Tuesday, August 13, Inventory of Nest #11 and emergence of Nest #9

Another beautiful morning on Waties Island and getting busy. The inventory for Nest #11, which emerged on day 52 went well. This is one on our Special Needs Turtle (SNT) nest.  The nest was actually a lot deeper than we thought, we thought we would find a shallow nest.  This is the nest we found with an egg sitting on top of a pile of sand, and we could see eggs at the top of the egg chamber.  The inventory results were 110 eggs hatched, 16 unhatched eggs, and no live hatchlings. Sadly, we had 6 dead hatchlings. This comes to a hatching success rate  of 85.2%, and an emergence success rate of 80.6%. This nest lost 4 eggs, 1 for the DNA study, and three to Ghost Crabs.

Another beautiful morning

This nest is deeper than we thought

Keep digging

Sorting the egg shells

The Tuesday Walkers also found that Nest #9 had emerged on day 63.  This was our "nest in the ditch".  This inventory will be scheduled and set up for later this week.  Many thanks to Kinsey for her pictures!

Those pesky Ghost Crabs.  We did catch a large Ghost Crab in the trap we set yesterday.  Hoping he enjoyed the scenic flight over the dune.  All Ghost Crab holes were filled and soundly packed.  Nothing new was reported for Nest #8 on the lower end.

A whole eggshell was found at the top of
 these Ghost Crab Holes,
 they are about 3 feet , and left of the DNR sign

Those pesky Ghost Crabs