Vanuatu STRP4

 Friday, 12/23/2022 Above are the three Sea Trks Iridium satellite tags we plan to deploy on post-nesting hawksbill turtles on Moso Island in January, 2023. Telonics (manufacturer of the Iridium Sea Trkr tags we use) recommends testing the tags prior to deployment.  I placed the tags out in the field by our tech center and left them on for 30 minutes.  I found that two of the tags (14A & 16A) had transmitted and were picked up by the Iridium satellites.  I had to put 87A out for the rest of the day at my house but it was finally picked up by the satellites.  Below is the status report/location of the tags resulting from the tests. The bottom three tags are our current ones.   All three tags are ready for deployment.  All we need now is to get to Moso Island and find some of wonderful hawksbill females who have traveled hundreds, maybe thousands, of Kilometers from their home forage grounds to Moso to nest.  WISH US LUCK!

 Wednesday, 12/7/2022 The students, with the exception of Annika, assembled at the IT department on Wednesday to go over the procedure we follow to attach satellite tags to the carapace of post-nesting hawksbill turtles on Moso Island. Above are our three Telonics SeaTrk satellite tags that we will take with us to Vanuatu and, hopefully, attach to the carapace of a post-nesting hawksbill turtle.  Marc Rice used wooden blocks to represent the satellite tags and plywood to represent the turtles carapace.  Sanding and surface prep were covered and the preparation of the fiberglass cloth as reinforcement was demonstrated.   The use of UV activation powder to catalyze the solidification of the resin was demonstrated and resin and glass were applied to the mock tag attaching it to the "carapace".   Curing the resin using a UV light source was demonstrated as was the fact that the catalysis is an exothermic reaction and heat is generated.  The whole process needs to be controlled so