It was a beautiful breezy morning, cool, and jackets were needed. Donna covered the short end and quickly called to advise there was a FC near the beach entrance. She could definitely tell it was a false crawl because there was no stopping - the very faint crawl made a half circle and an immediate return to the ocean. Similar to yesterday’s false crawl, it was 30 “ wide with a drag mark in the middle of the crawl.
On our way up the long end, Jewel and Claudia located another false crawl about half way up the beach. She came in, zigzagged up the dune, then just turned around and came back down. The base of the dune was probed, but the sand was very hard and there was no disturbance.
This track was also 30” and had a drag mark up the center of the crawl.
After I got up to the PN from yesterday, I believe this could be the lady from yesterday who may have returned again later in the day. The crawl had missing areas in the crawl on each side indicating the tide had come up at some point and disturbed it.
Soon afterward, I got a call from Jewel that she had found a beautiful deep crawl up near the jetty. She said the crawl went up into the dune. As we walked up the beach to join them, they tried to determine where she had gone. She appeared to crawl over the dune, went a little to the right and rested for a while. There was no body pit, no disturbance. We did probe a little, but, again, nothing but hard sand. She then started back out of the dunes and stopped again. This area had no body pit or disturbance either, although we did probe and explore it, finding nothing. From there, she returned to the water.
Text by Sharon. Pictures by Donna, Jewel, and Sharon.
Waties Island performs research and management activities regarding sea turtle conservation in accordance under SCDNR Permit Number MTP500.
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