Waties Island Sea Turtles: A New Nest Today and Inventory of Nest 21

Saturday, August 13, 2022

A New Nest Today and Inventory of Nest 21

What a wonderful surprise the volunteers and guests got this morning!

On our way up the beach to conduct the inventory of new Nest 21 and checking the other nests along the way, the volunteers saw a hatchling making its way toward the ocean! Looking around, they saw several more.

Up toward the dunes, we could see an emergence hole and lots of loggerhead hatchlings climbing out - not an easy job - but there is strength in numbers.

This daytime emergence is a bit unusual; these events most often take place in the late evening or overnight. A very exciting event to witness.

When we compared the GPS readings from a false crawl documented in this area and compared photos taken of that false crawl #6 on June 12, we feel very confident that this nest was that false crawl, making Nest 22 for the season. A happy discovery this morning :) The white pole in the photo marks the location of the emergence hole in case blowing sands cover it up.

After we watched the emergence of new Nest 22, we headed up the beach to do the inventory on Nest #21, previously Possible Nest #1, which was discovered on June 13th. She left a mess and we thought she had headed into the dunes, but she was sitting on the beach watching us, before hurrying back to the ocean. We were unable to find the nest chamber, so we marked it a "Possible Nest".

We attempted to do the inventory last Wednesday, but found hatchlings before any eggshells, so we had to cover the nest back up and wait another three days. Thankfully we did, this nest had great results. We had 111 hatched eggs, only one unhatched egg which we used for the DNA sample. This nest had a 98.2% for both the Hatch and Emergence Success rates. Great results, she hid this nest well!