Tuesday September 8 - Lucky #Nest 13

 It was a beautiful, somewhat cool start to the day with a nice breeze and beautiful sunrise. Two of the team members actually started the walk with hoodies on anticipating a cooler, September morning. 

Nest 12, which emerged yesterday, still had a visible emergence hole and a few tracks from stragglers. We followed the tracks from Nest 12 to the evening high tide line which was full of sea foam and wrack. No stray hatchlings were located in the wrack or the vegetation closer to the nest.  

As we approached Nest 13R, it was obvious that it had emerged overnight. We observed lots of hatchling tracks headed straight for the ocean! A few tracks meandered near the cage and we followed those.  All tracks lead to the high tide/wrack line. We are confident those babies caught a wave and headed out to sea! 

 

It was a great day to be on the island! The only down side was, right on cue, the big biting flies showed up as they usually do right after Labor Day, just waiting to pounce on us every time we paused to investigate a nest. 

Narrative and photos by Kathy G. All sea turtle monitoring by Waties Island Sea Turtle Patrol is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under Permit MTP500.