Thursday walk and nest #1 inventory

A beautiful Waties Walk!  The air was cool and the sky was marvelous.  We began our walk looking for ghost crab holes (very few and insignificant), possible emergences, and nests.  When we reached #4 we thought we had a big ghost crab hole at first.  When we touched the area to possibly fill in the GC hole it collapsed into what looked like an emergence! There was absolutely no evidence of hatchling tracks though.  Bill feels it was a depression that got rained (some evidence of a light rain last night) on and blown over.  Whatever it is tomorrow could be an exciting day for the walkers.

We were joined on the beach by many excited Turtle Patrol walkers and their friends.  It was a great inventory with 14 live hatchlings.  It's a wondrous thing to experience new life.  Kinsey was digging very carefully when she sensed movement.  Then we saw the tiny head pop up.  The joy on her face says it all.  Many of the participants got to see our little turtles make their way out to sea.

If you look closely you can see another hatchling emerging in the nest!

Altogether we had 123 eggs in the nest.  116 live turtles and 7 that did not hatch. The hatch success rate was 93.5%. 

Thanks to Elaine and Bill for taking great pictures!