# Daytona photos....



## gummybearpoop (Aug 24, 2010)

Daytona 2010 photos....where are they???


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## Yvonne G (Aug 24, 2010)

And where are the folks who attended?


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## Isa (Aug 24, 2010)

I can't wait to see them


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## GotTurtles (Aug 24, 2010)

Ive been waiting for them to pop up. I got to see some from my chameleon forum but no tortoises.


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## TylerStewart (Aug 24, 2010)

Best photo I took all weekend. 

I met Danny there and made some small talk. I had a blast socially, but was a little bummed about the show. Seems to be shrinking every year the past few years.


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## Becki (Aug 24, 2010)

Whoa.....that's the greeter?


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## cdmay (Aug 25, 2010)

These are a few images I took at Daytona. There is nothing great here as I usually do not spend a lot of time wandering around and when I do I don't bother to take any photos.
It was nice to finally meet a few folks I know from this forum or that I have corresponded with over the years but have never actually met in person. EgyptianDan, Art de Lamerens, Dan O'Malley and others were all genuinely nice folks who were a pleasure to chat with. Thanks to Mark and Allegra I was also able to FINALLY meet John Coakley after many years of correspondence. What a class act he is.
Of course, seeing old friends each year is the major attraction for me.
These first shots are from Eric Holt's tables at the far west end of the building. I took these early Saturday morning while the vendors were setting up. They sweep from N. to S. ....




















While the new building is far more roomy than the old venue and is much easier to load and unload displays, I actually prefered the old building. The old place was smaller and harder to set up in but it was a much more intimate place and I liked that you could walk around above the floor and look down at the scene below. The new place just seems so open and empty. But then, like last year the show was poorly attended and there were not the crowds of visitors from former years and that made the place seem even more empty. In fact, the number of vendors was also down by over 150 tables this year. This makes for a rather dull expo.
As usual there were the huge numbers of ball pythons and boa morphs and these snakes dominated the attention. Why, I don't know.
I only took a few photos of tortoises and they are of the cherry head type of red foot tortoise. This first photo is of Greg Fleming and an adult male cherry head he picked up as part of a nice pair from Bill Flood. This male had a flawless carapace with a lot of marbling and although not super colored he was as perfect an animal as you will ever find...






The female that went with him was a real jaw dropper. This is Eric with her...






The color of this female does not show in the photo but she had a gorgeous orange head and like the male, she too was just perfect.

more to come......

I stopped by one vendor's table as he had some yearling cherry heads for sale. Some of these had exceptional color but something seemed a bit off with many of them...











_Foo...._











He also had these things...











Do I detect some cherry head influence in these? Seems so.

Peter Pritchard giving a talk on the Pinta Island Galapagos tortoises...






Last photos. Eric Holt speaking to German turtle expert _par excellence_, Walter Sachsse...


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## spikethebest (Aug 25, 2010)

I would love to get a transcript or something from that talk with Peter on the galaps. How was the talk? Learn anything really interesting? Any interesting recent new developments or news?


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## dmmj (Aug 25, 2010)

Are those rabbit pellets I see in some of those tanks?


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## cdmay (Aug 25, 2010)

spikethebest said:


> I would love to get a transcript or something from that talk with Peter on the galaps. How was the talk? Learn anything really interesting? Any interesting recent new developments or news?



I think the basic part of the talk came from Peter's book, "The Pinta Tortoise:Globalization and the Extinction of Island Species" that was published in 2005 by the Chelonian Research Institute. You can probably pick it up for very little on Amazon.com.
This was the actual title of the talk...






...and it certainly was interesting. The real question isn't if Lonesome George is breeding any of the females that he has been kept with for decades. The latest information is about the possiblity---_THE POSSIBLITY_, that other Pinta Island tortoises might have been scattered about on other islands or that might be living in captivity somewhere. Pritchard's (and others) reasoning is that in at least one instance, live tortoises captured for food on whaling ships were thrown overboard during a naval battle off the island of Santa Cruz (I think this is the one he mentioned) many years ago. It was reported that the tortoises were found bobbing about in the ocean the next day and many of them made it ashore. Genetic studies have shown that the tortoises living in that section of the island now are of mixed genes which indicates that some of those tortoises might have actually survived the battle and went on to breed. This is further supported by the fact that there are now many different phenotypes living together in that same region of the island. So you have tortoises that are saddlebacks living right next to dome shelled types which shows that the tortoise there are made up of different backgrounds. Some of these living tortoises, according to Pritchard, look exactly like typical Pinta animals.
Sorry if this is OT, but the whole subject is really interesting to me.


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## Madkins007 (Aug 25, 2010)

cdmay said:


> ...and it certainly was interesting. The real question isn't if Lonesome George is breeding any of the females that he has been kept with for decades. The latest information is about the possiblity---_THE POSSIBLITY_, that other Pinta Island tortoises might have been scattered about on other islands or that might be living in captivity somewhere. Pritchard's (and others) reasoning is that in at least one instance, live tortoises captured for food on whaling ships were thrown overboard during a naval battle off the island of Santa Cruz (I think this is the one he mentioned) many years ago. It was reported that the tortoises were found bobbing about in the ocean the next day and many of them made it ashore. Genetic studies have shown that the tortoises living in that section of the island now are of mixed genes which indicates that some of those tortoises might have actually survived the battle and went on to breed. This is further supported by the fact that there are now many different phenotypes living together in that same region of the island. So you have tortoises that are saddlebacks living right next to dome shelled types which shows that the tortoise there are made up of different backgrounds. Some of these living tortoises, according to Pritchard, look exactly like typical Pinta animals.
> Sorry if this is OT, but the whole subject is really interesting to me.



God, don't apologize- this is fascinating stuff. There are so many species at risk today, even tortoises, that ANY stories of hope are great to hear!


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## egyptiandan (Aug 26, 2010)

Just to add to Carl's description of the talk on Pinta tortoises on Volcan Wolf.  It happened in 1812 when an American frigate gave chase to 3 English whaling vessels. They had already been through the islands and had stocked up on tortoises, so were ready to go out whaling. They dumped their tortoises to gain speed to out-run the American frigate. Like Carl said lots of tortoises were still in the water the next day. It seems most of these made it to shore at Volcan Wolf. Not sure when they did the work, but they split Volcan Wolf into 9 sections where tortoises are found. Peter got section 1 that was right on the coast. This is where most of the tortoises that went to shore in 1812 stayed. Peter said he recognised at least 4 different island species in the animals they took blood from. He gave a nice over view of the tortoises of Pinta and said that males and females look different on Pinta (Peter being the only person to ever find a females carapace on the island). Males are highest at the second vertebral scute and females are highest at the first vertebral scute and have a straight back as opposed to a sloping back that the males have. The 2 females with George at the Darwin Station came from Volcan wolf, but are very saddlebacked like a male Pinta or females from a different island. Peter did take a great picture of a flat backed female on Volcan Wolf that looks just like a female Pinta tortoise should look. They found 91 tortoises in Peter's section that they took blood from. I do believe he said that only a 1/3rd of the DNA work was done for all the sections. But he figures that in his section that fully 1/3rd of the tortoises had Pinta DNA in them. It was a great talk.

I'll be posting pictures soon  http://tortoiseforum.org/Thread-Daytona-Expo-Photos

Danny


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## cdmay (Aug 26, 2010)

Thanks Dan. Vulcan Wolf is on Isabella Island, not Santa Cruz as I mentioned. It had been a long day......


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## shelber10 (Aug 26, 2010)

TylerStewart said:


> Best photo I took all weekend.
> 
> I met Danny there and made some small talk. I had a blast socially, but was a little bummed about the show. Seems to be shrinking every year the past few years.



Did anyone notice the pictures in the backround?


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## Candy (Aug 26, 2010)

TylerStewart said:


> Best photo I took all weekend.
> 
> I met Danny there and made some small talk. I had a blast socially, but was a little bummed about the show. Seems to be shrinking every year the past few years.



Hey Tyler isn't your wife like 7 to 9 months pregnant right now? I take it this isn't her in this picture since I met her at the Pomona Expo and don't remember her looking like this. I'm kind of wondering about the pictures in the background also. 

Thanks Carl for the actual pictures of the expo. It looked nice. I would have loved to hear the speakers that were there. Those are weird looking Redfoots with the blonde shells.


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## TylerStewart (Aug 26, 2010)

> Tyler isn't your wife like 7 to 9 months pregnant right now? I take it this isn't her in this picture since I met her at the Pomona Expo and don't remember her looking like this.



This is the picture I took of our waitress at the "Wing House" next door to the hotel. I took this photo with my phone and sent it to my wife with a message "thinking of you" just to get under her skin LOL. So indeed, this is not her. My wife is a redhead, and is due in early October. She'll be with me in Anaheim in a few weeks and Sacramento the week after; if you swing by you can rub her belly.


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## Candy (Aug 26, 2010)

Can I also watch her slap you for sending her that picture?  Please.


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## Isa (Aug 28, 2010)

Candy said:


> Can I also watch her slap you for sending her that picture?  Please.



LOL


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## MissTurtle (Aug 28, 2010)

I heard a rumor that the state wildlife folks were going to be confiscating turt/torts being sold under 4" in size. Did this happen???


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## egyptiandan (Aug 28, 2010)

No it didn't happen that I'm aware of. They are though enforcing rules about whether you bred the turtles or tortoises yourself of if you bought them from another breeder. I'm sure the rules are there for trying to find sellers that are buying from turtle farms and not breeding themselves or buying from other breeders. So you need to have hatch dates for all the hatchlings or when and from whom you bought them from.

Danny


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