In this week’s episode both our storytellers share their experience of that beautiful and magical moment when new life is brought into this world.
Part 1: Ed Pritchard inadvertently becomes a leatherback turtle midwife during his first field job.
A native of South Florida, Ed Pritchard has fostered a love for the marine environment since an early age. Ed holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from the University of Florida and a master’s degree in Marine Conservation from the University of Miami. As an Interpretive Programs Lead at Miami-Dade County’s Eco Division, Ed develops and leads immersive citizen engagement programs that promote awareness and foster stewardship of our local environment, with an emphasis placed on our marine and coastal resources. Ed’s ultimate goal is to use effective science communication and education initiatives to inspire the next generation of ocean stewards.
Part 2: Science reporter Ari Daniel's life is influenced by his remarkable grandmother.
Ari Daniel has always been enchanted by the natural world. As a kid, he packed his Wildlife Treasury box full of species cards. As a graduate student, Ari trained gray seal pups (Halichoerus grypus) and helped tag wild killer whales (Orcinus orca). These days, as a science reporter and producer for National Public Radio, NOVA and other outlets, he works with a species he’s better equipped to understand — Homo sapiens. Ari has reported on science topics across five continents and is a co-recipient of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award for audio. In the fifth grade, Ari won the “Most Contagious Smile” award. Find him on Instagram at @mesoplodon_
Episode Transcript
Part 1
It's the summer after my undergrad and I'm back in my hometown of Jupiter, Florida. I'm sitting on the back of an ATV and I'm cruising along the beach. It's at night. It's pitch black. The driver of that ATV, her name is Kelly, and Kelly's a badass. She's a sea turtle biologist and her and her research partner, Chris, they've dedicated their life to studying sea turtles, specifically the leatherback sea turtle.
For those that have never heard of leatherback they're the largest of the sea turtle species. And they're not like the sea turtles that we've seen in movies, Crush from Finding Nemo, they're much larger. They don't really have the shell that a loggerhead or green turtle has, the ones that we're used to seeing. It's leathery. It's like a really rubbery skin.
They can grow from about four feet to about the size of a Volkswagen beetle. So they're these giants and they're prehistoric.
So Kelly and Chris have dedicated their lives to this. We're out there. Kelly has offered me a helping hand. She's offered me this job to help her on this leatherback project.
Her and Chris, they go out every summer and they hunt for leatherbacks. Leatherbacks, the females they come up on the beach during the summer months to lay their eggs. And Jupiter is a really important place for that.
So Kelly has offered me this job as a field tech. It's my first field job. I'm excited but I'm nervous. Never worked with these charismatic species that I've grown to love. But I'm also just anxious.
I'm riding on the back of this ATV and we're headed down the beach looking for leatherbacks. It's my first week of training and we're looking for a track in the sand. We're looking for a track that shows that a female has come up to lay her eggs.
What do we do when we come up on these turtles? We have to basically get important data but do it in a way that's respectful to these animals, because they're up there doing something really important and a very private moment. So we have to get up there and we have to get them at a time when they're basically they get into this trance. They've done their thing, they've gotten up on the beach and they just get into this trance. They have to do one thing and it's to lay those eggs.
We get up there and working up a turtle we tag them. So we're tagging, putting little flipper tags so we can identify them if anyone catches them or if they come up on a beach later a different year. We also have to measure them because we want to know how big they are and how big they can get.
Ed Pritchard shares his story with an audience at Open Stage Club in Miami, FL in December 2019. Photo by Jim Rassol.
“How do you think you measure a turtle?” I ask Kelly that and she's like, “Well, you just got to straddle it.”
You basically just have to get on either side and spread out that tape measure. So you're basically straddling this giant and you're like, “Oh, I'm trying to be respectful. This turtle's trying to lay their eggs and I'm right on top of you.” A little awkward.
Flash forward two weeks and so I've learned the process. We've gone out there. We've seen a few different turtles. We've worked them up. Some of them are ones that Kelly knows really well. She's gotten really close to these animals. They all have names because they name them, not just the little flipper tag with a number. So she knows some of them. Others are new, which is awesome when we get to work up a new turtle, but I've learned the process.
I'm still a little bit scared because it's still coming up on these beats in the middle of the night. It's still a very walking that fine line between being respectful but also getting that important data that we need.
Finally, the night comes and Kelly says, “You're ready to go out on your own. You're ready to ride on this ATV yourself and find these turtles.”
I'm just pumped but still just really nervous.
We cover a nine-mile stretch of beach. It's a very wide beach. One of us goes north, the other goes south. So I go south. We start around 8:00 p.m. and I'm out there. You're working in these adverse conditions. It's the beach at night so it's dark. It was a new moon that night. Sometimes there are things that are happening on the beach and you have to be aware at all times pretty much.
One of the other things that happens during that time we're out there in April, there's another species that comes up. I mentioned the loggerhead. They're another species that's important. It's endangered. They use that beach for nesting. We have to be respectful to them, but that's not our focus. We got to get to where we need to go because we need to catch this leatherback.
It's basically like Mario Kart. You're riding on this ATV down the beach, all these green shells around you, trying to avoid the green shells. And you see some stuff on the beach, some promiscuous stuff. There's people that go to a dark beach for that.
There's weather and there's all sorts of different things out there, so it's draining. The nerves are still working.
There's nights where I have some mistaken identity. I see something dark and we use these night scopes to help us. So I'm cruising on the beach, finger on the throttle with the night scope and sometimes you're mistaking it for a dune or a rock or a log, people having sex. There's definitely that mistaken identity.
But the night goes on and Kelly gets two turtles. She texts me on the other side. She gets two turtles on the other side but I'm still looking for that turtle.
And then I see a track. I'm pumped. I get out the night scope and I'm scanning the track up to the top of the beach. I'm looking to see where in the process she is of nesting, because we don't want to interrupt her if she's still digging because I can spook them and cause them to go back to the water without laying their eggs. We don't want that.
I noticed that she's digging. She's taking her front flippers and she's literally pushing the sand behind her. She's carving out this body pit so she can get lower in the sand so she can start digging her egg chamber.
I noticed that. I text Kelly, I said, “You know, I just got this turtle. I think she's just body pitting. We have time.”
So I'm just sitting there on the ATV quiet and I'm waiting. I'm waiting for her and she finally finishes that part of the process. She's ready to dig her egg chamber.
She does that with her rear flippers. She takes the rear flippers and gets down into the sand and they dig out this egg chamber. It's about this wide and it's about two feet down.
I'm waiting for her to make that motion with her rear flippers and I'm looking through the night scope. Usually you can see her body move a little bit in the rear. I don't see that. So I'm just waiting. I'm waiting to see what she's going to do next.
I'm waiting and I start to get nervous. I'm like, “Well, what is she waiting for? Why is she still not in that process yet?”
I text Kelly. I said, “I don't think she's digging that egg chamber. I'm going to get a little closer. I'm going to sneak up behind her.”
I get a little closer. We have these red headlamps because white light distracts the turtle and it bothers them, but the red light they don't see very well. So I flipped the headlamp on and immediately I get reflection back from the metal tag on her front flipper. I know, okay, this turtle's been tagged. I get the number from the tag.
And then I'm scanning back along her body. I want to know where she's at now or where she's at in the process. As soon as I get to the rear, I notice something's off. Something's not right.
Ed Pritchard shares his story with an audience at Open Stage Club in Miami, FL in December 2019. Photo by Jim Rassol.
I text Kelly. I say, “It's a tagged turtle and she's missing her rear flippers.” All I see are just nubs where these slender, pretty, long flippers are supposed to be.
I text Kelly that and she says, “Oh, it's Clover.”
Now I'm on the phone with Kelly and I'm like, “What's Clover? What's Clover's story?”
She's like, “I'm with another turtle right now and I'm going to get there as soon as I can, but you're going to have to start digging. You're going to have to dig her egg chamber.”
I'm like, “I know what that looks like,” but my heart leapt out of my chest and I'm just adrenaline. I get down on my hands and knees and I know I have to be a turtle midwife for her. So I start digging.
Leatherbacks are usually very meticulous. They take one flipper over the other and they scoop out that sand one at a time and they carve out this little chamber. I'm just freaking throwing sand everywhere, digging down. I'm just wild. Finally, I'm digging. I know it has to be about two feet. I'm at my shoulder now. I'm digging. I'm at my shoulder and then I feel this warm, warm moist thing just drop on my arm and roll down. And I know she's ready. She's ready to start laying those eggs.
It drops into the hole and I just kind of leap back. I just sit there and I watch her. She's breathing really heavily now because she's in that process of dropping those eggs.
These turtles do something when they're laying their eggs. They start crying not because they're in pain but because they're on the beach where it's really dry. They're not used to that kind of environment. They're also covered in sand so they cry to moisten up their eyes and to get that sand out. And so there she is just crying and breathing and I'm in that moment.
At some point, Kelly comes up and she tells me Clover's story. Clover, when they first spotted her, she was missing one rear flipper. It got taken off by a shark. And then at some point over the next few years, the other one got taken off by a shark because at some point she wasn't able to be as agile.
We work up the turtle. We measure her and do all that stuff and then we just kind of sit there and wait for her to finish that process. She ends up dropping 115 eggs and we start to see the little nubs move again because she's ready to start covering that nest.
So we get down on our hands and knees and we help her with that too. Now, we're both turtle midwives. We cover up that nest.
And then she does her end of her process to take her front flippers and throw sand to camouflage. She starts doing that.
It's starting to get light out because it's way early in the morning now and so we watch her. She gets up and she starts to crawl back and I'm just amazed by how much fortitude she has because she's had so much trauma. Now, she's doing what she instinctually knows what to do and she's creating the next generation of turtles.
I lent her a helping hand that night, but I know that for that species to really survive we all need to lend that helping hand for her. Thank you.
Part 2
Nana, my mom's mom, filled my little life with magic as a boy. She called the local playground a castle and she introduced me and my younger sibling to the most extraordinary cast of characters.
Nana herself was a kind of character. She dyed her hair a bright red, the color of autumn ablaze. And she wore every hue of the rainbow. Each of her clothes was purchased at a discount with matching costume jewelry to boot.
She fed my imagination. Like the time that she told me that much of who we are is due to the genes in our body. And I remember sitting in the back seat of the car hearing her say that, imagining in my head countless pairs of tiny Levi's jeans coursing through my bloodstream.
Even Nana's birthdate was a sing-song: September 18, 1918.
Nana was my first library. Stories poured out of her. One of my favorites was when she was in her 20s and living in New York City and she was on her bicycle, presumably in Central Park. She came careening down a hill, nearly crashing into and colliding with this guy at the bottom. And that guy, a total stranger, went on to become my grandfather.
And when the two of them moved into their home in Cleveland, he announced, “Martha, we're going to wallpaper the living room with birth certificates,” evidently confident of their collective fecundity.
There was the story that I loved to hear her tell that she loved to tell about her time during her career as a nursery school teacher when she had the kids go around in a circle and have each one move their bodies in a different way to the rhythm of the music. The first kid clapped his hands and the second girl stamped her feet, but halfway around the circle Nana's heart sank. A little boy sat in a wheelchair who could barely move.
But he looked up at Nana and said, “I can blink my eyes.”
Nana was so touched by that little boy because he was proof to her that children have profound things to teach us. As for me, every time I heard that story as a kid, I'd feel a glow inside because I felt like what Nana was telling me was that each of us has a special gift to share with the world even when we're children, maybe especially when we're children.
Nana had so many ways to tell me that she loved me. “Your beauty blinds me,” she'd say. “My heart is going to burst out of its brassiere,” she’d declare, which was a racy thing to hear as a kid.
She told me I'd be so popular with the girls that I'd have to fend them off with a stick, which did not happen. I dated on and off but mostly I was single and there was no stick required. I think back to the way my grandparents met and I thought, “Well, maybe all I have to do is just crash into some young woman on my bicycle,” but then I'd realize that's not the way the story worked. I was the one who had to be crashed into by the girl. And call it a character flaw but I've never been one to throw myself in front of oncoming cyclists no matter their eligibility.
In early 2008, in the winter, Nana passed away. She'd been living with dementia for nearly a decade at that point. And although her memories had faded, the core of who she was endured until the very end: kind, loving and gentle.
Ari Daniel shares his story with an audience at the Oberon in Boston, MA in January 2020. Photo by Kate Flock.
It was a few months before I was to defend my PhD dissertation and so I wrote to my advisor to tell him of the circumstances. I'll never forget what he wrote in reply.
“Ari, these are the times when we realize what's truly important. Go be with your family.”
So I flew home to Cleveland for the memorial. And my mom who'd been with Nana almost right up until the end told me that she was amazed that just as Nana's body knew how to live all those years, it also knew how to die in those final moments, all written presumably in those genes in her body.
I flew back to Boston. I finished my dissertation and a few months later I defended my PhD and I dedicated the whole thing to Nana. It was later that year that I started falling for this girl named Ghinwa. She had a huge heart and a fierce sense of justice. She sang and she loved being outdoors and she was into languages. She even loved to bike. So all things seemed to be pointing in the right direction.
But given my lack of experience with the ladies, I didn't really know if she liked me in return. Before I knew it, it was September 18th of that year, Nana's birthday. I figured something special was going to happen.
But the day came and went with nothing. The next night, however, we had our first kiss. And I like to think that Nana was too busy running around in heaven or wherever she is to help us out on her actual birthday, but her schedule freed up the next day and she helped bring our lips together.
A few years passed and Ghinwa and I got married and we decided we would start a family of our own, wallpaper our living room with a birth certificate or two. And Ghinwa took the pregnancy test and I filmed it, but the results were negative, as they were the time after that and the time after that and the time after that. We couldn't quite get our heads around it.
Both Ghinwa and I are real planners so the lack of control was disorienting. You see, when it comes to ovulation, timing matters. Blink and you miss it.
So Ghinwa studied her internal temperature fastidiously and I obsessed over dates when I could go out of town for work trips. We argued often, mostly about the timing. And each time the topic would come up in conversation about those dates, it was like knifing open the same old wound.
We stressed out about it. And the more we stressed, the more we would think about how stress isn't good for pregnancy. And that would just stress us out even more and so we each cast about.
My younger sibling counseled me, “It's amazing how much the little ones have to teach us before they're even born.” It's the kind of thing that Nana might have said.
We were a year in by this point with nothing to show for it. So we took a deep breath and we got tested. One of my numbers was off, one of Ghinwa’s numbers was off. We were tied.
And so we graduated onto IUI, intrauterine insemination. And wouldn't you know, it worked the first time. Ghinwa was pregnant.
Within a few days of us finding out, she told one of her sisters in person and my face flushed. That embryo felt so fragile that I dared not speak of it aloud for fear of extinguishing that flicker of life.
Ari Daniel shares his story with an audience at the Oberon in Boston, MA in January 2020. Photo by Kate Flock.
But gradually, the week stacked up and the baby became viable. We went in for our big ultrasound and the technician danced through the measurements. I looked on in awe, until my eyes snagged on something at the top of the screen, the date when Ghinwa's pregnancy began. September 18, 2015.
Ghinwa and I decided that we weren't going to find out the sex of the baby in advance, but truth be told I wanted a little girl more than anything. So when the night finally came and we were in the delivery room and Ghinwa gave that final push and our baby came tumbling into the world, the nurses asked me to announce who we were welcoming.
“It's a girl,” I whispered and wept to Ghinwa.
We gave her the name of Leila, which means ‘night of occasion’ in Arabic. And the middle name of Marta, after Nana's first name Martha.
Leila is three-and-a-half now, so I've told her about Nana, and she's told me that she wants to meet her. I just know how much Nana would have celebrated this little girl and cherished her and sung to her and made her feel like the best version of herself. But Nana is not here anymore.
So instead, I look at Leila and I tell her, “Nana is inside you.”
And then last spring, it's the morning of my 40th birthday and we're in the car. I've got some music on. We're halfway to Leila’s preschool when she announces from the back seat, “Dada, I'm singing with my eyes.”
I pull over and I look back and I see Leila beaming from ear to ear, blinking to the rhythm of the music. And there was Nana, a twinkle of magic shining through my daughter's eyes.
Thank you.