Waties Island Sea Turtles

Waties Island, the northernmost barrier island in South Carolina is roughly 4.0 km in length. It is a private undeveloped barrier island at the border of North/South Carolina. All sea turtle monitoring by this group is authorized by the SCDNR Marine Turtle Conservation Program under Permit MTP500. We strive to help protect the sea turtle, and we are at it again this season! The site will be updated often during the nesting season - May 1st through October.

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Saturday Inventory of Nest 16

Very high tides last night; the waves reached the base of the dunes in several spots. One nest at the jetty, #22, did get washed over but it shouldn't cause any harm.

Again, a beautiful sunrise! The volunteers were joined today by a large group from the Coastal Sea Turtle Club.

Lots of help today

The lower end of the beach was showing some erosion from the King tides recently. And a floating dock seems to have landed on the beach down there too. Thanks Pat and Jeanne for sharing your pictures today.

On to Nest #16: a large nest where we found 129 hatched egg shells, only 11 unhatched eggs and no dead hatchlings (a nice thing). We did find 6 live stragglers too. Including the DNA sample, we have a 91% hatch success ratio.