Wednesday, July 15th - Busy morning, False Crawl, Nest #11R, and a Possible Nest

 The morning started out with a bang as we drove up the beach to Marker 3 to park.  We have a crawl!

 

Nice find right where we park.  She came in crawled up in the dunes, lefty crossing over her incoming and took the long way back to the ocean.  We will work this nest area after we finish up our patrol.

The elevated tide last night was up high on the beach close to Hog Inlet.

 

After the lower end was covered, I returned to my vehicle to head toward the jetty to pick up the volunteers and they called we have a crawl up close to the jetties.  So I headed up the beach.  A very nice crawl was left by a 32 inch wide sea turtle lady.

 

The egg chamber was found quickly and the volunteers started digging to uncover the eggs since we were going to relocate this nest to the wider, higher and drier area of the island.  This part of the island does not have much beach at elevated tides and the potential for it to be over-washed or destroyed in a storm is high. As the eggs were uncovered it was very apparent this was not a normal nest chamber.  Many of the eggs were broken and co-joined in series of two and three eggs.  We uncovered 62 eggs, but only about 42 eggs were whole eggs.

Eggs were found

But, they are not our norm

 

Broken and co-joined

Spacer Egg

Two eggs co-joined

Yokes everywhere - what a mess!

 

 

 

 

 

The volunteers persevered and we drove down the beach where it is wider, higher and drier.  A new nest chamber was dug and 42 eggs were laid to rest in a new nest chamber.  We cleaned them up as much as possible before placing them in their new home.

Kudos for our Volunteers - Nest 11R in the books

       Now we move on to the first crawl we spotted this     morning and hoping it is going to be easy.  The     Volunteers have now been on the beach over two hours   and it is getting hot.

 

 

Unfortunately, we did not get lucky and find the nest chamber, so it was marked a "Possible Nest" PN02.  However, this story is not over yet, Leslie is going out later today and see if the nest chamber can be found.  We are hoping for nest 12.  Update, no luck in finding the nest chamber.

 All sea turtle monitoring by Waties Island Sea Turtle Patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR MARINE Turtle Conservation Program under Permit MTP 500 

Write-up and photos by Leslie