It was a cool crisp cloudy morning with an ocean breeze. We checked our remaining nests since the CCU Sea Turtle Club is coming out to meet the Wednesday Volunteers to do the nest inventory. Both nests 16R and 15R have depressions, so I may be planning for additional inventories soon.
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| Nest 16R |
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| Nest 15R |
Leslie returned to the shed to assist in the transport of the students, and many thanks to Steve and Barb Demusz for assisting in this effort. We had 13 students come out and some were returning students from our last inventory. Along with our Wednesday volunteers, and Cooper our guest, we had lots of action and help.
A little info on this nest. This nest was discovered on Saturday, July 6th and it emerged on day 57. The nest was found on the upper portion of the island and moved to a wider and higher area of the beach. A total of 97 eggs were moved, 1 egg sacrificed for DNA submission.
The following pictures are of the CCU Sea Turtle Club members, learning about and participating in a sea turtle nest inventory.
On August 30th the Saturday Volunteers found a hatchling in a Ghost
Crab hole, which probably had been dragged from the nest by a pesky
Ghost Crab. Thankfully, it was alive and it was helped to the ocean by
the Volunteers. The nest stats are 74.2% for both Hatched and Emergence
Success.
The inventory count was 72 hatched, 16 Unhatched - which does not equal 97 eggs. At the base of the egg chamber a big Ghost Crab tunnel hole was found. We are blaming the Ghost Crab for our missing eggs.
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| Look closely, you can see the GC tunnel |
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| What happened to the rest of the eggs? |
Unfortunately, no dead or live hatchlings were found, we did have a pipped egg. We loaded up the trucks and headed back to the shed, high tide was coming in.
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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