JOHN CHRISTOPHER FINE celebrates the diver-friendly reptiles that continue to return to their Palm Beach haunts in Florida, against all the odds. He took the photos
It was like turning back the hands of time. I could imagine Norine Rouse, with her yellow wetsuit, small tank and bright smile, swimming up to Robert. Norine named sea turtles. Robert, a large male loggerhead, would always return to the reefs off Palm Beach, Florida, season after season for 20 years.
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Norine swam with him, measured his carapace at 115cm. A hole in the middle of his shell identified him clearly, the result of a long-ago encounter with a boat-propeller. Robert would arrive in December, mate, then leave to return to his faraway Caribbean haunts – usually by the end of February, according to Norine’s fastidious records.
After completing her dive-instructor training in the Bahamas, Norine opened a small office in Riviera Beach, where she moored her dive-boat.
Also read: Turtle dancing – and what it means
Norine Rouse was open for business, taking divers exploring reefs off Palm Beach. She trained Dottie Campbell, a former local mayor, and they became fast friends. With Dottie’s investment, the Norine Rouse Scuba Club of the Palm Beaches opened in 1977.
This was a country club for divers, with a deep training tank and swimming-pool amenities that meant that divers in wet bathing suits could sit anywhere in the spacious office and lounge. Norine lived in an apartment upstairs, facing the Intracoastal Waterway where her new state-of-the-art dive-boat was moored.
Turtle Lady
Norine died in 2005. After suffering a paralysing case of the bends, she had recovered and continued to dive but had been forced to retire in 1995. Over her many years of providing great hospitality and training to divers from all over the world, turtles were Norine’s favourites.
She earned the moniker “Turtle Lady”, first in derision from the spearfishermen she refused to allow on her dive-boat and preached against, then softened to a term of deep respect as her Scuba Club became a gem of the diving world.
This magnificent piece of property was sold after 38 years in business and bulldozed to make way for development. But now turtles are back – and so is the Scuba Club.
The essence of the club was sold to Shaun Gallant, who operates the Kyalami Too from Riviera Beach Marina, as well as another dive-boat out of Jupiter and a shop off Northlake Boulevard.
The same affability, welcoming spirit and no-spearfishing rule – with the exception of pole spears to take invasive lionfish, and permitted lobstering in season – is continued.
Diving off Kyalami Too in turtle mating season reminded me of those amazing dives of so long ago with Norine. Turtles do not usually make the Gulf Stream waters off Palm Beach a permanent home.
Loggerheads are carnivorous. They eat jellyfish, molluscs and even fish if they can catch them. Some species eat only turtle-grass and sponges.
One hapless turtle was hooked by a fisherman off Juno pier, brought to the rescue centre to have the hook removed and later released back into the ocean.
Ready to mate
And here they are, each and every year off Palm Beach, ready to mate. Then the females lumber ashore at night to lay their eggs, return to the Atlantic Ocean reefs, usually mate again, deposit another clutch of a hundred eggs and go home until next season.
How do they get to this location, swimming hundreds, thousands of miles from their Caribbean homes to arrive on the reefs off beaches where they were hatched? Scientists thought it had to to with the Moon, the Sun, the Earth’s rotation.
I remember finding a dead turtle hatchling on the beach. It didn’t make it from its egg to the surf, got caught in bright daylight sun and was desiccated. Only one in a thousand hatchlings make it to adulthood. I picked it up, put it in a cup of water and, using a magnet, spun it around. Magnetic crystals in turtle brains imprint a map that enables them to navigate back to their origins.
As with other reptiles, turtle sex determination depends on temperature in the nest. There is a relatively small margin: we say cool dudes and hot chicks.
Dark sand increases temperature. You know that by walking barefoot on asphalt as compared to white concrete. Beach-renourishing projects dump dark, deep dredged ocean sand on beaches. Hot, females hatch out. Temperature changes are creating a warmer climate, which means more females. It’s an imbalance that leaves future populations out of nature’s balance.
Mike Healy, a Kyalami dive instructor, took us down on a reef they call Teardrop, south of the Breakers Hotel. We saw plenty of loggerhead females, one of them simply lodged behind a basket sponge out of the current, resting up after her long swim.
Mike held back as his divers took underwater photographs, admiring the aged turtle.
Norine had a special permit to swim with sea turtles. She recorded data and made observations on every dive. She logged the behaviours scientists craved. Researchers in those days rarely dived, and even more rarely observed the behaviours of their subjects in the wild, certainly not as often as Norine, who was diving every day.
Barnacle scrub
Several other female loggerheads were sighted on Teardrop Reef. On a second dive off Breakers Reef, four if them remained inquisitive and swam up to divers.
On occasions, Norine would even pass her regulator to Robert, an air-breathing reptile, so that he wouldn’t have to cut their dive together short by swimming to the surface. Robert knew Norine, and would swim up to her to have barnacles scrubbed off his shell with a ‘scrungee’ pad that she always carried.
In the worst of pollution times, when water managers opened canal gates during torrential rains to prevent flooding in the west, layers of muck came out into the ocean. Norine reported seeing turtles immersing themselves in the muck to deprive barnacles of oxygen, killing them. It was a most unusual intelligent behaviour, akin to an ape using a tool.
Marine turtles are in crisis. Despite protections as endangered species in the USA, they are still hunted for food, and many are killed in accidents. Some die suffering, after ingesting plastic waste they have mistaken for jellyfish.
Sea turtle population statistics are daunting. Estimates put Kemp’s Ridleys at 3,000, loggerheads at 91,000, hawksbills at 30,000, leatherbacks at 133,000, olive at 558,000, flatbacks of Australia at 7,000 and greens at 245,000.
Palm Beach is home to loggerhead, hawksbill, green, leatherback and, rarely, Kemp’s Ridley, the latter just passing through on trips north along the coast. They do not nest there.
Turtles are alive and well off the Palm Beaches. So is the Scuba Club. New generations of diving instructors, modelling the ethics of the new owner, are insuring protection of reef creatures as well as opening windows for those who want to view a natural phenomenon that is researched yet, even now, little understood. The turtles are back.
Also by John Christopher Fine on Divernet: SEA TURTLES ON THE BRINK, CORALS HAPPIER IN THE GULF STREAM, TALES OF DIVING’S TRUE PIONEERS, FATHER OF UNDERWATER ART: ANDRE LABAN, EEP DOODOO: DIVER’S-EYE VIEW OF A FLORIDA PROBLEM, CORAL FARMERS RESHAPING THE FUTURE
