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.

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Interesting Tuesday

Today's monitors inventoried Nest #2 and found 88 hatched eggs and 8 unhatched. 18 egg shells had been discovered prior to the inventory at the surface of the nest. The nest had a 76.5% hatch and emergence success.

CCU students, Hunter and Kinsey, remove the eggs from the nest.

Karen counts the hatched and unhatched eggs.

We also began an inventory at Nest #4 where groups have been discovering eggs at the surface of this nest for weeks (39 eggs total), and Karen saw an emergence hole on Saturday. We found 11 hatched shells in nest cavity, but also live hatchlings in a "side chamber" of the nest. We ended up releasing 24 hatchlings from this side chamber, but reburied other hatchlings and eggs/egg shells found in the nest cavity. The 2nd inventory will take place this Sunday.