Due to a rainy morning, we delayed our start time till 6:30. We had no sun, no bugs and no breeze,
Most Nests and Possible Nests are fine, but some have been pretty buried with sand from the extreme windy conditions on Waties.
But the good news of the day was finding that Nest 01R had emerged.,
History of N#01R - this nest was laid on Friday, May 17th. It was laid almost at the end of the beach, so the 120 eggs minus one for DNA were moved down the beach to an area that was safer from extreme high tides. Today which was day 66, we found a deep hole. At first we thought it was a ghost crab hole, but with the reed being moved, we felt it was a distorted emergence hole due to rain.. Unfortunately there were 4 empty egg shells on the top that ghost crabs had pulled out. We knew they had hatched because yesterday the team found some empty egg shells and one dead hatchling on top of the nest. Some pesky GC had been harassing this nest for a few days.
Again because of a downpour an hour before there weren’t any hatchling tracks to verify that this was an Emergence. Diligence by our volunteers Jewel finally found a hatchling track way down at waters edge. It’s a little distorted due to the rain.
Text and pictures by Sharon
Waties Island performs research and management activities regarding sea turtle conservation in accordance with SCDNR permit number MTP500
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