Monday, August 19th - Nest #8 - Day 70

It was going to be a busy morning on Waties today, along with checking our remaining nests, we had three inventories to do.  The Monday Walkers were up to the task with assistance from Barb, Paulette, Steve and guest Taryn Williams.

Nest #8 was located on the lower end of Waties.  This nest was laid on Monday, June 10th and  noted that it was a shallow nest.  This nest lost 1 egg for DNA, and 5 eggs to our pesky Ghost Crabs.  This nest was also one of our nests that was washed over during the king tide early in August.  Unfortunately, there was never signs of a depression nor an emergence.

The nesting history for this turtle is she laid 3 nests in 2011, Holden Beach, Waties Island and Oak Island respectively, 3 nests in 2013, and 2 nests in 2016. All of these nests were laid on Oak Island.  This year she laid 1 nest on Oak Island and decided to come back to Waties and laid our Nest #8.

Per DNR (Department of Natural Resources) guidelines we had to wait to inventory this nest on day 70.   Unfortunately, we had sad results - 17 hatched, 131 unhatched or pipped eggs, and 5 dead hatchlings, and no live hatchlings.  Our stats for this nest is 11% Hatched Success and only a 7.7% Emergence Success.

Sandy and Arlene ready to rebury the eggs