This morning was a sweatshirt kinda morning. We had a misty cool morning, with a light breeze. The two of the Wednesday Volunteers along with myself walked up to our last nest 15R to check on its status. No change from earlier reporting, this nest is 54 days old today.
Nest 11R was laid on Wednesday, July 15th. It was one of three events for the day for the Wednesday Volunteers. That day the team had a False Crawl and two nests. This nest was laid the same day as Nest 12, which was one of our "in situ" nests and was laid by a 34 inch momma turtle.
Nest 11R started out with issues when it was found up by the jetty. Due to its location it was decided to move the nest to a saver place on the beach where the beach is higher and drier. When the Volunteers first found the nest chamber, many of the eggs were not completely formed, several were co-joined, and there was lots of yolk on the eggs and all throughout the nest chamber. We dug up 62 eggs. When I checked with SCDNR I was told this maybe the momma's last nest of the season. This would possibly explain the condition we found the eggs.
We were able to relocate only 43 of the 62 eggs. One egg was used for the DNA sample and we reported two eggs that were broken within the nest chamber and 18 eggs which were not totally formed or co-joined with tissue. There was yolk all over the eggs and in the nest chamber. We wiped the eggs off before inserting them into the new nest chamber, hoping to keep the Ghost Crabs from attacking the nest. Even though we took this proactive action, this nest was severely harassed by Ghost Crabs. We had placed a Ghost Crab trap by this nest and caught over 20 Ghost Crabs from the day the nest was laid until the trap was removed.
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| Lynne and Chris digging |
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| Lynne - we are done |
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| Some of the eggs removed from nest chamber |
The sad outcome of this nest that we inventoried this morning on day 70 is all 43 eggs were found, but no hatchlings hatched or emerged. The white eggs we found were very light in weight. The eggs in this nest may not of even been fertilized. This nest did not produce any hatchlings so 0% for both hatched and emerged, the stats that SCDNR collects.
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| Egg with tissue on outside of egg |
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| Co-joined egg |
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| Egg count - 43 eggs |
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White eggs - very light weight - no yolk?? |
As we left the beach we spotted these beautiful blue beach morning glories.
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| Nest 11R resting place |
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| Beauty on our way off of the island |
Pictures and narrative by Leslie
All sea turtle monitoring by the Waties Island Sea Turtle Monitoring Program is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under Permit MTP500.
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