June 17: NEST TWELVE!

    The season continues at a fiery pace with yet another confirmed sea turtle nest! Not far from nest 7, which was discovered last Friday, this obvious track was found etched into the sand past Mile Marker 6.

The crawl was thirty four inches wide, very defined and deliberate.

  The body pit, as seen below, gave walkers a lot to work with. The nest was spotted by long-end walkers Keela and Arlene, but ALL the walkers turned into Long-End walkers in order to reach this distant crawl. Once they got there, flies and thickly humid air didn't help the situation.

 This large body pit required a lot of digging.

 And digging.

Did we mention the digging?

However, these efforts ended in triumph! The egg chamber was located successfully by resilient and relentless Friday walkers. 

Since the nest was several feet above the high tide line, pressed firmly against the dunes, there was no need to relocate. As is custom, an egg was taken for DNA (pictured below)

Keela (Left) and Deb with sample tube containing freshly cracked eggshell from Nest Twelve

 This nest--if everyone can keep count!--is Nest Twelve of the 2016 season! Fortunately Waites never runs out of vacancies. Thanks to the Friday walkers for their hard work.

From Left: Arlene, Paulette and Deb announcing the 12 nest of the season the old fashioned way--with fingers

No thanks to the flies. They will be hearing from my bug repellant next Friday.