Friday, December 31 - Summary of our 2021 Nesting Season

 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.