Update from Yesterday and Today

We are now 8 for the season!!  Yesterday morning, there was a crawl at the jetty - as far away from the entrance as you can get.  It looked like she actually tried to nest up on the hillside, but there are lots of rocks just under the sand there.  So she came back down and Nest 7 was laid just above the wrack line.

A long crawl up the beach

It's a loggerhead - see the alternating flipper marks?

The Friday crew working Nest 7

Arlene and Paulette uncovering the eggs

This morning, Patrick, Arlene, Jackie, Amanda, Ashley and Seth set off with Steve for another stroll on the beach.  But... right above Marker 5, there were the telltale tracks crossing the beach.  While Steve went for supplies and a cage, the others continued up the island to check for more crawls and monitor the other nests.

Perfect location up on the dune

Sure enough, it was a nest - Nest #8.  The tracks looked pretty big, but measured just 31", fairly average for a loggerhead.

This one was 31" wide

Seth, Amanda, Ashley, Steve, Patrick, Jackie and Arlene

Patrick's first nest ever and might be Jackie's first too.

This year, we've had ghost crabs at several nests and yesterday's nest at the jetty was no exception.  New crab trap is now in place and we'll see if we can catch this one.

Nest 7 with Fripp Island ghost crab trap in place

Different style crab trap installed on Nest 2

Statistics from 2007, our best year so far, show our 8th nest on June 19 - that means that we're a day ahead of the 2007 season.  But only time will tell what the end of season results for this year will show.  Still, it's looking good!  Thank you all for volunteering!!

Don't forget to check out the Waties Island Turtle Watch Facebook site that Ashley is maintaining:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Waties-Island-Turtle-Watch/182846128434586

Barb and Steve