Waties Island Sea Turtles 2024: Wednesday, June 12th - Three crawls, Two Nests and a PN

Another stellar day on Waties Island beginning with another beautiful sunrise. We had 4 guests today. Leslie Y had her nephew Michael out, he has walked before with us. An acquaintance of Leslie Y is in town, so Jenn and two young ladies also walked with us. We had no idea it was going to be a busy morning.

Leslie along with Jenn and the two young ladies walked the short end. We had not gotten very far, and a call comes in, we have a crawl and a body pit. These volunteers are to continue to walk, and when Leslie is finished checking the lower end will go and pick them up. Leslie did not go very far, and she sees a crawl and body pit on the lower end. This nest is located in an area we had a nest last year. Leslie called the other volunteers to let them know. We walked to the area of where the trees are located on the lower end, and another phone call comes in - Leslie answered the phone "Are you kidding me" . We have another crawl and body pit - that makes 3 in one morning.

We had to relocate this nest out of this flood plain and to higher ground. This Lady was 38 inches wide and knew what she was doing. Her egg chamber was well hidden, and hard to probe. The sand density was soft, hard, soft due to the area of the beach. Her nest chamber was deep, 23 inches. We uncovered 123 eggs, there were 5 broken eggs in the nest, and we used one of these for our DNA sample. This crawl became Nest 5R.

The next crawl we worked was a classic text book crawl, and body pit. This lady was just 30 inches wide, and she laid 117 eggs, and we sacrificed one egg for the DNA study. This crawl became nest 4R. We moved this nest up higher into the dunes, since it was laid right on the wrack line. She came in and on her way out, she crawled on top of her incoming crawl. Per the outgoing tracks, our Volunteers just missed seeing her.

Nice Body Pit

Incoming and out going

Low tide, her tracks were right at thee water line

She crawled over her incoming tracks

Bucket of eggs - 117

Happy Volunteers - Nest 4R

Our third crawl became our Possible Nest # PN03. She crawled up to the dune, with a side squirrely path. Her body pit was a disaster to read - she had several places that were in the crescent shape, thrown sand was all over the place, not in one direction. Leslie ended up calling Steve for some expert advice, even then we could not find the nest chamber, so this area became Possible Nest #3 (PN03). We have seen this lady before, she has a barnacle or something on her plastron that is dragging. Good Luck to Thursday Volunteers.