We started our walk with a beautiful sunrise. We split up and went on our way. It became a very busy morning with high heat and humidity. We did have some really nice cloud cover for a short while.
As we walked up the beach we had to have seen 50 or more pelicans come down in groups of 10-15 at a time. At least 7 groups flew by us. They were a sight to see, especially in the clouds. We came across a chicken egg which was broken, a plover egg, and nice foam football, and a stuffed animal along with a good amount of trash especially water bottles.
As we worked our way up the beach we approached a crawl. Momma had come up, wiggled her way through the dunes then came back down. Her tracks were 28" wide. We started to work the nest as while Betsy continued on to finish up the rest of the walk.
As we were probing with no luck, we got a call saying there was another crawl. We gelt that this could be a false crawl and decided to get up to the other possible nest. Once we got up there, we saw a nice clean in and out crawl with an obvious body pit. Well we didn't have to probe long, one probe and it sank right in.....and we found nest number 13.
Because the area that she laid her nest in was not in a safe spot (a good chance the nest would have been washed over), we had to relocate further down the beach to higher ground and away from the rack line. We measured her as 28" with a clutch of 80 eggs with keeping one egg for DNA testing. We carefully transported them all to their new home. We did call Leslie and she came down to get us so we could get the eggs back in the ground ASAP. We got to our new spot, dug a good 20" hole, placed all the eggs, in, covered them up, did our measurements and coordinates, and labeled our nest #13R. Great job by all. The Saturday team did awesome work! Thank you!
Narrative by Cheriè Pics by Cheriè and Jackie
All sea turtle monitoring by Waties Island Sea Turtle Patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under Permit MTP500.
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