As we close the 2021 year, I thought it would be a nice touch to give a summary of our 2021 Nesting Season.
Here's our stats and than some notable highlights.
- On May 1st, the COVID virus was still a major issue for the Sea Turtle Monitoring Program, so only the Permit holder and LOAs (Letter of Authorization) were allowed to walk, at first
- May 6th, was our first False Crawl and our FIRST NEST of the season - the earliest nest laid in 10+ years
- Our nest count
- Total of 12 nests
- One "Wild Nest", which was lost to Coyote depredation - it was found due to Coyotes digging up the nest before it emerged
- 2 Nests were relocated
- Nest #1 took 84 days to emerge, and an emergency inventory was done on this nest per SCDNR
- The average incubation time was 63 days
- Last nest laid on August 7th
- Last nest inventory was on October 19th, marked the end of our surveys and our season
- False Crawls
- 6 False crawls
- Last False crawl was on August 9th
- DNA Results
- At this time we have DNA results for 9 of the 12 nests, missing DNA for nests 10, 11, and 12 - will report on when this information is available
- At this time, we know we have 5 individual mothers who nested on Waties Island
- Volunteers were able to start walking on June 13th - only 4 volunteers were allowed to walk per day, along with a LOA
- Started caging all nests on day 45 to protect the nests from the Coyotes
- Started placing plastic netting over the nests to deter those pesky Ghost Crabs, some nest had both deterrents
- Saw evidence of both Coyotes and Bobcats patrolling the beach, the Sunday team was lucky to see a Bobcat and her kitten
- 4 King Tides
- 2 Hurricanes which were off the coast, but still caused higher than normal tides
- Return of the Coastal Carolina University Sea Turtle Club students for inventories
- September a small fire was reported, very exciting morning on Waties with the North Myrtle Beach Rescue services responding
- October a site visit by Michelle Pate, our SCDNR contact
I tried to cover items of interest. If you have not done so, please enter your time and mileage into the Volunteer logging application http://seaturtle.org/volunteer/ This information helps toward getting additional grant monies for the DNA study.
Again, many thanks to all, so hoping for a better 2022.
