This morning started with a hazy sky, but we were blessed to see the last of last nights full moon.
Along with the Thursday Volunteers we had several guests out on the
beach this morning and they may of been our lucky charm to have a
classic crawl and a really nice body pit.
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| Incoming on left, outgoing on right |
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| Classic body pit |
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| She is dragging something |
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| She crised-crossed her crawl |
This lady may be our 34 inch lady that we were hoping would return this week. She crawled up created a nice body pit, where you could see the outline of her front flippers. We had the crescent shaped sand and lots of thrown sand and the nest chamber was found quickly. Her nest chamber was 15 inches deep. We removed 73 eggs, and sacrificed one for the University of Georgia's DNA research.
She nested above the spring high tide line, but we have several times where the South Carolina coast is going to have elevated tides this summer, so it was decided to move the nest up a little higher on the dune since it was located in a flat area.
With the assistance of Ariana, Kathy, Jeanne and Tom the eggs were removed, counted, counted again and relocated to a new higher drier home. As our norm, we placed a cage on the nest area to protect the nest from coyotes.
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| Ariana - we have eggs |
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| Kathy and Tom working on hard on moving eggs |
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| New home |
The Thursday Volunteers and guests were thrilled with this morning's find!
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| Final home - placed just a little higher on the dune |
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| Happy Thursday Volunteers |
Text and pictures by Leslie P
All sea turtle monitoring by Waties Island Sea Turtle Patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under Permit MTP500.
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