Satellite Tracking Data Processing

I mentioned improvements to data processing on Day 3. I was also able to optimize data processing for the chlorophyll satellite imagery that is used in STAT. Thought I had also finished with the sea surface temperature, but there is still a bug somewhere that I need to fix. When it is all working, a process that was taking 12-18 hours every day should complete in just 3 or 4 hours.

More Updates to Remigration Summary Statistics

Had another request from Brian Shamblin which I have added to the Remigration Summary Statistics. The summary now shows you the percentage of females that have only been detected during one season. A critical metric when looking at remigration.

iPhone 5s Side Project

And I got distracted for about half an hour on a side project on Friday. I have been getting annoyed that I can't find the iPhone 5s I want at my local Apple Store. Apple lets you check online if their stores have iPhones in stock, but I kept forgetting to check their website. So I wrote a little script to check for me every hour and let me know if my Apple Store gets the iPhone I want. I decided to spend a little more time on it to make it a public service, since I assumed there are other people in the same boat. So now there is a page that will allow you to sign up to receive an e-mail notification when your favorite Apple Store has the iPhone 5s model you want available for in-store pick up.

iPhone 5s Availability Notifier

Today was the culmination of something I have been poking at for several weeks. I significantly optimized one of the data processing tasks. Something that used to take about 4 hours per day now takes about 20 minutes. One of the things that happens behind the scenes as part of the Satellite Tracking and Analysis Tool (STAT - the engine behind the seaturtle.org satellite tracking website) is sampling of environmental data for every animal location that is collected by STAT. STAT users are able to export their data from the system and get access to all of the sampled environmental data. In this case, the process determines if it is wet or dry (water or land) underneath each animal location, and keeps up to date as new animal locations are added every day. Now that that is done I just have to do the same with data sampling of sea surface temperature and chlorophyll :)

Now, back to business...

Updated Remigration Summary Statistics

I received some great comments from Brian Shamblin, one of the DNA project partners from the University of Georgia, on the Remigration Summary Statistics that I set-up yesterday. Brian wanted to be able view remigration summaries at the state level at for the entire project. You can now do that. Brian also mentioned that he gets lots of people asking him how many of "their" turtles are new each year. So I have now added a statistic that indicates the percentage of new females identified each year.

Suggestions and feedback are great and help make me so much more productive. Thanks Brian!

The first change of the month is a small bug reported by Mark Dodd and the folks from Jekyll Island, Georgia. One of the reports generated by the Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System was incorrectly giving hatch success and emergence success values of zero in some cases. The report in question is called the Activity Report and allows users to export all of their nesting data to a CSV file. The bug was related to changes I made to the code at the beginning of the 2013 nesting season to add several new fields to meet Florida sea turtle nest reporting requirements. The changes caused one (yes 1!) line of code, a simple counter, to end up in the wrong place and throw off the HS% and ES% calculations. Now fixed :)

Remigration Summary Statistics

Added a new feature to the STNMS that calculates remigration summary statistics based on the genetic ID of each nesting female on beaches participating in the Northern Recovery Unit Loggerhead DNA Project. Basically you can look at any participating beach and see what percentage of the nesting females nested in other years. It is soooo cool all of the amazing things that people will be able to do with this DNA data!

Skip down to the punchline if you get bored :)

The short answer is monkey buttons! A lot has changed since I wrote that "monkey button" post in 2003 (more than 10 years ago!). Seaturtle.org now averages 90,000 hits a day (2-3 million hits a month) and I'm not sure I can count how many pages make up the site. I now no longer have a "real job". About 6 years ago seaturtle.org became too much work to keep up with in my spare time, so this is now my "real job".

The (slightly) longer answer: I automate everything as much as I can. So much so that I typically will not add a new feature until I can figure out how to automate it. So if you are ever wondering why feature X is taking so long, that is usually the reason. Take this approach to it's logical conclusion and you add a new feature/doo-dad every few days for 10+ years, and eventually you have a giant, feature-rich website.

Note that I said "new feature every few days". In the early days I could easily add a feature, or multiple features, every day! However, even with automation, the code base and the user base has grown so much that day to day maintenance has become a huge task unto itself. I typically spend at least half of each day responding to inquiries via e-mail (preferred) and phone (not preferred!). These can be anything from simple questions and customer service type problems ("where is my adoption packet?") to technical questions and bug reports ("my favorite thing on seaturtle.org that I need right NOW is broken!"). The questions get answered, the problems get fixed and the bugs get squashed. And as with any growing and increasingly complex system, I periodically have to step in and optimized code, manage databases, etc, to speed things up and keep everything running smoothly. Throw in the (thankfully) infrequent hardware and network failures and you have multiple full-time jobs!

The Punchline

It can be a bit difficult to wrap your head around all of this, so I thought I would try something I am calling "a month of change". Everyday for the month of October I will document the changes I make on seaturtle.org. This could be anything from a brand new tool/service (least likely), to a new feature on an existing tool/service (a little more likely), to one or more bug fixes (most likely!). Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference between a bug fix and a new feature :)

Consider this a peek under seaturtle.org's kimono, and a preview of some of the things I am working on.

One small caveat...

Family is important to me, so I will not make changes/post on weekends. Except in emergencies :)

Starting tomorrow (1 October 2013) keep an eye on this space to see what has changed on seaturtle.org. The changes will come from a variety of sources. There may be a bug fix reported by a user that day. I have an official to-do list of things that I have to get done. I have a less official wish list of things that I want to get done. And then I have a stack of random pieces of paper with notes and ideas scribbled on them sitting next to my keyboard. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please send them along (or post them in the comments below if you are reading this on the blog).

And enjoy a month of change!

Thanks,

Michael Coyne
seaturtle.org

PS - There are a couple of folks that help out tremendously (and others that have helped out in the past). Not everything can be automated. A lot of the content on seaturtle.org is user submitted and some of it needs to be reviewed/approved before it goes online. Without help I definitely would not be able to keep up. Matthew Godfrey manages the Image Library and ALan Rees manages the Job/Volunteer Board. They review all of the submissions and correspond with users as needed, I just need to make sure the engine keeps running.

And of course I would not need this extra help managing content if all you turtle nerds weren't participating by sharing your data, submitting your photos, and just generally being awesome. Thanks for being a part of the Global Sea Turtle Network!

And while I've got your attention on this topic, if there is a favorite tool or resource on seaturtle.org that you would like to help out with, please let me know :)

The "Dewie" page no longer exists, so the links in my 10 year old posts are now broken (ie they don't go anywhere). This is not unusual. There are lots of borked links on the internet to pages that no longer exist. There are probably quite a few on seaturtle.org. But for some strange reason I have received several e-mails over the last couple of months about this particular link. It seemed strange so I just ignored the first couple of messages as some kind of spam/scam or phishing expedition.

Even if the messages about the broken links were valid, I wasn't sure how I felt about changing the links. Should I preserve old posts and pages as-is or make the herculean effort to keep all of the links on the thousands of pages on seaturtle.org up-to-date. If I do decide to try to keep old links up-to-date, do I just change them, or do I note the change on the page with some kind of comment?

I haven't yet answered these questions, but information security on the internet is important enough that I added a note to those pages. You can now find helpful information from the FTC about protecting your personal information on the internet here:
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0272-how-keep-your-personal-information-secure

If you are reading this 10 years from now this link is probably broken now too. Sigh...

However, a bit of planning is required when traveling internationally with an iPhone or it could end up costing you a lot of money. I thought I would share some of the tips and tricks I have picked up over the years.

First, add the AT&T MyWireless app to your iphone if you haven't already. That will help you manage your phone's features.

I always have AT&T World Connect and Expanded International Roaming turned on. AT&T World Connect is $3.99 per month and provides reduced rates on international calls from the US. You can also turn it off and on as needed. Expanded International Roaming is free and lets you make and receive calls while traveling in supported countries. You may need to call AT&T support to enable international calling if you haven't done so already.

When I am traveling I add...

AT&T World Traveler - $5.99/mo and gives you slightly reduced per minute rates when using your phone to make calls while traveling internationally. Check AT&T's website to see if your destination is covered. For example, in India normal international rates are $2.49/min, and $2.29/min with the World Traveller plan. So it would take about 30 minutes of phone calls to pay for this feature.

Data Global Add-On - This provides access to data while you are traveling outside the US. There are a number of plans ranging from $24.99 per month (20 MB) to $199.99 per month (200 MB). Check AT&T's website to see if your destination is covered. When I went to Australia I added the 100 MB plan and used almost all of it over a 2 week period, browsing the internet, checking e-mail and using Google Maps to navigate. I will use the 100 MB plan when I go to India this week. The nice thing about having the AT&T app on your phone is that you can upgrade plans if you start to run out.

The key to both of these features is to turn them off when you get home so you don't get charged for extra months. AT&T suggests that you wait until all of the international charges show up on your account before turning features off or you might be charged higher rates. What I do is turn the services on the day before I leave and then turn them off 30 days later right before the next month starts.

Finally, don't forget to put your phone in airplane mode or turn off international data roaming (in Settings) when you are not actively using the phone so that your phone and apps will not secretly consume your data plan. Airplane mode will block prevent the phone from using data and making or receiving calls. Turning off international roaming will turn off data usage, but allow you to make and receive phone calls.

Also check out the iPhone Travel Tips on AT&T's website.

Due to a series of delays this year, citizen lobbying for U.S. appropriations in support of the Marine Turtle Conservation Act (MTCA) and other Multinational Species Conservation Funds (MSCF) for some of the world’s most charismatic species has only just begun. The deadline for Congressional signatures on a letter to Interior Appropriations in support of MSCF programs is Wednesday, March 17^th.

Around the world, these programs make a huge difference to conserve marine turtles, rhinos, tigers, great apes, African and Asian elephants and neo-tropical migratory birds.

Please consider sending an electronic letter or making a call to your Congressional Representative asking that he/she support appropriations for these small but critically important funds by signing a letter to Interior Appropriations. More information, and the opportunity to send a letter, are provided on CCC’s website. The office of your Representative can be reached through the Capitol Hill switchboard at 202-224-3121.

The MTCA was passed in 2004. Since 2005, it has provided 113 grants totaling $ 3.733 million to marine turtle conservation programs outside theUnited States and leveraged an additional $5.946 million in matching or in-kind funds. As many of you in our community live in the Southeast, we are asking for your help in encouraging your congressional Representatives to sign a letter to Interior Appropriations by the March 17^th deadline.

As constituents and interested citizens, your calls make a huge difference. Remember, in addition to everything else the MTCA supports, it also provides critical funding for the International Sea Turtle Symposium. This year Members of Congress signing the letter to Interior Appropriations will be requesting $2.5 million for the MTCA.

(Disclaimer: these quotes may be slightly out of context, a practice Limbaugh approves of but rarely warns listeners of when practiced on his show)

Radio star Rush Limbaugh is worried about sea turtles and is doing something about it. He and his neighbors in Florida know that just one light can kill thousands of sea turtles. "Giant sea turtles lumber out of the ocean, they trundle up to the beach, they dig the nest, they lay the eggs, and they trundle back to the ocean", says Limbaugh. "And then some weeks later the hatchlings hatch and they burrow up out of the sand and they are supposed to go to the ocean." But, says Limbaugh, "lights on the beach distract the hatchlings and cause them not to go to the ocean but inland. So, those of us who live on the beach have to turn the lights off."

During the sea turtle nesting season female sea turtles crawl on to beachs around the world to lay eggs. When they are finished they used light reflected off of the water to find their way back to the ocean. When the baby sea turtles emerge from the nest about 60 days later they also use the reflected light to find their way to the ocean for the first time.

As we develop coastal communities, building beach houses, shopping centers and high rise hotels and apartment buildings, we are splashing more light on to these sea turtle nesting beaches. Unfortunately these lights are coming from the wrong direction and can cause sea turtles to follow the wrong light source, becoming disorientated, and end up on a roadway, in a pool, an easy snack for a racoon or cat, or simply get lost and bake in the morning sun.

For this reason, many coastal communities have "lights out" regulations during sea turtle nesting season. These regulations often require home and business owners to take modest steps to install turtle-friendly lights, draw curtains, or turn lights out after dark.

One light in the wrong place can dissorient nesting female sea turtles and hundreds or thousands of their hatchlings.

Rush even says he is "seriously considering founding the forthcoming Turtle Preservation Society of Palm Beach".

Take the "Lights Out for Limbaugh" pledge!

Thanks for your support, Rush!
M. Coyne
WJ Nichols
(environmental wackos)

Tips for keeping light off the beach

• Reposition or shield necessary lights so they are not visible from the beach.
• Put lights on a timer or motion sensor.
• Replace current fixtures with "turtle-friendly" fixtures.
• Reduce wattage of outdoor lighting.
• Turn off lights in rooms that are not being used.
• Relocate movable lights away from windows.
• Keep curtains or blinds closed after 9 p.m.
• Apply window tinting.