Well, the Monday team has not had a lot of action in the last two years, but we certainly made up for it today. We had three crawls which turned into one false crawl and two nests. So I’m going to get right to it.
Walking up the beach we came to the X’d out false crawl from yesterday, and we were commenting on how narrow the crawl was.
Continuing our walk up the beach, we came upon our first crawl. It measured 32” wide - larger than yesterday’s crawl. This turtle came up, made her body pit and then returned directly to the ocean. The crawl going in and out were almost the same length.
I was taking some pictures and sent the rest of the team to finish the walk. No sooner did I get done when I get the call they have a second crawl. Told them I would be up and to finish their walk. When I got there the crawl measured 28” The lady from yesterday. Would have to come back to this one because got another call about another crawl - #3. Needed to call Leslie to help get this all done.
Third crawl pictured below - turned out to be FC#05.
This turtle had a long crawl up to the dunes, where she travelled all around. After studying and probing all areas extensively we determined this to be FC#05.
We then went back down to crawl number two and located the body pit. I began probing and quickly found the egg chamber. The nest contained 109 eggs. We also found four broken eggs within the nest and retained one for the DNA sample. The nest was not laid high enough to be protected from high tides so it was relocated. Also she laid right in back of all that vegetation!
One more crawl to do. Back to the beautiful body pit with a substantial amount of thrown sand in one big spot. It was hot and getting late, so I began probing on one side while Leslie probed on the other. We both located soft spots so we had Jewel and Claudia begin digging. Jokingly I remarked that they were going to meet in the middle and find the eggs. That’s exactly what happened a few moments later Claudia excitedly
called out “there they are.” The nest was in an excellent location, high enough on the beach to provide good protection and did not require to be relocated. It became N#07.
We had two visitors join us today from Utah -Yvonne and her son Cooper. They had a wonderful experience and as a high school student he commented on how he will really have something to tell his classmates.
Text by Sharon pictures by Jewel and Sharon
All sea turtle monitoring by Waties Island sea turtle patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under permit MTP 500.
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