August 14, Wednesday Inventory 7R

 The Wednesday group had a wonderful start to their morning. It was cooler but the mosquitoes and nose nosee-um’s were out in force. 

After the walk to check nests the inventory on N7R was started.  This nest was laid on 6/17 and emerged 55 days later.  The nest was found lower on the beach and it was relocated just higher up in dunes.  She laid 117 eggs. Unfortunately at the bottom of the nest 6 eggs were broken, so only 111 were relocated .

Notice our red markers, those replaced all plastic markers before Debby came.

We had the regular Wednesday team plus Leslie‘s niece, Stacy and Kim P’s son Eric. Several members from the Monday group were there, Claudia, Bonnie and Sharon, because they relocated the original  nest.  Some of Tuesday’s volunteers, Beverly, Barb, and Steve also joined us.

First time for Bonnie and Claudia digging into a nest!

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Bev handing hatched eggs to Claudia.

This nest had been harassed all season by ghost crabs.  We had lost another 10 eggs before we did our inventory, so we were worried about the outcome of this nest.  We found the eggshells quickly and the outcome was sad.   Out of 111 relocated we had 43 hatch and 36 unhatched.  The emergence and hatch rate were both only 36.7%.

Claudia, Beverly and Bonnie model our new-this-season shirts with the cool logo.

Text by Sharon pictures by Leslie and Stacy. 

Waties Island performs research and management activities regarding sea turtle conservation in accordance with SC DNR, permit number MTP 500.

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