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.

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Wednesday 5/25/2022 NEST #1

We were lucky. Weather was cool and cloudy. We met some mosquitoes in the parking area only. Noticed just a few deer tracks on the beach and picked up very little trash.

Walkers could not make it around the lower end this a.m. due to the tide.

Between MM 3 and MM 4 we spotted a crawl and a text book nest site. We continued our walk and notified the other walkers that we had a possible nest and would meet them there.

We measured the crawl at 32 inches. Don't believe we missed our turtle by much because according to the "Tides Near Me" app, Dunn Sound High Tide was 4:47 a.m. Allowing for an hour Ebb Tide, the tide turned around about 5:45 a.m. and we got to the beach parking by six and still needed to walk up the beach.