Wednesday, August 7th Inventory of Nest 05R - TS Debby

 Its nice to have adventurous friends who are willing to follow and assist in sea turtle activities such as performing an inventory of a nest while the ocean is angry and the wind was picking up on the beach.   Thankfully, both Kim T and Kim Pf have those credentials and were available to investigate going out to the island.   Thankfully, the Causeway was clear and had not been flooded.  The beach access road after the CCU gate was partially under water in places, but still passable.  We were able to drive over the dunes to the beach.  With the tide coming in, I parked my truck on the beach road.

We came out to do the nest inventory of Nest 05R, which was located just left of the beach access road.  This nest emerged on Sunday, August 4th, day 53.  This nest was originally laid down on the flat beach area close to Hog Inlet.  We moved the eggs to a nest we dug that was located on higher ground.  She was a big girl with a 38" inch crawl.  She laid 123 eggs, sadly we found 5 broken eggs in the nest she laid.  We used one of these eggs for the DNA study.  This nest was laid on June 12th, the same day that Nest 04R and PN03 - it was a three-for a day for the Wednesday Volunteers.

When Kim and Kim2 dug up the nest earlier today, I was going to do the sorting.  However, the wind came up and started blowing the eggshells around.  As I was chasing hatched eggshells, I hear "we got a hatchling".  I stopped chasing eggshells and took the one little hatchling down to a runnel which helped the hatchling swim out to the ocean.  Walking back up to the nest, there were more hatchlings.  They were energetic and ready to start there lives and heading to the ocean.  We helped them down, and even with the rough ocean, they  made it out.  We had a total of 15 hatchlings.  We took the eggshells with us and completed the counting at the shed.

The nest results are 109 eggs hatched, 10 Unhatched eggs, no dead hatchlings, and 15 live hatchlings.  This nest had an 88.6% Hatched Success, and an Emergence Success of 76.4%.  Nest 04R emerged on August 04, so we will be performing this inventory soon.

First Hatchling

Hatchlings crawling toward the ocean

The angry sky and ocean - thanks to TS Debby

Wonder if this tree will be still here after the storm?

The wind blowing the sand, time to go

Results of the Inventory

Text by Leslie Pictures by Leslie, Kim T and Kim Pf

 Waties Island Performs research and management activities regarding sea turtle conservation in accordance with SCDNR permit number MTP500.