Monday, August 3rd Inventory of Nest 03R

 We had an interesting assortment of guests today for our inventory.  Both Kathy and I drove out.  We had Pam a Wednesday Volunteer, Caroline from the Friday Volunteers, and Cindy and Dani from the Sunday Volunteers and Dani brought out members of her family.  We met up with the Monday Volunteers.  Thankfully the rain had moved on, we had cloudy skies and a nice breeze, great day for an inventory.

Nest 03R was laid on June 4th about mid-island.  This nest was laid on a Thursday by a 34 inch wide momma, but the Thursday Volunteers were unable to locate the nest chamber.  The nest day, the volunteers tried again to find the chamber and we had Nest 03R.  The original nest was moved to higher ground.  She laid 113 eggs, 112 were moved to the new nest since we sacrifice one egg for the DNA Research.  We lost one egg to a Ghost Crab, but thankfully this nest was not harassed by those pesky Ghost Crabs.

 About two-weeks ago the Leads were on the island and dug about 3 feed of sand off of this nest and cage.  Well, today we had to dig the cage out again.  Thankfully we had some muscle with us today.  The cage was quickly dug out and the reed was found under the large accumulation of sand.  To help with this effort, we mark the SCDNR pole with a strip of colored tape when the nest is laid, so we know how much sand had accumulated on this nest.

Since we had visitors the digging started with Dani and her family. 

Caroline taking photos

Good supervisor

Lots of digging going on . . . and lots of oversight

The digging was continued with Donna and new Volunteer Debbie.

Donna says the digging is all done.

We kept everyone else busy handing off the eggs, and doing the sorting.

Everyone else helped with the passing of eggshells and sorting

 

This nest emerged on day 57, July 31st  and had a great outcome.  There were 105 hatched eggshells, and three unhatched eggs, with no pipped eggs.  This nest had a Hatch and Emergence Success rate of 92.8%.

Now the cleanup, which was helped by our "young" guests.

Fun in the sand

Double checking our work

 

 

We have cleaned up our nest site!  Good job everyone.  Sorry a few of our Volunteers were not able to make it, we have other nests emerging soon.

 

 

 Narrative by Leslie, pics by Leslie, Caroline and Dani

 

 All sea turtle monitoring by the Waties Island Sea Turtle Patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under Permit MTP500.