It was a very bright, cool start to the morning, and the ladies were already commenting that hoodie weather would be here soon. It didn’t take long, though, before it warmed up nicely.
Between Nest 11R and Nest12, I found hatchling tracks. At first, I thought we had found a wild nest, but it turned out that N12 had emerged. In the picture below I was not near where N12 was, and the team had to tell me that the tracks I was seeing were from it.
Most of the hatchlings made a straight shot to the ocean, but a few went over the dune off to the right. They ran around in circles for a bit before making their way down to the beach.
The confused ones finally made it.
This nest had actually been labeled possible nest 02 on 7/15. Two days later on 7/17 the nest was found and it became N12. It was very deep and hidden in the dunes.
We had a big storm last night and we knew that 10R might be emerging any day. When we reached the nest, we found very light tracks all the way to the ocean. They had a beautiful straight path to the water. The Relocation of this nest was very important due to the high tide and the short area of beach in the spot that mama originally chose. Her tracks were 31 inches wide and 20 inches deep. 96 eggs were relocated to a better location on the beach.
Our Labor Day walk was beautiful with a few little hatchling adventures to keep things interesting!
Text and pictures by Sharon
Sea monitoring by Waties Island sea turtle patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under permit MTP 500.
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