we would opt for a night climb on the full moon of Aug. 10. But that would add an additional two hours to our work day so we might ask to take off for an afternoon nap that day!

Welcome to Our World

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, photographed from the sand dunes to the east of the light minutes before sunset.

Wow! We are hard at work here on Cape Hatteras – harder than we are used to. Lots of responsibilities for the safety of the visitors to the lighthouse.

Yesterday and today were spent in intensive training. It seemed endless and comprehensive. We were taken to the top of the light – 257 steps inside a brick tube that’s the tallest lighthouse in North America. There are eight landings along the journey – a good place to stop and regain your breath. It’s hot and humid inside the tower. In fact, the heat index is watched carefully by the staff and radio reports are made every half hour regarding relative humidity and the temperature inside the structure. This results in a heat index. If that heat index hits 103 degrees, the lighthouse is closed for safety reasons.

If the wind at the top of the lighthouse gusts above 40 miles an hour, the balcony is closed. You can still climb the lighthouse and you can look out to the south at the top. But you are not permitted to stroll around the balcony. The balcony was closed this afternoon when wind gusts were recorded at 43 miles an hour.

I’m working the base of the lighthouse for an hour and a half after lunch tomorrow. The person at the base has the responsibility for warning of safety procedures for those who are about to climb. It is mostly a series of No this and No that. No carrying children. No bare feet. No chewing gum. No tripods. No backpacks. No pets. No tobacco products. When you get to the top: No spitting. No throwing stuff off. No. No. No.

I, of course, wanted to know if people jump off the top. The answer is Yes! Doesn’t happen often and you are told when the public asks the question, you simply say, “Not since I’ve been here!” Our Ranger/instructor Lori told me, however that a newly married man in 2003 climbed to the top the day after his marriage and threw himself to his death. Not a good start to a marriage.

Jo will be stationed at the top of the tower the same time I’m at the base.  Her job will be to answer question of the climbers. She’ll also take their picture (if they ask); explain how the lighthouse was moved 2,900 feet in 23 days in July, 1999. This astonishing engineering feat was accomplished by excavating under the lighthouse, inserting I-beams, jacking up the beams and the lighthouse and then pushing the entire structure, very slowly, on a track until the lighthouse was moved away from the encroaching ocean to a safer location. The lighthouse keepers’ two cottages also were relocated in the same relationship to the original location.

I’ll start out my day in the museum, where two lighthouse keepers and their families used to live. This is a wooden two-story construction that’s filled with historic material and pictures that range from a captain’s hat from one of the dozens of U-boats that ranged off the East coast at the beginning of World War II.  There are more than 500 sunken ships off the coast on the Outer Banks of North Carolina – truly a graveyard of the Atlantic.

After my 90 minutes at the base of the lighthouse, I’ll go to the Visitor’s Center to answer questions from arriving visitors. It’s a long day and doesn’t feel like retirement to me. We’re here for six weeks and we’ll decide at the end of that time if we are up to such a heavy-duty volunteer commitment.

Now, this was a hurricane

We have been doing our homework, in preparation for our heading for the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

One of the fascinating things I read was a report on the 1899 hurricane that came through the Outer Banks. Back then, there was a weather monitor living with his family on the Outer Banks. No road connected the banks to the mainland. Only sailing vessels could make passage. But this fellow, named  S.L. Dosher, could write a report. I decided to pick it up and drop it into this blog in its entirety so you can read what a hurricane was really like before radio and television.

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Weather Bureau

Office of the Observer

Subject: Hurricane

Station: Hatteras, North Carolina

Date: August 21st, 1899

Chief of the Weather Bureau,

Washington, D.C.

Sir:

I have the honor to make the following report of the severe hurricane which swept over this

section on the 16th, 17th and 18th instantly.

The wind began blowing a gale from the east on the morning of the 16th, varying in velocity from

35 to 50 miles an hour….During the early morning of the 17th the wind increased to a hurricane

and at about 4 a.m. it was blowing at the rate of 70 miles, at 10 a.m. it had increased to 84 miles

and at 1 p.m. it was blowing a velocity of 93 miles with occasional extreme velocities of 120

miles to 140 per hour. The record of wind from about 1 p.m. was lost, but it is estimated that the

wind blew even with greater force from about 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and it is believed that between

these hours the wind reached a regular velocity of at least 100 miles per hour…

.

At about 7:30 p.m. on the 17th there was a very decided lull in the force of the wind and at 8 p.m.

it had fallen out until only a gentle breeze was blowing. This lull did not last more than half hour,

however, before the wind veered to east and then to south-east and began blowing at a velocity

estimated from 60 to 70 miles per hour which continued until well into the morning of the 18th.

During the morning of the 18th the wind veered to the south and continued to blow a gale, with

heavy rain squalls, all day, decreasing somewhat in the late evening and going into southwest.

This day may be said to be the end of the hurricane, although the weather continued squally on

the 19th , but without any winds of very high velocity.

This hurricane was, without any question, the most severe of any storm that has ever passed over

this section within the memory of any person now living, and there are people here who can

remember back for a period of over 75 years. I have made careful inquiry among the old

inhabitants here, and they all agree, with one accord, that no storm like this has ever visited the

island….

The scene here on the 17th was wild and terrifying in the extreme. By 8 a.m. on that date the

entire island was covered with water blown in from the sound, and by 11 a.m. all the land was

covered to a depth of from 3 to ten feet. The tide swept over the island at a fearful rate carrying

everything movable before it. There were not more than four houses on the island in which the

tide did not rise to a depth of from one to four feet, and at least half of the people had to abandon

their homes and property to the mercy of the wind and tide and seek the safety of their own lives

with those who were fortunate enough to live on higher land.

Language is inadequate to express the conditions which prevailed all day on the 17th. The

howling wind, the rushing and roaring tide and the awful sea which swept over the beach and

thundered like a thousand pieces of artillery made a picture which was at once appalling and

terrible and the like of which Dante’s Inferno could scarcely equal.

The frightened people were grouped sometimes 40 or 50 in one house, and at times one house

would have to be abandoned and they would all have to wade almost beyond their depth in order

to reach another. All day this gale, tide and sea continued with a fury and persistent energy that

knew no abatement, and the strain on the minds of every one was something so frightful and

dejecting that it cannot be expressed.

In many houses families were huddled together in the upper portion of the building with the

water several feet deep in the lower portion, not knowing what minute the house would either be

blown down or swept away by the tide….

Cattle, sheep, hogs and chickens were drowned by hundreds before the very eyes of the owners,

who were powerless to render any assistance on account of the rushing tide. The fright of these

poor animals was terrible to see, and their cries of terror when being surrounded by the water

were pitiful in the extreme.

The damage done to this place by the hurricane is, at this time difficult to estimate,…but is

believed that the total loss to Hatteras alone will amount to from $15,000 to $20,000. The fishing

business here is the principal industry from which is derived the revenue upon which the great

majority live, and it may be said that this industry has for the present time been swept entirely

out of existence….

A great majority of the houses on the island were badly damaged, and 5 or 6 are so badly

wrecked as to be unfit for habitation and that many families are without homes, living wherever

they can best find a home. The Southern Methodist church building was completely

wrecked…All of the bridges and footways over the creeks and small streams were swept

away…. The roadways are piled from three to ten feet high with wreckage….

The telegraph and telephone lines are both down…. It is reported that several vessels are

stranded north of [Big Kinnakeet Life Saving Station]….

A large steamship foundered about one mile off Hatteras beach…and it is thought all on board

were drowned….

The Diamond Shoals Light Ship which was stationed off Hatteras, broke loose from her mooring

on the morning of the 17th and was carried southward by the gale….This vessel will probably

prove a total loss….

The damage to the instruments and property of the Bureau here was considerable….The office

building was flooded with water to the depth of about 18 inches, and the rain beat in at the roof

and windows until the entire building was a mass of water….

I live about a mile from the office building and when I went home at 8 a.m. I had to wade in

water which was about waist deep. I waited until about 10:30 a.m., thinking the storm would lull,

but it did not do so, and at that time I started for the office…. I got about one-third of the

distance and found the water about breast height, when I had to stop in a neighbor’s house and

rest, the strain of pushing through the water and storm having nearly exhausted my strength. I

rested there until about noon when I started again and after going a short distance further I found

the water up to my shoulders…. I had to give it up again and take refuge in another neighbor’s

house where I had to remain until about 8 p.m. when the tide fell so that I could reach the

office….

I started to the office against the advice of those who were better acquainted with the condition

of the roads than I, and continued on my way until I saw that the attempt was rash and fool-hardy

and that I was certain to reach low places where I would be swept off my feet and drowned….

[T]here has never been any such tide as the one here mentioned.

….The rainfall…was as heavy as I have ever seen. It fell in [a] perfect torrent and at times was

so thick and in such blinding sheets that it was impossible to see across a roadway 20 feet wide.

…[E]verything went before the fury of the gale. No lives were lost at Hatteras, although many

narrow escapes occurred, several families being washed out of their homes in the tide and storm.

At Ocracoke and Portsmouth, 16 and 20 miles south of this station the storm is reported about

the same as at Hatteras, with a corresponding damage to property. Reliable details from these

places however, being lacking. A pleasure boat at Ocracoke with a party of men from

Washington, N.C., was lost and a portion of the party were drowned.

There has been no communication with this place by wire or mail since the storm, and it is not

known when there will be. It is therefore requested that so much of this report as may be of

interest to the public be given to the Associated Press for publication in the newspaper.

Very respectfully,

S.L. Dosher

Observer, Weather Bureau