Monday, August 17, Inventory of N6R

 We experienced a great start to our morning with a nice, cool  breeze and cloudy skies.  

Nest 6R was laid on June 22 along with Nest 7 and a false crawl.  Our team determined the eggs needed to be relocated to a location not touched by elevated tides. 

She laid 109 eggs.  One taken for DNA,  3 broken in nest, and one taken by crab. This left 104 eggs to be relocated.

The nest wasn’t very old when we placed a screen over it along with a crab trap behind the cage. Throughout the incubation period, this nest would have been harassed by roughly 30 ghost crabs if not for that trap.  Per DNR  - After 45 days, we must move the screen and the trap for the hatching to get ready to emerge.  On day 53 it happened - and many little tracks headed to the ocean.

So today, Monday, August 17 the Monday team was very glad that they were out there to participate in the inventory of their relocated nest.  We had four visitors with us today -  Pat, Marie, Lois and Christie - plus many LOA’s from other days and regular walkers.  

We handed out gloves to all who wanted to help?

  Jackie, our LOA from Saturday and Pam started the initial digging. They started finding broken yolks among lots of roots. Sharon stepped in to see what was happening, and just as she was ready to move,  she saw a little flipper move.  One little hatchling was found.

In the picture below is teamwork in full force.  Marie and Christy are now the diggers. Lois and Pam are passing the shells on to our veteran Monday walkers Jewel and Claudia.  They are sorting them into hatched and unhatched groups.

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Cherie our photographer (green shirt, front) taking a break to check out the activity.

   

Lois happy to be helping!

Sadly, the inventory of this nest did not have good results. We had 40 hatched eggs and 55 unhatched. The hatch success 36.6% in the emergence success 35.7%.

Most of the unhatched eggs were orange and pink in color, which means they could have been infected with a bacteria.

 

Making  tracks in the sand.

Best of all is what happens at the end of an inventory: If we find a live hatchling ,we get to release it and watch it make its first journey across the sand to the ocean. It’s a thrill every single time!

Text by Sharon, pictures  by  Cherie, Melissa, Leslie and Sharon

All seaturtle monitoring by Waties  Island sea turtle patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under permit MTP 500.

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