Update #7 from Naomi!

Friday 1st July – Thursday 7th July 2022:

Poor weather and busy schedules meant that we were unable to rearrange our second in-water day from earlier this week. Though this was disappointing, it did open up my schedule to be able to spend some time with my parents. The next few days were jam-packed with a rainy hike and swim at Concord Falls, beaching, scuba diving, hiking the trail around Grand Etang Lake, and running a few small errands in the south. Our evenings were spent either eating out or at the project house with Kate and the new team of leatherback volunteers, heading to a local bar for karaoke night, and a leatherback night survey (during which my parents were lucky enough to see a female laying). In the meantime, the rest of our camping / research supplies arrived on the island, so Kate and Kester (Ocean Spirits Field Manager) travelled down to SGU to collect them and drop off any new blood samples to the lab. This meant that on Tuesday, Kate and I spent the morning organising and packing up the camping / research supplies into totes, with the afternoon then spent in a nest excavation training session with the leatherback volunteers. I joined my parents for one last dinner in the evening, as they were travelling to the south and flying home the next day. On Wednesday, we made it out for another in-water day (5 green turtles and 2 hawksbills), which was then followed by centrifugation of blood samples, as usual. Now that we have our supplies, the plan is to head out to the remote island on Sunday; hence, on Thursday, Kate and I travelled to Grenville (Grenada’s second largest city) to buy plenty of food for the island, with the hope of just having to top up certain items occasionally. When we got back, we sorted and packed the kitchen and food supplies into totes, ready for Sunday!