Loving these cool crisp cloudy mornings.
The previous days volunteers had reported that Nest 16R had a depression so we knew it was going to emerge soon. Today was the day. Classic emergence hole and lots of tracks. Thankfully the wind yesterday did not blow them all away.
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| Classic emergence hole |
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| Tracks are faint - due to the wind |
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| The hatchlings came out before the canines patrolled the beach. The coyotes tracks are on top of the hatchlings |
The Thursday Volunteers performed the inventory of Nest 11. This nest was a natural nest laid on June 26th. The mother turtle had a 33 inch crawl and this nest was very shallow 4 - 6 inches deep. This nest had been over washed several times starting with Tropical Storm Debby and the following King Tide so we were expecting a sad outcome. We never saw any evidence of an emergence from this nest. However, I was pleasantly surprised when we did find hatched eggs when we first dug into the nest. We uncovered 49 hatched eggs, 63 unhatched eggs. The eggs at the bottom of this 14 inch deep nest were discolored and many had roots around the eggs. Thanks to all volunteers who periodically placed sand on top of this nest. The stats for this nest is 43% for both Hatched and Emergence Success rates.
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| Nest 11 |
Outcome of the nest inventory.
Text and pictures by Leslie P
Waties Island performs research and management activities regarding sea turtle conservation in accordance with SCDNR Permit Number MTP500.
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