The Amazing Hawaiian SeaTurtleCam

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"Honu" (HO noo) is the Hawaiian word for the green sea turtle. George Balazs has studied Hawaiian sea turtles for 30 years. George is Leader of Marine Turtle Research and works with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in Honolulu, Hawaii. Read this story to learn how George and his NMFS research team are combining the Internet and the latest video technology to bring the lives of these turtles into your home and school.

Turtle Lagoon

"Turtle Lagoon" is located on the Big Island of Hawaii. Turtle Lagoon is a perfect place to watch turtles. Why? Because it is one of the few places in the world where sea turtles crawl up on land to bask.

"Turtle Lagoon" is located on the Big Island of Hawaii. Photo by George H. Balazs (64K JPEG)

"Bask" is just a way of saying sea turtles like to get dry and lie in the sun and catch rays! Basking is good for a scientist like George Balazs because it makes research on the turtles much easier. It is almost as though the honu volunteer to be studied!

SeaTurtleCam helps George learn even more.

Turtle Lagoon is where George decided to put SeaTurtleCam. Together with Daniel Zatz, world expert on wildlife video cameras, George decided on the type of equipment SeaTurtleCam would need to make it the best it could be.

Then with the help of Mr. Marc Rice and his students at Hawaii Preparatory Academy (HPA), SeaTurtleCam became a reality. Now, people all over the world can watch Hawaiian turtles at Turtle Lagoon every day on the Internet.

Real live video--as it happens!

Daily Life at Turtle Lagoon

George and his team have many goals for SeaTurtleCam. George believes that sea turtles are their own best "ambassadors." That is because George knows when people watch sea turtles they will grow to love them as much as he does. Then people will join his NMFS team in trying to save them.

Conservation is George's big goal for SeaTurtleCam, but it's not the only one.

Another goal is research. There are many things George and other scientists can learn by observing the turtles at Turtle Lagoon. SeaTurtleCam helps him learn new things every day.

Mr. Rice and his students at Hawaii Preparatory Academy play a big part in that research too. Right now they control the cameras from HPA!

Just like the students at HPA, you can get involved in turtle-watching too.

How do George and Mr. Rice's students turtle watch? Well, it's easy and it's hard! First, the easy part.

When a turtle crawls up on land, they try to use the camera's zoom control to do a close up of the left side of the turtle. If they are lucky, they will see a number that was engraved on the shell during one of George's tagging visits to Turtle Lagoon.

Since December 1995, George has tagged over 450 turtles at Turtle Lagoon. He has also engraved numbers on the left side of their shells. That is the easiest way for his team to identify a turtle.

This is taken from the shell of a turtle that basked on May 17th. Can you tell what the number is?

Can you tell what the number is? Captured from SeaTurtleCam (46K JPEG)

Now for the hard part.

What happens when a turtle doesn't have a number? The team of researchers still has to know which turtle it is. It is important to be able to tell turtles apart. That is the only they can keep excellent records.

There really is only one other way.

George and his team must identify turtles by their faces! All sea turtles have their own special faces just like people do. Hawaiian turtles have brown plates that form a pattern that is different for every turtle.

We have "captured" some images from SeaTurtleCam to show you how the scientists will do this. You can follow their procedures too using your computer and any good graphics programme.

Here we go.

These are some images we "grabbed" from SeaTurtleCam and the dates the turtles were sighted. Can you see the different markings for each turtle?

Once you have looked at these images and noticed that sea turtles have different markings on their faces, you will be ready to "match" faces.

Introducing "Bear Claw"

It didn't take long for us to "resight" a honu. We noticed a turtle that crawled up on land again and again. On May 16th we captured this image.

On May 16th we captured this image. Captured from SeaTurtleCam (23K JPEG)

This is the raw image. "Raw" means the image has not yet been changed since we captured and saved the image from SeaTurtleCam. Notice that it's not really a good picture. We needed to enhance the image to show the turtle's face better.

Sometimes the turtle is far away from the camera. Sometimes it has its head on an angle. These are all things that make it more challenging for a researcher to get a perfect image. Fortunately, we don't need perfect pictures to identify turtles. This image is blurred, but it's still good enough to make a positive identification.

In this case, we made the image brighter to "bring out" the markings.

We made the image brighter to "bring out" the markings. Captured from SeaTurtleCam (25K JPEG)

Finally we "cropped" the image to show just the turtle's head.

We "cropped" the image to show just the turtle's head. Captured from SeaTurtleCam (10K JPEG)

This is how we work all our images. George and Mr. Rice's students will probably do something similar. Because graphics programs have so many ways to do the same thing, everybody has a diffferent, comfortable way to get a job done. We're describing ours.

The next day, May 17th, we visited SeaTurtleCam again and captured another image. Then we enlarged the turtle's face (upper left hand corner) and compared it to the turtle we saw the day before. It was the same turtle! We also noticed that the turtle was resting in the same spot as he did the day before.

We enlarged the turtle's face (upper left hand corner) and compared it to the turtle we saw the day before. It was the same turtle! Captured from SeaTurtleCam (39K JPEG)

So we visited SeaTurtleCam again the next day!

Can you see that this is the same turtle as in the two other images?

Can you see that this is the same turtle as in the two other images? Captured from SeaTurtleCam (40K JPEG)

We discovered that this honu basked every day at about the same spot.

Here is a comparison of the turtle's face patterns from all three days:

We were excited about our discovery and sent email to Mr. Rice. Mr. Rice is Assistant Headmaster at Hawaii Preparatory Academy on the Big Island of Hawaii. Together with George Balazs he does research on the honu who live in the waters around HPA.

We told Mr. Rice that we noticed the same turtle had been coming up to bask three days in a row--and near the same spot!

Mr. Rice wrote us back immediately. He said:

From: mrice@hermes.hpa.edu
To: "UrsulaKeuper-Bennett" 
Subject: Re: Thought you would be interested.
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 16:12:54 -1000

Yes indeed.... this is a little fellow we call
"Bear Claw." As I am writing this, it is lying
about half submerged as the tide rises. A real 
regular, this one!

So the people at HPA know "Bear Claw" well.

We decided to give this honu the Hawaiian name "Peamikia'o" (Pea='bear', mikia'o='claw') and hoped Peamikia'o would show up again the next day. That would make it four days in a row!

That was yesterday May 19, 2000. SeaTurtleCam was running flawlessly and there was a turtle resting in the same spot a turtle had been the other three days.

We waited for SeaTurtleCam to do a close up on the face. That never happened. People aren't always controlling the cameras. It is unreasonable to expect that.

So we captured the best image we could and tried working with that. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried enhancing and magnifying, we couldn't be sure if the turtle was Peamikia'o.

Only Mr. Rice can tell us for sure. (We've written him to ask)

Whoever it was, the turtle slept happily through the late Hawaiian afternoon.

This is a raw image from SeaTurtleCam. There are three other turtles in the background. Can you find them? (It will be easier if you click on the picture to get the larger image.)

There are three other turtles in the background. Can you find them? Captured from SeaTurtleCam (31K JPEG)

We watched SeaTurtleCam hoping to see a Hawaiian sunset (there is a six hour time difference between Hawaii and where we live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada).

We watched until midnight Canadian time. The sun was getting lower in the Hawaiian sky. The turtle stayed in the same places for several hours. It was getting darker and darker.

The turtle still slept... Captured from SeaTurtleCam (24K JPEG)

The turtle still slept... and then? At five minutes past midnight Toronto time (we stayed up) SeaTurtleCam shut off!

Now things were just too dark. So ended turtle-watching for another day.

Saturday, May 20th update

We can't wait to visit the SeaTurtleCam again. So many questions!

Will Peamikia'o crawl up and bask again today? Will he go to his favourite spot? How many other turtles bask regularly? Do they have favourite places too? How many hours do they bask a day? Do they ever go back in the water to cool off and then crawl back on land? What is the average number of turtles basking per day? Do more turtles crawl up to bask on warm sunny days?

George Balazs and his SeaTurtleCam research team will investigate these and other questions over the next few years.

What is absolutely wonderful, though, is that you can answer many of these questions too just by watching SeaTurtleCam. You can even ask your own questions!

You can be a sea turtle researcher right from your own home! Give it a try and let us know how it goes. Who knows, you might be the first to see some new behaviour!

You can be a sea turtle researcher right from your own home! Captured from SeaTurtleCam (38K JPEG)

Don't forget to try our Hawaiian SeaTurtleCam Challenges. Can you spot Peamikia'o?

For more information:

• Visit the web site of the Hawaii-based Southwest Fisheries Center of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
• Learn more about how the SeaTurtleCam got started at Hawaii Preparatory Academy.
• Read about George Balazs and his work with Hawaiian sea turtles.
• Discover how we use sea turtle faces to tell them apart.
• For fun, follow our comic strip and find out how sea turtles create their own webcam.

Kidz Korner

SeaTurtleCam

Last modified 00/05/20
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