It was a wet and cold morning when the Sunday team started their last patrol for the 2024 season. They had time to stroll, so they took a look at the short end first. It was beautiful to see all the seagulls and pelicans flying just above the sand.
The Sunday team met Leslie, Kim T. and Sharon at nest 19 for the inventory. This nest was found on August 20th, after being dug up my a coyote. One unhatched egg and 20 empty egg shells were found and removed from the beach on this day. After looking at the false crawls we have had this season, we decided that this nest was most likely from False Crawl 23, laid on July 16th. On September 12th & 13th, hatchling tracks were seen coming from the nest.
Dani, Kim and Sharon dug into the nest to quickly find hatched egg shells. Unfortunately, the found hard sand just as quickly. They dug in different areas around the nest connecting all the holes, since we never found the actual nest and could have the location wrong.
After coming to the conclusion that we had found all the eggs, we counted 18 hatched, 2 unhatched eggs (1 of which was piped), and 1 live hatchling. Including the previous eggs found, the clutch total was 42 eggs with a hatch success of 42.8% and emergence success of 40.4%.
We took the live hatchling toward the water and released it. It was very strong and had no issues crawling to the water and swimming out into the ocean. We may have all been soaked from the rain, but everyone was happy to see the hatchling start its journey.
Narrative by Erin; Photos by Leslie & Erin.
Waties Island performs research and management activities regarding sea turtle conservation in accordance with SCDNR permit number MTP500.
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